migraine brain

All About Migraines: A Podcast with Angela Stanton

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Migraine has been the focus of my research for over the past decade. Over the years, I had been interviewed many times, some with more and others with less technological success. By this I mean, that sometimes the webcam malfunctions and other times the internet connection on the interviewer’s end fades in and out like one of these two podcasts here.

This time the interview went flawlessly. Everything worked. The interviewer was Dr. Shawn Baker, a surgeon and an athlete, and Zach Bitter, a teacher and ultramarathoner (yeah… 100 miles… oh my). The questions were interesting and covered a very broad range of topics related to migraine, such as diet, medical care, general health, and exercise.

The main concept of an interview like this is to help migraneurs and the general population learn about migraine. The benefit of having expert interviewers like Shawn and Zach is that different segments of the population may also learn. Many of the questions that Shawn asked were questions a doctor would ask to understand migraine better and the questions Zach asked were more appealing to the general population. He also brought up the question of vegetarians, vegans, and migraineurs, as well.

The interview covers how the migraine-brain develops. For example, cyclical vomiting syndrome and IBS are very typical migraine-brain developmental stages, with cyclical vomiting more frequent in pre-puberty boys and IBS in girls. Few doctors realize that these are migraine prodromes. We also discuss some of the medicines most often prescribed for migraine and some of the adverse events that are not recorded as well associated with their use.

Other topics covered include the role of carbohydrates, the genetic setup of the migraine brain, the role of channelopathy in the development of migraine-brain. While migraine as a form of channelopathy is not new, current research is not focusing much on this aspect. This is the very area where much of the benefit may be gained. I view migraine as a channelopathy and discuss this aspect at length. Channelopathy is not preventable or curable, but once its action on the brain is understood, its interference with normal life is preventable. The migraine prevention and treatment protocol that I developed in 2010-2012 and first published first in 2014, and later the second edition book in 2017, is based on preventing the activation of the channelopathic processes that can cause migraine.

Migraine is preventable without the use of any medicines.

Is Your Diet Giving You Migraines?

In case you prefer to watch it on YouTube, the link is here. Please share with migraineurs you know, so they can see that there is hope.

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Angela A Stanton, PhD, is a Neuroeconomist who evaluates changes in behavior, chronic pain, decision-making, as a result of hormonal variations in the brain. She lives in Southern California. Her current research is focused on migraine cause, prevention and treatment without the use of medicines.

As a migraineur, her discovery was helped by experimenting on herself.

She found the cause of migraine to be at the ionic level, associated with disruption of the electrolyte homeostasis, resulting from genetic mutations of insulin and glucose transporters, and voltage gated sodium and calcium channel mutations. Such mutations cause major shifts in a migraine brain, unlike that of a non-migraine brain. A non-migraineur can handle electrolyte changes on autopilot. A migraineur must always be on manual guard for such changes to maintain electrolyte homeostasis.

The book Fighting The Migraine Epidemic: How To Treat and Prevent Migraines Without Medicines - An Insider's View explains why we have migraines, how to prevent them and how to stay migraine (and medicine) free for life.

Because of the success of the first edition and new research and findings, she is now finishing the 2nd edition. The 2nd edition is the “holy grail” of migraines, incorporating all there is to know at the moment and also some hypotheses. It includes an academic research section with suggestions for further research. The book is full of citations to authenticate the statements she makes to be followed up by those interested and to spark further research interest.

While working on the 2nd edition of the book she also published academic articles:

"Migraine Cause and Treatment" Mental Health in family Medicine, November 23, 2015, open access
"Functional Prodrome in Migraines" Journal of Neurological Disorders, January 22, 2016, open access
"Are Statistics Misleading Sodium Reduction Benefits?", Journal of Medical Diagnostic Method, February 3, 2016, open access
“A Comment on Severe Headache or Migraine History Is Inversely Correlated With Dietary Sodium Intake: NHANES 1999-2004” Angela A Stanton PhD, 19 July 2016 DOI: 10.1111/head.12861 not open access, membership required to read it.

Dr. Stanton received her BSc at UCLA in Mathematics, MBA at UCR, MS in Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University, PhD in NeuroEconomics at Claremont Graduate University, and fMRI certification at Harvard University Medical School at the Martinos Center for Neuroimaging for experimenting with neurotransmitters on human volunteers.

For relaxation Dr. Stanton paints and photographs. Follow her on Twitter at: @MigraineBook

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