In this study looking at high dose vitamin D and blood vessel health (endothelial dysfunction), I’d like to point out the dosages used. I have previously brought up the concept of overdose of Vitamin D, but look at the levels used in this study!! 10,000 / day for 3 months with no problems… I know that I personally don’t usually exceed 6,000 / day, but the results of this study are pretty impressive.
vascular health
Migraines "Under Control" with Meds? Better Think Twice
Last Update December 18, 2014
I don’t mean to beat a dead horse, but merely managing your chronic migraine headaches with meds is not the answer.
I am not saying that it’s not the short-term goal. If you’ve ever spent time on some of the social networking sites that relate to migraine headaches, you’ll realize just how devastating and life-shattering migraine headaches can be. Jobs, relationships and lives in general can be restricted to living like a hermit in constant pain.
I understand that controlling the pain of the headaches is the first priority for a migraine sufferer. But not everyone gets relief from medications. This group spends their lives in a constant search for relief. Medication after medication after medication. When they’re lucky enough to find a medication to help, sometimes the side effects are just as debilitating.
The other group includes the ones who do find relief from medications. But then they stop there, blissfully unaware that this is just the first step.
I have written over and over that the headaches are the symptom of a much bigger problem. The headache is NOT a problem in the head. Rather, it is the brain that is the most sensitive organ to the unbalanced state of health, with the critical dysfunction coming from blood vessel health (also referred to as “vascular health”).
Poor vascular health is at the root of migraines. It is not always the only answer, but in most it is the principle problem. If you can address vascular health and improve the health of your blood vessels, it is highly likely that you’ll find that your migraines improve as your blood vessels do.
Just in case you think I’m crazy for suggesting this merely because your neurologist has never suggested it, I would like to present as evidence this particular study.
In it, researchers looked at the relationship between the development of Parkinson’s disease in migraine sufferers in the AGES-Reykjavik study. And the news isn’t good.
The Age, Gene/Environment Susceptibility-Reykjavik Study (AGES-Reykjavik) is a study that began in 2002 and is designed to look at the relationship between risk factors, including genetic susceptibility and gene/environment interaction, in relation to disease and disability in old age.
Between 2002 and 2006, 5,764 participants from this study were reexamined to look for symptoms of parkinsonism, Parkinson disease, a family history of Parkinsons and Restless Leg Syndrome. Here’s what they found:
- People who experienced midlife migraine (especially migraine with aura) were 360% more likely to report parkinsonian symptoms.
- They were also 250% more likely to be diagnosed with Parkinsons.
- Women who had migraines with aura were 226% more likely to have a parent or 178% more likely to have a sibling who were diagnosed with Parkinsons.
- All of those who experienced headaches were more likely to experience Restless Leg Syndrome.
Parkinson’s disease has been strongly linked to prediabetes and diabetes. The damage to the blood vessels that occurs in the diabetic process is pretty bad, leading to actual brain damage and dying brain cells. I don’t know about you, but I’m hoping to keep all my brain cells intact as long as possible.
While no single study or research finding is enough to set anything in stone, the links between poor vascular health and migraines is quite extensive. Extensive enough to warrant finding a new neurologist if this has never been discussed with you.
It is equally clear that vascular problems LEAD to migraine headaches, NOT the reverse. This means that all the bang for your buck is in improving the health of your blood vessels to help your migraine headaches, not improving blood vessel health by controlling your migraines. There is not a single medication used to control headaches that does anything to improve blood vessel health.
There are quite a few ways to improve the health of your blood vessels. While it is beyond the scope of this article (you can read all about it in my Migraines and Epilepsy eBook by clicking here) here are a few short tips:
- Short-burst exercise is a must
- Cocao products like dark chocolate and cocoa, are very good for the blood vessels
- Berries
- Wild caught fish
- Not smoking (smoking DESTROYS the blood vessels)
While this is the short list, it should be enough to get you started.
Chronic Migraine: Why Migraine Relief Has to Focus on This
I can’t imagine life fraught with chronic migraine. Society doesn’t support the idea of a “cure;” that’s because migraine relief doesn’t focus on what matters.
All too often, migraine headache pain control is the goal. Or, even better, suppression of flare ups of headache with medications. This is what mainstream medicine focuses on and considers your treatment successful if one or both of these goals are obtained. Sure–they help to rule out the scary things like strokes, tumors and weird blood vessel formations, but these are very rarely the cause of headaches.
I have repeatedly stated again and again (I know–redundant, but I wanted to get the point across) that the problem with migraine headaches are not in the head, but rather a systemic problem affecting every aspect of the body and health. However, if we needed to focus on a single organ, the blood vessels and cardiovascular system would likely be the most important.
The research showing that migraineurs have problems with their blood vessels is quite plentiful:
- Migraine strongly linked with heart disease.
- Chronic migraine headaches linked with cervical artery dissection in the neck.
- Natural compounds known to protect the blood vessels can help with migraines.
- Chronic migraine sufferers have white matter changes in their brain–known to occur with blood vessels problems.
- Migraine sufferers had a 380% increased risk of having a stroke (arguably a blood vessel problem).
And these are just a few of the studies available. Overall, it seems pretty hard to deny that anyone with migraine headaches are having problems with their blood vessels. Here’s the kicker…
There is not a darn migraine medication out there that actually addresses the health of the blood vessels. In other words, migraine medications (of which, many are actually anti seizure medications) do not, in any way, shape or form, actually treat the migraine cause. They merely function by suppressing the pain.
You will never get better by using medications to address your headaches. Period.
Certainly, migraines do go away seemingly on their own, or after a course of medication, but the true answer likely came from some other change that occurred.
This particular article continues to support the importance of focusing on the blood vessels in the health of anyone who suffers from a migraine.
The researchers looked at aspects of vascular (blood vessel) health in migraineurs. Most notably, they looked at epithelial progenitor cells (EPCs). Think of the EPC are a little “fix it” cell that helps to keep your blood vessels healthy. Higher levels of EPCs have been shown to protect the heart.
Researchers also found that, with time, less and less EPCs were present. In other words, the longer a migraine progresses, the sicker the blood vessels become.
It doesn’t get more serious than that. It also means that, if your neurologist or primary care doctor who is treating your migraines has not address lifestyle changes geared towards improving the health of your blood vessels (such as those found here), it’s time to find a new doctor.
So what changes have you made that have given you migraine relief?
How Anti Depressants Damage Arteries
Vascular health is of the utmost importance when it comes to chronic disease prevention. Protect your blood vessels and you lower or eliminate your risk for heart attacks, strokes and dementia. That means that anything that leads to good vascular health is important, while anything that destroys vascular health is a bad thing. There are several commonly used drugs that fall under this category.
The has been much controversy over the years in regards to the actual effectiveness of anti-depressant medications (mainly the SSRIs like Prosac) compared to placebo. Anytime you have a drug that shows very little effectiveness compared to a placebo it has a tendency to highlight the dangerous side effects. The list of side effects associated with anti depressants is a little too long, in my opinion, given their questionable effectiveness over placebo. Consider these:
- Anti depressants weaken bone health in the elderly population.
- Anti depressants accelerate bone loss at the hip.
- SSRIs have been associated with upper gastrointestinal bleeding.
- SSRIs greatly increase the risk of becoming diabetic.
- Anti depressants increase the overall risk of dying (not a good thing…).
As if this list wasn’t long enough, this particular study allows us to add vascular damage to this already-too-long list. Researchers found that those who were on anti depressants had smaller diameter arteries (the authors note that the arteries were, on average, about 40 microns smaller in diameter–or the equivalent of about 4 yrs worth of normal progression with aging).
So what is someone to do? No one can argue that exercise is THE most powerful weapon against depression. However, getting a severely depressed patient off the couch may be near impossible. In these cases, there are some natural approaches that can be instituted to get the brain in a better state, maybe allowing the patient some motivation to get out and exercise.
- Coffee has been shown to lower the risk of depression.
- A mere multivitamin given to elderly patients has been shown to improve depressive symptoms.
- St John’s wort has held up in multple studies for mild to moderate depression.
- Melatonin is being investigated as a potential treatment for severe depression.
And the list surely gets longer as we look harder, but by now you should get the idea…
THOSE STUPID LIFESTYLE CHANGES DON’T WORK ANYWAY…
For many, at first thought, the idea of adopting a healthier lifestyle seems almost painful and certainly not worth it. Many have tried and did not see results in what they thought was a reasonable time frame. Many think they have made healthy changes, but in reality their choices were the wrong ones.
A frequent retort to the suggestion of making healthier lifestyle changes usually runs along the lines of “Well–Uncle George smoked 6 packs of cigarettes per day, drank Jim Bean like water and never ate a vegetable in his life and he still lived to 104 until he was taken out skiing off a cliff on Machu Picchu…”
I call this the “genetic lottery” approach. How many of us sit on our duffs watching Jerry Springer reruns from the couch, assurred that we are going to win the lotto? Do some people win the lotto? Of course. But do you want to hang your hat on that miniscule chance? Didn’t think so. So why are you so willing to do that with your health?
I have covered the concept of flow mediated dilation and pulse wave velocity in a prior post, but suffice it to say that these are very important markers for looking at how healthy our blood vessels are (or are not..).
This particular article looked at prediabetic patient adopting a low sugar diet combined with a high intensity workout (>3 times per week at >75% VO2 max) and found that, after 12 weeks and again at one year, pretty much every marker they looked at had improved pretty dramatically. 64% of the participants no longer met the criteria for prediabetes.
This is not a complete lifestyle overhaul, but rather very straightforward changes in merely two aspects of lifestyle. Before you begin to shake your head and think you can’t adopt these simple changes, remember that your fate is not likely to mirror Uncle George.
ARE EVERYDAY HEADACHES DANGEROUS?
Last update December 19, 2014
I’ve been a strong opponent of the way we treat migraines in this healthcare system. In general, we keep trying different medications until the doctor finds a medication that reduces or stops the headaches. Then we all jump up and down and pat each other on the back and call the process a success. If this is the approach your doctor has taken, then there ARE times when an everyday headache can be dangerous to your long term health.
Why? Because a migraine headache is unquestionably a cerebral (brain) manifestation of a systemic problem. If all we do is medicate the headache, we just signed an early death certificate for the patient because we have not fixed the problem. All we have done is control the symptoms. The “problem” was not a deficiency of Topimax or Depakote or Lyrica. Giving these drugs may control the symptoms, but in now way fix the problem that caused the headache in the first place.
So what is the problem?
A great place to look is at the blood vessels. Our vasculature that brings blood to every cell of our body. With this blood comes important nutrients, vitamins and minerals for a brain cell to function at its best.
When there is a problem with our blood vessels, our brain cells can’t get the nutrients it needs to make ATP. In case you don’t remember back to high school biology, ATP is the “energy currency” of our cells. It is what every cell needs to do anything and everything. The more ATP available, the healthier the cell. The less ATP available, the sicker the cell becomes.
In cells that require very high levels of energy, such as our muscles, our heart and our brain, this process is absolutely critical. If the brain does can not get the nutrients it needs to make enough ATP, a migraine or a seizure may be the result.
Ok. “So what exactly is the problem with poor vascular health”, you ask. With few exceptions, no one has a heart attack before they have a problem with the blood vessels leading to the heart. No one has a stroke without first having a problem with the blood vessels in the brain. Dementia begins with poor blood supply to the brain.
If you don’t fix the vascular problem that is contributing to the migraine, you are allowing unchecking damage to your blood vessels to occur. With enough time, this will lead to a heart attack, a stroke or the slow process of dementia and loss of your cognitive function.
Medications will NOT fix this. In fact, in several cases they will make the process worse.
This is strongly confirmed by this current study linking migraine with aura and cardiovascular disease. Strangely, the risk of stroke was massive (380% increased risk) in women with NO established risk factors for heart disease. However, in those women who DID have risk factors for heart disease and experienced migraines with aura, the risk of having a heart attack was increased 334%.
In other words, you can’t win either way. Having migraines with aura will either lead to a heart attack or a stroke. The ONLY way to save yourself is to make the changes needed to improve your vascular health.
Sadly, despite all this research, I have yet to EVER have a patient come in with migraines that were given any type of lifestyle advice by any other provider (specialists included). So yes–Everyday headaches can be dangerous. Even deadly.
CAN OUR CORONARY BLOOD VESSELS JUST BURST??
Pretty scary to think about, huh? As a bit of anatomy, the coronary blood vessels are the ones that feed nutrients to the heart itself so it can do its job. Block these suddenly and the heart muscles cannot get oxygen. This is called a heart attack. This can be caused by a rapid blockage from a piece breaking off from a clot in a larger blood vessels (emboli) or from the slow blockage that occurs with damaged blood vessels forming plaques over time. This will cause chest pain when the heart’s demand for oxygen goes up, either with stress or strenous situations.
Less commonly thought of is a rupture of these blood vessels. This would be the same as a hemorrhagic stroke ocurring in the brain. Any way you look at it, it is NOT a problem with the heart–it is a problem with the blood vessels feeding the heart. A vascular problem. It is critical that we think of heart and stroke issues as being a problem with the blood vessels.
What makes this particular article a little scary is that the authors were looking for patients that had evidence of healed ruptures of their coronary arteries. This is NOT a good thing! It is nice that the ruptures healed, but it is a sign of very sick blood vessels.
Here’s were the study gets worse. The patients that suffered these ruptures did NOT have “traditional” risk factors like elevated cholesterol. So the traditional risk factors, in this particular scenario, had little impact on vascular health. This means one of two things. First, there is nothing we can do to prevent these episodes from happening (not likely). Or, (more likely) we’ve been looking in the wrong direction to protect our blood vessels.
Protecting our blood vessels has everything to do with lowering inflammation through diet, management of pro-inflammatory situations (periodontitis, gut dysfunction, food allergies) and exercise as well as leading an anti-diabetic lifestyle. THIS is where the massive bang for your buck occurs with avoiding heart disease and stroke.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002914911003870