Stanton Migraine Protocol in Dutch Magazine

The Success of the Protocol is in the News in the Netherlands—in Dutch.

Surprise! An article appeared highlighting me (including my photo) and the Stanton Migraine Protocol, based on my book: Fighting the Migraine Epidemic: Complete Guide How to Treat & Prevent Migraines Without Medications’ (2017) by Angela A. Stanton, Ph.D, ISBN 9781546976370

Here I quote a few sentences from the article and the picture is partly whited out because of copyright protection; this magazine is by subscription only. If you are interested to read the original article (in Dutch), here is link to magazine and look for the article title: Migraine behandelen en voorkmen zonder medicijnen. I also add a bit of extra to place the article into context.

Migraines Are Misunderstood

I have been a migraine sufferer all my life. The older I got, the worse they became. This is counter to all medical and scientific literature, in which the suggestion is that as we get older, the number of migraines reduce, particularly because of the lack of female hormones in menopause and post menopause. This is a lovely tail but unfortunately not true for most migraineurs.

There are several factors that make it untrue:

• There are children as young as 2 years old with migraine
• There are many men with migraine
• The percentage of migraineurs among females may actually be larger post menopause than at any other age

So migraines are clearly not female hormones driven. Migraine preventive medications don’t exist. There are the CGRP inhibitors, which are meant to prevent migraine pain by blocking the pain sensory neurons (nociceptors) from feeling pain. Unfortunately, these nociceptors are found all over the body in many organs, including the pancreas, the heart, etc., and not just in the brain and they have many functions that are not associated with pain. As a result, blocking these receptors has caused a host of adverse effects, which are not (yet) listed on the FDA label of the drugs. Some of these unlisted adverse reactions are: severe chronic hypoglycemia (CGRP inhibitor affecting the pancreas), severe heart palpitation and increased blood pressure and/or heart rate (CGRP receptor inhibitors affecting the heart), whole body inflammation (CGRP inhibition affecting the immune and adrenal system), in addition to very common problems like loss of hair, muscle pains, constipation that requires hospitalization, etc.

Drugs that are customized for migraine pin reduction include the triptan class with many types, whose main work—as far as the patient knows—is to deliver serotonin, but whose main outcome is actually blood vessel constriction to increase blood flow and blood pressure (vasoconstriction). These drugs are adaptive and may cause severe rebound migraines and discontinuation syndrome upon stopping their use. The more often they are used, the less they work. In this respect they behave very similarly to coffee because the only thing that helps reduce migraine pain is their vasoconstriction, like from coffee. Because of their constant vascular modifier action, triptans eventually lead to heart trouble—this has happened to several of my migraineurs. So if you want the triptan effect safely: have a cup of coffee. But there is a better way…

And yet there are other drugs that are often prescribed for migraine that have nothing to do with migraine. These are usually voltage gated sodium and/or calcium inhibitors that are often also nerve pain drugs (like Topamax, Lexapro, Celexa, Valproic acid, Nortriptyline, Lyrica), or heart drugs (like Propranolol), or SSRIs (like Zoloft) or SNRIs (like Cymbalta, Effexor, Pristiq), or opiates and barbiturates. All of these medications have huge list of adverse effects and none actually addresses the cause of migraines. They try—not very successfully—to mask the pain.

This is where my work comes in, and why this article was written about my protocol: my work addresses the root cause, thereby making it possible to prevent migraine completely. In the past 6+ years, I have worked with over 7000 migraine sufferers from all over the world—mostly in my Facebook groups, see the main group here, and the more specialized one here—to teach them how to prevent their migraines by focusing on the cause. This magazine article discusses the protocol through reading only my book. In the groups we offer a ton of help, including recipes, on top of the book. You can see some of the testimonials migraineurs post into the groups here.

There are also several YouTube interviews with me—and more to come. I update this as more interviews are released. Here is one with the Biohackers (bad video quality, so only listen to it, my webcam promptly died after this interview was over), here is another with Dr. Shawn Baker and Zach Bitter for the Human Performance Outliers series.

The Dutch Article Summary

Angela Stanton: “More salt, less sugar, enough water”

Article title translated: Treating and preventing migraines without drugs

Dr. Angela A. Stanton… treated thousands of migraine patients who provided her with a wealth of information. Supported by more than 800 works cited from the scientific literature, have led to a treatment method that she has documented in her fist-sized book Fighting the Migraine Epidemic: Complete Guide How to Treat & Prevent Migraines Without Medications (2017). In this article Hal-Bedee highlights her point of view…

…Migraine is genetically determined. Migraine patients appear to have so many similarities that they can almost be considered siblings… The migraine brain is anatomically different… This makes the migraine brain hypersensitive to all kinds of stimuli that come in much more strongly than [for] others… Electrolytes are dissolved salts that are in the blood in the form of ions (electrically charged particles)… salt (sodium chloride) is the most critical, no human cells can function without salt… Stanton calls glucose the main trigger of migraines… A few hours to days before a migraine attack, migraine patients may experience various signs announcing an attack (prodromes). According to Stanton, these are signals that the brain is deficient in nutrients and energy. The body prepares for the ‘fight or flight’ stress response and produces stress hormones such as adrenaline. This happens at all forms of migraine, even in migraine without pain and without aura. If no action is taken now, a migraine attack is inevitable… Stanton is very positive: carbohydrates pose many problems for migraine sufferers. That is why she has developed a low-carbohydrate diet plan especially for them, ‘the Stanton Migraine Diet’ [Protocol is the correct term]. Her latest book will be published shortly with a ketogenic diet plan specially adapted for migraine sufferers.

More information can be found in Stanton’s book (not yet in Dutch) and via Stanton Migraine Protocol Inc., and Facebook Protocol Group.

Maja van Hal-Bedee is an employee of Hoofdzaken and has a special interest in the relationship between food and diseases. Source: Book Fighting the Migraine Epidemic: Complete Guide How to Treat & Prevent Migraines Without Medications‘ (2017) by Angela A. Stanton, Ph.D, ISBN 9781546976370.