example for open database for doctor payments

Posted on January 18, 2017 by
doctor1-2015

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The Top 100!

Posted on January 3, 2017 by

The Top 100 in 2016

I started writing for Hormones Matter at the end of 2014–a little over two years ago. Since then I wrote 18 articles. From the 18 I wrote so far, 5 made this year’s top 100 and 2 are listed among the all-time top 25.

Here they are:

In The Top 100

Himalayan Salt – Flint on Global Scale? (here)

Dehydration and Salt Deficiency Trigger Migraine (here)

Topamax: The Drug with 9 Lives (here)

Silent Death – Serotonin Syndrome (here)

The Truth About Salt (here)

And in the All Time Top 25:

Himalayan Salt – Flint on Global Scale? (here)

Dehydration and Salt Deficiency Trigger Migraine (here)

I hope you will visit all the articles (not just the ones I wrote) and learn a great deal about all kinds of health issues in a scientific way! I am very proud of this, not because my articles made it to the top but because there are so many great articles on so many topics of interest, all with great scientific knowledge and acumen. I truly enjoy my time writing for Hormones Matter and feel honored to be one of their writers.

Comments are welcome, as always.

Angela

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Support Petition for Healthy Nutritional Guidelines!

Posted on December 19, 2016 by

Petition for the Support of Nutritional Learning

https://static.change.org/product/embeds/v1/change-embeds.js

In case the embedded link doesn’t work, here is the link to sign the petition.

It will take you less than a minute to sign your name but may change the lives of millions in the US.

The Petition

In the era when healthy nutrition guidelines need to change annually with the many new findings, the United States’ nutrition advisory committee is lagging significantly behind. There are no requirements for any doctor or nutritionist to update their knowledge and to pass a test (annually) on what is a healthy or a harmful diet and for what health conditions.

Examples:

1) RNs don’t know that vegetables, fruits, and grains are carbohydrates. This is a tragedy.

2) Nutritionists are educated only with the old mantra that is 60+ years old; got the US obese and sick. These are: grains, low-fat, vegetable oils, and high sugar fruits and even candies are great for type 2 diabetes. They ignore that these spike insulin terribly high and are unhealthy for diabetics and may even cause type 2 diabetes.

3) Doctors are not trained on nutrition at all. While the LCHF (low carbs high fat) and the ketogenic diets are already used for weight reduction, reversing type 2 diabetes, and all metabolic syndromes, in addition to the ketogenic diet being therapeutically used for the treatment of seizures, Parkinson’t disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and even cancer, most doctors have not even heard the words LCHF or “ketogenic” let alone be able to advise their patients on what to eat for health.

4) By now scientific literature explained that cholesterol is made from carbohydrates and not fat. It is time to advise patients to stop eating refined sugars and start eating a healthy nutritious diet without negative health consequences.

5) Implement the Canadian doctors’ manifesto of “HOW DIETARY GUIDELINES NEED TO CHANGE” in the US (please see source here: http://www.nutrition-coalition.org/manifesto-3/ )

By now there are millions of people who took on the nutritional challenge themselves all over the US proving that grain diet is wrong, sugar is poison, and animal fats are the healthiest for the human health.

It is time for the medical community to start preventing disease when such prevention is available (as is proper nutrition) and to start treating diseases at their root cause (bad nutritional advise that is over 60 years old).

Please help push the US toward a healthier future! Please sign and share!

Thanks,

Angela

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Ignorance? Fear of New? Stupid?

Posted on December 10, 2016 by

Sugar Is Killing Us

Gary Taubes wrote a short article in the Wall Street Journal with the title “Is Sugar Killing Us?” on 12/9/2016. The article is super. It is a small expose of the many misleading events that led us to obesity, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes in huge numbers that was unprecedented before.  The direction from eating sugar to these diseases is very straight-forward. I will not waste my or your time describing it since I have in the past many times–look back at my previous blog posts on this blog or here or here.

Rather I wish to talk about the comments that follow the article. I was floored when I started reading them. At the time I am writing this blog, there were 80 comments posted after the article. I copy-paste a few here for examples–names appear as they appeared in the comments with links to the person–it is a public site:

Sharon Block
So in other words, there is no empirical evidence it’s bad.
This article was a waste of time.

Bill Reichert
If sugar is “killing us”  as the  author claims, why is it that while sugar consumption as been rising for the past 100 years, the average life span of males has risen in  1900  from 48 years to 76 years in 2011. Is it the caffeine in Coke?  The chocolate in chocolate chips? The vanilla in frosting on cup cakes and in little Debbies?

Breck Henderson
Two observations.  A rise in diabetes and obesity that coincides with an increased consumption of sugar is not the same as a demonstration of cause and effect.  The rise of diabetes also coincides with the watching of more NFL football games, but the NFL is probably not to blame.  Second, the key to good health is exercise.  Lots of exercise, regularly over an entire lifetime.  When so many jobs are sedentary office jobs instead of active factory jobs, and walking is the rare choice over an automobile ride — well, you decide.  Personally, I probably eat more sugar than Mr. Taubes would recommend, but have no problem with obesity or diabetes because I spend a lot of time in the gym, on the tennis court and other places where exercise is required.

Oh my gosh!!! These were just 3 comments plucked from the many posted in the past few hours. I just about fainted!

Why Don’t They Get It?

I really shouldn’t care at all about what these comments say. After all, I don’t know Gary Taubes, though I read all his books and most of his articles. However, I do know the history of the tragedy that touches over 50% of the US population, which you can call Syndrome X or obesity or whatever you wish. The most commonly known term is obesity, which in the US today represents over 40% of the population–there is variability between ethnic groups. According to the American Diabetes Association, in 2012, 9.3% of the US population had active type 2 diabetes (these include only those people who knew they had that). Type 2 diabetes used to be reserved for the aging but now it is prevalent in all ages, including children. Now even 3-year olds can end up with type 2 diabetes. I could not find statistics for later years in the quick but I would not be shocked to see an over 25% figure for 2016.

So now, if you follow all the links I put above (they open on a new page), please help me find an answer to this question:

What’s wrong with those people who commented on Taubes’ article on the damaging effects of sugar like that?

The evidence is there. Whether Taubes had enough space in the WSJ to put any citations (or if it is even appropriate to do so) could be a question but not held against the author. After all, how many of those commentators have actually published a newspaper or a journal article? Do they know the rules? Since I have, I know the rules. It is not always possible to place a single citation or reference into a publication! So hush people!

I was fuming but I have a place to vent: this is it.  Thanks for reading my misery.

Because if I ever sign in to the WSJ and start responding to those comments, a war will ensue. While I prefer to think of people as ignorant or just want to avoid facts; I can see I am being misguided by my trust in people.

Some people are just either mean or stupid or both! I just had to say that! Pardon my rudeness!

Your comments are welcome as always–and be warned that ugly comments will not see the light of day! So don’t even try!

Angela

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A Migraineur in a Noisy Jazz Club Without Migraine?

Posted on December 10, 2016 by

Not only migraine but also medicine free!

New testimonial today: a migraineur heading to a jazz club, enjoys loud music and no migraine! Impossible? It is impossible until the migraineur is migraine and medicine free!

“Have to publicly thank Angela Stanton … this [Stanton Migraine Protocol®] is life changing! Joined two months ago, not perfect, but changes are happening that are benefiting my life in many ways. Thanks! Awesome example: husband looooves going to jazz clubs. I haven’t been able to go in years, despite also loving jazz music. Well, guess what? We went last night, and I am migraine free! Not even a little headache! This was no small feat on a Friday: we live 90 minutes south of the jazz club we like, and 90 minutes only in good traffic. On a Friday, after a storm that gave us lots of snow …” read more here.

Please share this with migraineurs you know!

I want to reach out to all migraineurs from all over the world! Over 4000 are already migraine free and most also already completely medicine free! The Stanton Migraine Protocol® is not a medicinal approach–no supplements or vitamins to purchase. There is a book to purchase but the e-book is about US$3 and that’s it. The paperback is around US$19. Nothing else to buy and no need to participate the free Facebook group either–though the group is very helpful!

It is a lifestyle change that all migraineurs can do.

Please share! Migraineurs get permanently damaged by the drugs they get from their doctors. There is a solution without drugs! Help your migraineur family member or friend or colleague change their lives for the better and help them prevent brain damage that their medicines cause by simply ensuring they don’t need to take them!

Comments and questions are welcome as always!

Angela

Posted in Big Pharma, Healthcare, Interesting reading, Migraine-Blog, Must Read, This & That, Thoughts | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Eating Culture of Want vs Need

Posted on November 29, 2016 by

PRESS RELEASE

I just published an article today as part of the huge movement toward helping people understand what really makes us sick, why there are so many people with metabolic diseases like obesity, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular diseases, and so forth.

Some of the old and totally wrong 20th Century explanations are very much still alive: eat less, exercise more, eat more “heart healthy” grains, fruits and vegetables, eat less artery clogging fat. The fact is that these advises are the very ones that created the obesity epidemic. To start with fat doesn’t become artery clogging cholesterol since cholesterol is actually made from glucose and fructose, neither of which is in fat at all but they are the main constituents of the food they recommend you eat: all forms of carbohydrates, which include grains, fruits, vegetables, and sweeteners of all kinds. Reduced carbohydrate diets provide more benefits than reduced fat diets do.

Researchers have known this for a long time but it is hard to swim against the tide of industry founded research and a medicinal system that doesn’t require its doctors to take classes in nutrition and doesn’t require those with nutritional training to update their knowledge every year! Thus, the tragedy of making Americans sick continues on a larger scale–it is global now–for the benefit of all pharmaceuticals.

The Tragedy of the American Diet

I can only reach so many people with my message but at least I try. The food you want to eat is addictive! What you eat is not what your body needs! Pay attention because you will pay the price by having to fall victim of the bad food ==> drugs that lead to lost limbs (type 2 diabetes), two seats to be purchased on planes (obesity), heart attacks (cardiovascular disease), and many really bad drugs for life with a not so happy life.

What We Want is Not What We Need

This article I published reveals the thoughts of one of my Facebook migraine group members who had a light bulb go off in a very enjoyable-to-read way. I asked for permission to share that message and I wrote my article around it. That article provides scientific proof why you have trouble dropping weight, why you have high blood sugar, high blood pressure, why there is no such as “high cholesterol”.

Even if you fall into that extremely small group of people who were born with hyperlipidemia, in which case your cholesterol is extremely high, since high cholesterol doesn’t cause heart disease but inflammation does, you may want to search for dietary change options other than statins. A huge study was published in the Annual Nutrition and Metabolism in 2015 that can be read here (it is nearly a book). This entire edition is about how higher cholesterol is actually better for longevity and health.

This is a paradigm shift; We better start paying attention.

Low cholesterol is associated with higher mortality even in those with coronary heart disease! Cholesterol is essential for life! Our body makes it, our brain makes its own cholesterol it is so essential for brain development and maintenance! What happens when you reduce cholesterol with a drug? Your body starts to fall apart, so…. Pharmaceuticals get to sell you other drugs and supplements that replace the minerals your body is blocked from making as a result of the use of cholesterol lowering medicines. I particularly get angry when women are prescribed statins: women live longer and healthier lives with more cholesterol!

One of the biggest cholesterol lowering medicines’ side effects is vitamin D deficiency. While I bet you thought I was going to mention becoming impotent, nerve and mood damages, cognitive function, muscle wasting, etc., since these are listed on the label of these medicines (see FDA label update here), I thought of one that is rarely mentioned instead.

“[V]itamin D is critical for metabolizing minerals and is linked to the expression of 200 different genes. Vitamin D deficiency is associated with chronic pain, Parkinson’s disease, 17 different cancers, heart disease, cognitive dysfunction, autoimmune disorders, and muscle and bone ailments. In fact, low levels of vitamin D are linked to higher rates of mortality.” (see here)

Vitamin (hormone actually) D deficiency leads to a host of problems since it  leads to calcium deficiency ==> osteoporosis; thyroid hormone deficiency ==> thyroid medicines, obesity and osteoporosis among other things) that forces D enhanced milk on us to drink and D supplementation.

Why do I mention vitamin D and cholesterol in the same sentence? Because without adequate cholesterol, your skin cannot synthesize vitamin D no matter how much time you spend on the sun! I hardly meet a woman over 50 these days who in not taking supplements for most of these conditions, all caused either by reduced fat diets, or the use of statin drugs, or both.

Comments are welcome, as always.

Angela

 

Posted in Big Pharma, Healthcare, Interesting reading, Must Read, Press Release, This & That, Thoughts | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Angry! I am Very Angry!

Posted on November 15, 2016 by

I receive tags on FB in posts about articles that publish claiming to know what migraine is. I have yet to see an article (in popular domain like newspaper, magazine and similar) that does  not start with migraine as a headache or pain disorder!

Migraine In Not A Headache!

Migraine is Not a Pain Disorder Either!

Here is my latest response to a Facebook post to an article published in The Guardian, a rather respectful UK newspaper, on migraines, which was full of completely wrong information:

…this article is total BS…. all old stuff and half of it is untrue! To start with very few people stop migraine as they reach into their 60s–many start it at that age instead. I have treated MANY people past their 60s with migraine and men as well. Also, migraine doesn’t throb… just a bunch of bull really. Please ignore ALL literature published about migraine.

I have conducted the only longitudinal study (3 years just on FB) and longer prior to that with over 4000 migraineurs by now. I know precisely the cause of migraine–I am also a migraineur….

All migraineurs in my care stop their medicines and remain migraine free, return to work and fun, etc., and never need another migraine medicine ever again as long as they maintain the necessary prevention (stick to the Stanton Migraine Protocol®). There is a prevention!

Migraine is Genetic

About 80% of the prodrome types are not known to the scientific community! Those currently in my migraine group get a great giggle about what scientists come up with because they are so wrong. Unfortunately, the drugs they create to treat their imaginary reason for migraines cause permanent damage to migraineurs’ brain and often mess up their metabolic system, which is already compromised by expressed genes that migraineurs are also endowed with (1-17). I only inserted 17 citations because I got tired of trying to prove my point but there are hundreds if the scientific community just had someone help them read all information already available and managed to find someone who can connect the dots.

I am a scientist and have connected the dots! 

The process used in medicine free and the outcome is becoming migraine free. Aha! This is the problem! If there is no pain to treat, there is no money to be made!

Pain = Money

This is a VERY serious matter. Everyone is focused on the pain because that way money can be made but

  1. there are migraines without pain (silent migraines)
  2. the pain is a symptom that happens at the end of the process cascade that leads to the pain phase–the prodromes of migraines can be far worse and more complex to understand. Preventing the migraine while in prodrome is very possible.
  3. There are several hours in which one can prevent the pain if the particular prodrome signs are observed and acted upon. I just give you one here that I already published but gets completely ignored: migraineurs get one eye smaller than the other about 4 hours before the pain hits. This is one of many prodromes that seem to be unanimously present in all migraineurs but which is not known to scientists.

I explain more migraine prodromes here.

I wish scientists would listen up but they cannot act even if they are listening. A medicine-free migraine prevention will not get research funding and is impossible to pass on to the community. Publishing in academic journals is impossible since that is against all dogma.

I work very successfully along the path of grassroots with thousands of migraineurs. Eventually it will reach a threshold number of migraine and medicine free migraineurs and science will have no choice but pay attention. My process is known already by many doctors and hospitals–I get migraineurs referred to me all the time.

I also get many short-term migraine group members from places like the Harvard, Mayo Clinic, and many other big name hospitals and institutions. Some hospitals are familiar with the Stanton Migraine Protocol® and my name as well. By now there have been at least 100 universities from all over the globe in my migraine group for a very short time—short time because if they don’t follow the requirements, they are removed in a week. They are there to learn what I do so they can figure it all out. I appreciate that they are interested but I would even more appreciate if they tried to work with me instead of just looking at the magic and try to figure it out themselves.

My system works–I personally have not had a migraine (unless I deliberately cause one for experiment’s sake) for eons but yes, I can create a migraine at any time on demand, I can stop it on demand, and I can certainly prevent them all–and Guardian, I am past the age you refer to when I should have no migraines anymore.

The ONLY thing The Guardian got right is placing their article in the “Life and Style” section of the newspaper since indeed, migraine, while genetic, is a lifestyle-resolvable problem.

  1. Azimova JE, et al. (2013) Effects of MTHFR gene polymorphism on the clinical and electrophysiological characteristics of migraine. BMC Neurology 13:103-103.
  2. Becerra L, et al. (2016) Triptans disrupt brain networks and promote stress-induced CSD-like responses in cortical and subcortical areas. Journal of Neurophysiology 115(1):208-217.
  3. Benemei S, et al. (2013) TRPA1 and other TRP channels in migraine. The Journal of Headache and Pain 14(1):71.
  4. Bhoi S, Kalita J, & Misra U (2012) Metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance in migraine. The Journal of Headache and Pain 13(4):321-326.
  5. Bigal ME, Golden W, Buse D, Chen Y-T, & Lipton RB (2010) Triptan Use as a Function of Cardiovascular Risk. A Population-Based Study. Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain 50(2):256-263.
  6. Bigal ME, Kurth T, Hu H, Santanello N, & Lipton RB (2009) Migraine and cardiovascular disease: Possible mechanisms of interaction. Neurology 72(21):1864-1871.
  7. Cader ZM, Noble-Topham SE, & Dyment DA (2003) Significant linkage to migraine with aura on chromosome 11q24. Hum Mol Genet 12.
  8. De Fusco M, Marconi R, & Silvestri L (2003) Haploinsufficiency of ATP1A2 encoding the Na+/K+ pump 2 subunit associated with familial hemiplegic migraine type 2. Nat Genet 33.
  9. Eising E, A Datson N, van den Maagdenberg AMJM, & Ferrari MD (2013) Epigenetic mechanisms in migraine: a promising avenue? BMC Medicine 11(1):1-6.
  10. Essmeister R, et al. (2016) MTHFR and ACE Polymorphisms Do Not Increase Susceptibility to Migraine Neither Alone Nor in Combination. Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain 56(8):1267-1273.
  11. FDA (2009) Topamax Highlights of Prescription Information. ed FDA.
  12. Freilinger T, et al. (2012) Genome-wide association analysis identifies susceptibility loci for migraine without aura. Nat Genet 44.
  13. Freilinger T, Koch J, & Dichgans M (2010) A novel mutation in SLC1A3 associated with pure hemiplegic migraine. J Headache Pain 11.
  14. Friedrich T, Tavraz NN, & Junghans C (2016) ATP1A2 Mutations in Migraine: Seeing through the Facets of an Ion Pump onto the Neurobiology of Disease. Frontiers in Physiology 7(239).
  15. Grinberg YY, Dibbern ME, Levasseur VA, & Kraig RP (2013) Insulin-Like Growth Factor-1 Abrogates Microglial Oxidative Stress and TNF-α Responses to Spreading Depression. Journal of neurochemistry 126(5):662-672.
  16. Gupta VK (2005) Triptans to Abort Neurological Symptoms of Prodrome of Migraine: Fact or Fiction? Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain 45(5):615-616.
  17. Harrison-Bernard LM (2009) The renal renin-angiotensin system. Advances in Physiology Education 33(4):270-274.
Posted in Big Pharma, Healthcare, Interesting reading, Migraine-Blog, Must Read, This & That, Thoughts | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

iPress Release: What is the connection between nitrates and migraines?

Posted on November 14, 2016 by

iPRESS RELEASE

What is the story? Interesting findings indeed and not what you would expect! After quite a bit of literature research I found a very new connection that no one has yet discovered or discussed! I don’t just mean deli meats or bacon as nitrates but nature richly endowed fresh produce in nitrates. So should you eat celery? Nearly all vegetables are high in nitrates!

Please read the article I wrote that summarizes my findings and turns the connection of nitrates to migraines (and to your health!) up-side-down.

Comments, as always, are welcome!

Angela

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Why the Recent Milk Research Is Faulty

Posted on November 6, 2016 by

Why be Skeptical?

I just received a link to an article from one of my migraine group members with concern and confusion–quite understandably. I want to explain why articles like this are misleading and hope that this will help you in the future to see (and not panic!) what is wrong with them–here is the original it refers to.

The research has committed several errors:

  1. not looking at what kind of milk is consumed
  2. if grains are consumed
  3. what kind of other fats are consumed
  4. if sugar is consumed

The actual summary of the newspaper is totally misleading since the original study looks at the genetic connection of drinking milk (as opposed to eating fermented milk like yogurt and kefir) to genotypes–not mentioned in the newspaper at all. The original research isolated D-galactose as the possible cause for fractures, etc., and only looked at that and nothing else.

The Problems

Studies that take a single food item humans eat and look at that in isolation are trouble for many very simple reasons. Milk is not pure D-galactose… so if you take D-galactose and look at what that does, perhaps you will find issues. Also, people eat a variety of foods that affect how milk is absorbed and used by the body and for what. For example, look at the 4 points I listed above. Each has a major influence on how the body responds to drink.

We already know that whole milk is the only healthy milk so if they looked at skim milk (no mention of the type of milk) then we know that it is a problem. If they did not separate milk types, that too is a problem since each milk type has a little bit different mineral and nutrition constituent–these also vary by brand! No mention of any of this in the research, so this is an epidemiological study without full information. That is a major problem.

Why grains, fat, and sugar have such significant effect on the bones:

  1. Grains prevent the absorption of nutrients by blocking protein synthesis and nutrient absorption in the intestines and the gut so while you are drinking calcium, it doesn’t absorb anywhere.
  2. Calcium is a fat soluble mineral and as such you need to eat it with animal fat in order to get is absorbed–calcium that cannot be absorbed may build up in your arteries causing plaque and later trouble!
  3. Sugar uses up all insulin–fat also uses insulin (see below)–so fat cannot absorb

This study has not only not looked at the type of milk (skim versus increased fat levels of however kind) but also has not studied if the people who drink them have been on the low-fat diet all their lives, which is likely since they studied people of the older generation in particular, all of whom grew up on the low-fat nonsense of the failed heart-health hypothesis.

Sugar

I pulled sugar out separately since its relation to milk is difficult and unique. Sugar has a lot to do with how milk is used by the body since sugar blocks fat absorption for fuel and stores fat away. The problem is that both sugar AND fat use insulin for transport thus there is a contest!!!

If you are in carbs burning mode (most people are unless you are on the ketogenic diet), sugar has priority and so all other good stuff in the milk–such as fat, if not skim milk, and minerals as well as vitamins–are just trouble since insulin is tied down with sugar already. The fat in milk just gets deposited rather than used for handing out fat soluble minerals and vitamins. This means that calcium is just floating in your blood aimlessly and has the chance to cause trouble.

Most likely, had they checked, all the people in this study would also have had low vitamin D and high triglycerides! These are all connected but, of course, they have not checked!

I find studies like this very unprofessional. If I were a reviewer, it would not have had a chance to see daylight in print. Don’t believe everything you read!! Even if it is in the best of academic journals and the best of newspapers! Just stay skeptical!

Comments are welcome, as always.

Angela

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Predatory vs Real Academic Publishing

Posted on October 11, 2016 by

Why Predatory Journals Will Take Over

Up until a year ago I have never heard of the term “predatory journal” and I would still be quite oblivious to them, had I not been told that 3 of my articles were published in them!

What is a Predatory Journal?

The official definition:

In academic publishing, predatory open access publishing is an exploitative open-access publishing business model that involves charging publication fees to authors without providing the editorial and publishing services associated with legitimate journals (open access or not) (source: wikipedia emphasis in original))

This definition is a bit outdated since all three articles I published in predatory journals were peer-reviewed and as one was an editorial invitation, no fee was charged. The market is changing!

Because they are in predatory journals, I decided to keep an official copy of all 3 of them uploaded here for future use, should the journals vanish. They can also be found here together with many of my other published articles (those are in real journals)–this is an article repository.

Are Statistics Misleading Sodium Reduction Benefits?

Functional Prodrome in Migraines

Migraine Cause and Treatment

Why are these Published in Predatory Journals?

The answer is simple: when a researcher introduces a paradigm shift, the articles cannot be published in legitimate journals.

For example, although JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) was interested in my Migraine Cause and Treatment paper, it wanted to see a clinical trial. A clinical trial for migraine experiment (that is well done) means placing (mostly) women in their prime of motherhood into a clinic-controlled environment for a considerable length of time. My paradigm shift process is not a matter of popping a pill! It requires several lifestyle changes.

What I would have to do in a clinical trial requires a change of lifestyle on many fronts for the migraineur because the cause of migraines–if you read my article on that–is not a single element but a combination of many:

  1. glucose intolerance,
  2. genetic mutations of the sodium-potassium pumps,
  3. genetic mutations of the ATPase transport, and
  4. possible mutation also at the renin aldosterone angiotensin pathway (RAAS) that
  5. requires manual manipulation of the electrolyte homeostasis maintenance.

This is impossible to learn how to do in one day and what this means for the migraineurs in terms of adjusting her daily life. Thus clinical trial–as our technology is today–is impossible.

What Can be Published?

Official academic journals may only publish those research articles that have been assigned a grant number–thus research without any funds from an official grant donor can never be published, even if research funds were not needed–such is my case. Research must also be approved by an ethical board even if there was nothing done to anyone. For example, in a clinical trial I would have to induce pain to prove it is possible so I can show what I do is not a placebo effect. This indeed would require an ethical board an any descent ethical board would turn such request down: one does not cause pain in patients today with knowledge! The way I work though is I need not induce a migraine! My subjects do that on their own when they derail from the protocol and admit that they have a migraine as a result! I do not need an ethical board to let my migraineurs cause harm to themselves! My work could never be approved by an ethical board because they have never seen a situation like this before.

And finally, my published research represents nearly 1000 subjects who self-reported how they felt. Cheating is easy to catch (as noted before) since complaints of migraines were always followed by evaluation of what may have caused the migraine, thus this observational study set is more valuable than a clinical trial–it is interactive.

It was also not in the interest of the subjects to cheat because who do they cheat? They were the ones ending up with a migraine as a result of cheating and that was undesirable for them.

The outcome of my research is repeatable (by now over 4000 migraineurs are migraine and medicine free). It can also be tested that it is not a placebo effect: migraines can be initiated on demand and stopped on demand. Furthermore migraines can completely be prevented. Not only have most of the migraineurs already stopped their medicines, some had surgical neuronal stimulators implanted and they all have had those already surgically removed–they remain migraine free. The proof of the process working is in the number of migraineurs who came off their medicines and remained migraine free for years now.

Can I publish this in official academic journals? Nope.

Are Publishers Concerned of the Loss of Business?

You bet! Don’t be fooled for a second: official open access publishing costs several thousands of dollars as well! In fact, they are more expensive than predatory journals (some asking for US$5,000 for an open access article). It is a rather lame excuse that predatory journals charge fees: yep, so do the big guys!

However, their business model means they are losing business. They try to smear the blame on the researchers for publishing in predatory journals because of the reputation of the journal. Really? Last I looked some of the top real academic journals had awful reputations of publishing bad science.

The official academic journals have absolutely no trouble publishing articles that analyze data collected for reasons completely independent of their research (epidemiological databases) that cannot possibly show causation–yet they publish totally erroneous causal articles BUT they had a grant number! If you have a genuine article that did not need any grants, you cannot publish! Grant number is king!

Kind of stupid if you ask me! Whether the article actually makes any sense or not–that does not matter! Only the grant number does.

Who Will Win?

It was, at first, painful to have learned that my articles were in predatory journals. But is it really a bad thing?

A predatory journal may come and go, in which case one can publish the paper elsewhere, since officially it is not published–so nothing is lost.

What if these predatory journals overtake the official academic journals?

They can. The number of academicians publishing in each predatory journal is large and growing! Much more papers are published in predatory than  in official academic journals! Academicians are perhaps still scared to cite an article in a predatory journal–many official academic journals prohibit it as well–but nothing can stop someone from citing articles from one predatory to another. A predatory may also morph into a real academic journal at one point! There is no reason for them not to do so.

Should You Care?

It depends on your goal. If you want to win the Nobel Price, perhaps you should not publish in a predatory journal but get ready to fight against a whole dogmatic school of editors and reviewers! And you may not get that Nobel Prize after all!

If you do research to help people, should you care? Nah! What does it matter if anything is published at all? If I want to achieve any success, I can just continue with my very successful grassroots movement, where over 4000 migraineurs (men, women and children) are already migraine and medicine free! It makes a lot more sense to me to help people become migraine and medicine free than to be published in an official academic journal.

My articles are attached! If you wish to read them, please do. They will remain here forever. Whatever happens to the predatory journals will be interesting since one of them undoubtedly will become the biggest academic journal in the world as the official academic journals will fade out of existence. I wrote about that earlier today.

Comments are welcome, as always,

Angela

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