Lesson 6: Integrative Therapy for Migraines: Using the Migraine Action Plan to make this course work for you.

Natural Migraine Relief for Women

Reducing the intensity, frequency, severity, and duration of migraine headaches is one of the greatest clinical challenges in medicine.

As we have been discussing, one reason this is such a difficult dilemma to solve is that migraine headaches, like many other problems in both medicine and life have several interlocking components that must first be:

• recognized, and then

• treated together simultaneously

• to obtain the best cumulative results over time.

The premise of this course is that you are a one-of-a-kind human being. True, some of us are more one of a kind than most, and if you’re reading this you have probably wondered at times why you were chosen to be so special when it comes to headaches!

Each of us is truly unique. Your genetics, lifestyle, past health history, and habits-both the bad and the good combine to produce your strengths, as well as the weak links which lead, in part, to your migraine headaches.

This course is based on the concept that most problems in life or in medicine have more than one contributing factor. I’ve yet to find anyone with a migraine who doesn’t have at least two to three root causes that contribute to their condition. Many times, these root causes have gone unrecognized, sometimes for many years. Or, even if they are recognized, only one of several root causes is being addressed. And, even if the right therapy is chosen, it may be in too low a dose, or for too short a duration to see a meaningful benefit.

If you have three, four or more underlying provocative factors, and only address one or two of them, would it be surprising that symptoms like headaches continue to flare?

Almost always in migraine therapy you need to find and treat several components to get the synergistic momentum that leads to solutions. It’s said that you can’t cross a 21-foot chasm in three 7-foot jumps! That would be true here as well. The key is finding and combining therapy that is aimed at your most significant root cause factors.

As we continue through this course, especially Lessons 7-22, we will be reviewing:

• each of 10 major underlying root cause categories that enable or promote migraines.

• the symptoms, personal or family medical history, lab results and other indicators that suggest which of them apply to you.

• the related details on non-drug therapy options for each specific migraine root cause factor.

Over the years, I have found that some people “just want the bottom line,” while others “can’t ever get enough detailed information.” I wrote this course to split the difference between those two, as a common reason we don’t finish a book, or an online course is that it’s just too detailed and information dense to plow through.

in this course, we will be using the Migraine Action Plan to organize your personal investigation of which root causes best apply to you. I hope you have already printed this out and have it in front of you. If not, consider taking a pause in this lesson to do this now. Go to Lesson 26 which is the Migraine Action Plan.

The MAP will address:

1. the questions that you and your health care team should be asking about you and your personal, family and medical history.

2. the symptoms that are clues to your potential migraine root cause factors.

3. the blood work tests you should consider, based on answers to the above questions, to see if certain root factors apply to you. Some can be done through any local lab; others may need to go to a specialty lab, and many of them can be done by a direct-to-consumer lab. I will give references on this later.

4. specific front-line therapy to consider for your profile, with interventions you can start now, along with details about dosing, duration of use and what to expect in the process.

5. second tier therapy choices to add if needed

6. additional therapy options for you that may need additional qualified assistance or consultation, with a separate lesson (#24) on where to find that help.

7. finally, it walks you through a step-by-step plan to self-triage the elements of therapy for the root causes of migraine that best apply to your situation.

You are also subscribed to the FAQ on Natural Migraine Relief blog, where you will get weekly postings. These posts will focus on:

• general questions about migraines from subscribers

• current topics about non drug migraine relief

• follow ups on topics from here in the course that either expand a topic or even introduce a new one.

The Basic Four

Even before you start learning about Root Cause factors for Migraines, I’d like to have you consider starting “The Basic Four”.

I have found that everyone with migraines can benefit from trying safe and effective basic frontline non-drug therapy, even while they are sorting out their own individual contributing factors. Some people will plow through this material in a week; others might take a month or two. If you think it will take a little time to review everything, you may not want to wait until you have completed the course’s Migraine Assessment Plan, but rather jump right in by taking “the Basic Four.” These nutrients have the most baseline research and the best response percentages for non-drug therapy in reducing migraines.

The Basic Four include:

-Magnesium citrate 250-350 mg/day or Magnesium threonate at 2000 mg/day. We will discuss the relative merits of the two in Lesson 10 Cellular Energy Deficits Part II. I would start by taking the citrate version.

-Vitamin D 5000 IU/day unless a recent Vitamin D level suggests less.

-Riboflavin (Vitamin B2) 400 mg/day

-CoQ10 200 mg/day

Check MAP #s 1-4 for details on these four, and then each will be mentioned multiple times as applicable in lessons to come. I know that many of you have taken at least one of these in the past, but I find that very few of those with migraine have taken all four in the therapeutic dosage ranges for a full 2-3 months, which is where the research literature shows the best response rates.