“Menstrual Migraines …
The Missed Link and Overlooked Remedy”
© Michael John Coleman 2007
Bio-Identical Hormone Replacement Therapy -
The Bigger Picture
WASHINGTON, DC; December 22nd, 2007--As we reported earlier this month MAGNUM and other Migraine disease public health advocates were none to happy with Dr. Andrew Jones as the Medical Director had allegedly reported "The Women's Health Institute of Texas announced today the debut of their cutting edge cure for migraine headaches." Besides the fact that Migraines are not a 'headache', though most do present the symptom of headache with a Migraine attack, along with other debilitating symptoms not limited to but usually including nausea, vomiting, sensitivity to light and sound, numbness and tingling in their extremities. Having said that, Migraine at this time like Diabetes or Epilepsy it is an incurable disease. But you regular readers know this, so MAGNUM contacted Dr. Jones about his press release and his 'cure' no doubt the NIH would be thrilled to hear about it.
But after an hour and half telephone interview with Texas based doctor Andrew Jones, he turned out to be horrified that there was such a, let us say, excitable, press release put out with his name on it. But we where very interested in the work that he was doing on what the IHS calls menstrual Migraines. Menstrual Migraines unlike what some drug company TV advertisements are not a "Type" of Migraine but rather a demographic of sufferers whose menstrual cycle are their primary Migraine trigger. With some groups of Migraineurs, remove the primary trigger and their Migraines all but go away. Not a cure, but for many a life altering change. His treatment program deserves a perusal, so we invited him to be a guest medical writer for MAGNUM on his bio-identical hormone therapy in alleviating and effectively treating Migraine in woman patients. So now that you have the back story, please read our guest Doctor's article:
Bio-Identical Hormone Replacement Therapy -
The Bigger Picture
By Dr. Andrew Jones, Medical Director
Women's Health Institute of Texas
It’s something that’s been staring doctors in the face for decades, but few have taken any particular notice. Almost 60% of all migraines in women coincide with their menstrual cycle. Many of these women experiencing “menstrual migraines” had their first bout with this disease soon after taking (or quitting) birth control pills or following childbirth.
It’s also known that many women see improvement in the severity and frequency of their migraines once they get past menopause. But for a woman 25 years old suffering from 6 migraines a month, waiting 25 years for relief is not an encouraging option.
Most women are in tune with their own bodies, and they intuitively know their menstrual migraines are hormonally related. But try telling that to their neurologists! Physicians tend to treat all migraines the same - regardless of origin or triggers. That treatment is almost always administering triptan medications (Imitrex, Maxalt, Zomig, and the like.) and almost always a short term, stop-gap solution. The true underling cause of menstrual migraines – hormones – is by and large ignored by mainstream medicine.
Hormones play an integral part in the health of every woman. Change these hormones and you’re sure to create an extensive array of symptoms and medical conditions – migraines included.
Not widely known by the public or even most doctors is the fact the hormones found in birth control pills and traditional HRT are not natural. They are synthetic mimics of the real thing – having different biological and chemical structures.
While most neurologists are busy focusing on where the pain occurs (the brain and the head) they totally miss the boat when it comes to where these migraines actually originate.
Many, if not, most women with menstrual migraines have taken birth control pills in the past, and/or HRT therapy, usually in the form of Premarin or PremPro.
The pseudo-hormones in these pills created a Pandora’s Box of female related health problems, not just migraines. Uterine fibroids, PMS or PMDD, ovarian cysts, painful and heavy periods, endometriosis, water retention, depression, hypothyroidism, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome are all directly related to taking these medications.
Root Causes Investigated by Texas Clinic
The Women’s Health Institute of Texas noted the direct connection between the Pill, HRT therapy and the many health issues associated with them - migraine headaches included.
We believe all of these health problems are related – often caused by the synthetic hormones many women have been taking. So if synthetic hormones were the problem, the solution was to focus on removing the birth control pills and HRT medications, replacing them with bio-identical alternatives.
If our observations were correct, then simply changing over to bio-identical hormones should have improved the medical conditions these women suffered from. We were elated to discover just that!
But what we didn’t expect was the “side benefit” of virtually eliminating migraine headaches in our patients who were now taking these bio-identical hormones.
It was just another instance where one medical discovery uncovered a wholly unexpected but very welcome outcome.
Bio-Identical vs. Prescription Hormones
As mentioned above, there’s a lot of controversy and confusion when it comes to bio-identical vs. synthetic prescription based hormones.
This isn’t by accident. The big drug companies (who control the education of doctors in these matters) have made it a point to muddy the issue.
Bio-identical hormones are what Mother Nature is making inside your own body. They are the exact chemical structure of the same hormone that is supposed to be circulating throughout your system. The term “bio-identical” and “natural” mean the same thing.
But, the standard prescription drug hormones found in the Pill and replacement therapies are anything but natural.
As you read, the hormones found in these prescriptions are synthetic mimics of the real thing – having altered chemical structures and exerting different biological results. Just why do the drug companies spend all the time and money to create these pseudo-hormones in the first place, when nature has already provided them with the real thing?
Simply Put: It’s The Money!
Anything found in nature can’t by law be patented. But if you alter the natural hormone in the lab to something nearly but not quite identical, you can then protect your new drug from competitors.
Yes, these newly created synthetics do act in some ways like the original, but they also have a litany of side effects only now being discovered. Unfortunately, this is too late for the millions and millions of women who’ve been taking these Petri-dish creations for years and years.
But this is a multi-billion dollar business, and with those kinds of sums involved, health takes a back seat to profits.
Progesterone & Estrogen Knock-offs
When it comes to making these pseudo compounds in the lab, the female hormones modified are derived from progesterone and the three different types of estrogen.
But nearly-identical is not identical, and the female body knows the difference.
The fact is very small changes in the hormone chemical composition can cause massive effects. For example, a difference of just one proton and one carbon atom is what separates estradiol, one of the strong estrogen female hormones from the male hormone testosterone.
The very hormones that spell the difference between a woman and a man.
A Legacy of Suffering
The legacy of promoting these false hormones is this:
We have essentially poisoned several generations of women since the 1960’s with synthetic hormones. The wonder is that despite being exposed to these foreign toxins (prescription hormone drugs) about half of all women are still largely unaffected. The tragedy is that the other half suffers from some variation of the multitude of health problems listed above – including migraine headaches.
One can only imagine the longer term unintended results that will eventually occur with the routine introduction of these bio-poisons into society.
What About Bio-Identical Hormones: Are They Safer?
But are bio-identical hormones safer when taken to alleviate a medical condition and over a long period of time? It is true that natural hormones have not been studied in large clinical trials – but this is simply because no drug company wishes to spend the several hundred million dollars required for FDA testing. And all for a product that can’t be even be patented!
The naysayer’s point to the lack of clinical trials as reason enough to be skeptical of bio-identical hormones, and to discourage women from taking them. Advocates counter that bio-identical hormones are intuitively safer, and their actions predictable depending upon the dose. As to trials, nature has been conducting them for hundreds of thousands of years on every human born. One needs to go no further than a college freshman biology textbook to determine the effects of natural hormones.
Here is another point to carefully consider: Natural production of all types of hormones peak around the age of 25 years. If natural or bio-identical hormones were indeed unsafe, then why don’t we see diseases, cancers and a host of ailments also peaking in that age group?
The answer is – we don’t. In fact, it’s just the opposite: Health problems and cancers ramp up as natural production of hormones decline in the later years of life.
The physical actions of bio-identical hormones are both well known and well documented. There are no unexplained “side effects” but rather conventional “target effects.” Unlike synthetic, chemically altered hormones, excessive doses of bio-identical hormones are predictable and completely reversible.
For these reasons alone, bio-identical hormones are incredibly safe. The worst that can happen is the administered dose didn’t have the intended effect of curing some pre-existing health condition (like uterine fibroids or ovarian cysts, for example). No harm is done and the patient simply stops taking it, with the bio-identical hormones harmlessly washing out of the body over several days.
In fact, there are no known reported deaths or even serious heath issues arising from bio-identical hormone replacement therapy.
Unfortunately, the synthetic hormone drugs can’t say the same. Birth control pills along with synthetic HRT can and have quickly killed women through blood clots, pulmonary emboli, strokes and heart attacks.
If a woman escapes these fatal consequences, there are always the slow, accumulating chronic medical problems that follow long term use of synthetic hormones.
Sound, Scientific Proof
So, where is the proof that natural or bio-identical hormones, especially sex hormones, have been shown to be effective in migraine headaches and other neurological disorders?
Is there any solid, empirical evidence that our natural hormone therapy works?
The answer is a resounding yes! This treatment has been known and investigated for more than 50 years.
Here are just a few of the important studies and research findings:
• As early as 1953, the British Medical Journal published Dr. Kathleen Dalton’s first hand account of how her own menstrual migraines were relieved by injections of natural progesterone. This same doctor started using this therapy on her own patients, claiming an 83% success rate.
• Moving up to 1983, in the Journal of Reproductive Medicine, Dr. Penny Budoff cites successful trials of natural hormone therapy dating back to 1964, showing alleviation of multiple symptoms, including migraine headaches.
• In 2000, The Mayo Clinic announced their usage of a new type of natural hormone – through trials conducted by one of their leading endocrinologists - Lorraine Fitzpatrick, M.D. The conclusions were that natural hormones can improve the quality of life for post-menopausal women, decreasing the risk of endometrial cancers, sleep disorders, hot flashes, anxiety and symptoms of depression. This same study was also published in the Journal of Women’s Health.
• In the June, 2005 edition of Annals of New York Academy of Sciences, Dr. Donald Stein, (Emory University School of Medicine) writes that natural hormones “may be a potent neuroprotective agent especially in the treatment of traumatic brain injury, stroke, and certain neurodegenerative disorders.”
• The Annals of the New York Academy of Science in 2005 published a study by Dr. M. Singh stating that ovarian (sex) hormones “can no longer be considered strictly within the confines of reproductive function, and the brain is just as important a target for hormone function.” He goes on to write: “Indeed, recent evidence supports the neuroprotective potential of progesterone [a sex hormone] itself.”
• Dr. Andrew Herzog of the Harvard Medical School’s Neuroendocrine Unit published two articles in the journal, Neurology, describing how natural hormones influence nerve cells in the brain by demonstrating a dramatic reduction (68%) in a condition called Catamenial Seizures. These seizures paralleled the time course of migraine headaches during the menstrual cycle so closely, that the seizures are labeled as “menstrual seizures”.
• Dr. Vincent T. Martin, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, is perhaps the WORLD’S FOREMOST AUTHORITY on the relationship of migraine headaches with sex hormones.
In October of 2005 he wrote that “…migraine headache and epilepsy may show a similar pattern of response to changes in ovarian hormone encountered during the menstrual cycle. …”
• Dr. Martin further wrote, “Our study also suggests that [ovarian hormones] modulate migraine headache.” Additionally, the doctor indicated: “…the presence of (natural) progesterone provided a preventative benefit for migraine headaches.”
• In 2006, Dr. Martin published in special issues of the medical journal Headache two expansive review articles on ovarian hormones and migraine headaches. Dr Martin wrote:
“Therefore, substantial clinical evidence suggests that changes in ovarian hormones affect migraine headache.” “…hormonal therapies which minimize fluctuations in ovarian hormones can improve menstrual migraine.”
Further Information
Andrew Jones, M.D. is the Medical Director of the Women’s Health Institute of Texas. To find out more about the Women’s Health Institute of Texas and their bio-identical hormone therapy in alleviating and effectively treating migraine headaches, please visit:
www.Migraine-Headaches-Information.com
© Michael John Coleman 2007 
