Before you take your next pain killer you need to read this!
I wanted to post a little abstract here–hard language but the title tells it all. It is not an open article so I cannot share it but I can write up a summary on it if you all are interested. The title tells it all:
“Decrease of Gray Matter Volume in the Midbrain is Associated with Treatment Response in Medication-Overuse Headache: Possible Influence of Orbitofrontal Cortex”
Franz Riederer1, Andreas R. Gantenbein1, Marvin Marti1, Roger Luechinger2, Spyridon Kollias3, and Peter S. Sándor1,4
The Journal of Neuroscience, 25 September 2013, 33(39): 15343-15349; doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3804-12.2013
******So.. medication overuse causes permanent damage!*****
Here is the abstract:
“Patients with chronic daily headache and overuse of analgesics, triptans, or other acute headache compounds, are considered to suffer from medication-overuse headache (MOH). This implies that medication overuse is the cause of headache chronification. It remains a key question why only two-thirds of patients with chronic migraine-like headache and overuse of pain medication improve after detoxification, whereas the remainder continue to have chronic headache. In the present longitudinal MRI study, we used voxel-based morphometry to investigate gray matter changes related to medication withdrawal in a group of humans with MOH. As a main result, we found that only patients with significant clinical improvement showed a significant decrease of previously increased gray matter in the midbrain including periaqueductal gray matter and nucleus cuneiformis, whereas patients without improvement did not. Patients without treatment response had less gray matter in the orbitofrontal cortex. Another striking result is the correlation of treatment response with the amount of orbitofrontal gray matter. Thus, we demonstrate adaptive gray matter changes within the pain modulatory system in patients with MOH who responded to detoxification, probably reflecting neuronal plasticity. Decreased gray matter in the orbitofrontal cortex at baseline may be predictive of poor response to treatment.”
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About Angela A Stanton, Ph.D.
Angela A Stanton, PhD, is a Neuroeconomist focusing on chronic pain--migraine in particular--physiology, electrolyte homeostasis, nutrition, and genetics. She lives in Southern California. Her current research is focused on migraine cause, prevention, and treatment without the use of medicine. As a forever migraineur from childhood, her discovery was helped by experimenting on herself. She found the cause of migraine to be at the ionic level, associated with disruption of the electrolyte homeostasis, resulting from genetic variations of all voltage dependent channels, gates, and pumps (chanelopathy) that modulate electrolyte mineral density and voltage in the brain. In addition, insulin and glucose transporters, and several other variants, such as MTHFR variants of B vitamin methylation process and many others are different in the case of a migraineur from the general population.
Migraineurs are glucose sensitive (carbohydrate intolerant) and should avoid eating carbs as much as possible. She is working on her hypothesis that migraine is a metabolic disease.
As a result of the success of the first edition of her book and her helping over 5000 migraineurs successfully prevent their migraines world wide, all ages and both genders, and all types of migraines, she published the 2nd (extended) edition of her migraine book "Fighting The Migraine Epidemic: Complete Guide: How To Treat & Prevent Migraines Without Medications". The 2nd edition is the “holy grail” of migraine cause, development, and prevention, incorporating all there is to know. It includes a long section for medical and research professionals. The book is full of academic citations (over 800) to authenticate the statements she makes to make it easy to follow up by those interested and to spark further research interest. It is a "Complete Guide", published on September 29, 2017.
Dr. Stanton received her BSc at UCLA in Mathematics, MBA at UCR, MS in Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University, PhD in Economics with dissertation in neuroscience (culminating in Neuroeconomics) at Claremont Graduate University, fMRI certification at Harvard University Medical School at the Martinos Center for Neuroimaging for experimenting with neurotransmitters on human volunteers, certification in LCHF/ketogenic diet from NN (Nutrition Network), certification in physiology (UPEN via Coursea), Nutrition (Harvard Shool of Public Health) and functional medicine studies. Dr. Stanton is an avid sports fan, currently power weight lifting and kickboxing. For relaxation (yeah.. about a half minute each day), she paints and photographs and loves to spend time with her family of husband of 45 years, 2 sons and their wives, and 2 granddaughters.
Follow her on Twitter at: @MigraineBook, LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelaastantonphd/ and facebook at https://www.facebook.com/DrAngelaAStanton/
Stanton Migraine Protocol 