The Necessity of Pharmaceutical Migraine Medications
It’s very clear that pharmaceutical migraine medications allow some people with migraines to function and keep a job while dealing with what is considered to be the sixth most debilitating condition. The annual burden of migraine costs in the US in 2005 was estimated at $17 billion annually. Without migraine medications, migraines are a serious handicap which lead to lost productivity, huge impacts on quality of life, lowered energy, compromised presence with kids and family, and on migraine days – inability to function in any capacity. Therefore, use of migraine meds is totally understandable, especially given the scarcity of truly effective, safe, natural alternatives – or the fact that they are not being actively marketed to us and so require a lot of digging and research to hear about.
Since most people manage their migraines by way of health insurance and the treatments that the practitioners within their networks provide, they are less likely to discover natural and plant-based solutions unless they have literally become so desperate to find a solution that they spend much of their time researching how others have healed themselves and/or experimenting with ways to heal themselves.
This is what happened to me. Without health insurance and after a few expensive out-of-pocket expenditures with various alternative health care practitioners, I still had debilitating migraine headaches a few times a week and finally reached the point where I decided to take matters into my own hands. Two and a half years of self-experimentation, online research, cleansing and dietary and lifestyle changes, mixed with some incredible luck, led me to the discovery of a folk medicine solution to migraine headaches that completely cleared my head and is now helping many others to do so: the SimplyWell Migraine Protocol. There is now a choice between pharmaceutical migraine medications and folk medicine solutions to chronic migraine headaches.
In comparing pharmaceutical migraine meds with plant-based, drug-free folk medicine solutions to migraine headaches, it’s not my intention to judge or demonize anyone who is taking pharmaceutical migraine medications. Some people have had daily, weekly, or monthly migraine headaches for literally decades, and must do something to manage them. These people are acutely aware of the drawbacks of pharmaceutical medications and their attendant side effects, but haven’t found a better solution to manage their migraines besides meds.
I wish I could say that the SimplyWell Migraine Protocol were an easy replacement for migraine meds, but it appears that frequent use of migraine medications makes the protocol take longer to be effective, and in the case of daily use of migraine medications, may render it totally ineffective until those meds have been weaned off. It’s my belief that this is because anything we ingest orally will affect our microbiome (the gut flora balance in our colon), and that pharmaceutical meds feed pathogenic bacteria (this is just a hypothesis) which keeps the histamine load in the colon high (thus perpetuating migraines). They also steal vital nutrients needed to create important enzymes that break histamine down.
The good news is that people who only use migraine medications very intermittently, or who wean themselves off these meds, usually respond very well to the SimplyWell Migraine Protocol. Since I never took migraine meds, I didn’t have to go through that process, but very soon I’ll be highlighting the stories here of some of the courageous people who have managed to successfully wean themselves off meds and how they did it. So stay tuned!
Pharmaceutical Migraine Medications:
- require a prescription, are high-tech and patented (not easily accessible)
- are expensive (require costly health insurance or are subject to random price hikes)
- have negative so-called “side-effects” (in other words, are making you sick with dizziness, fatigue, rebound headaches, medication-induced headaches, drowsiness)
- are suppressive, so don’t solve the underlying problem but rather, drive it deeper into the body.
- are foreign substances to our bodies (evolutionarily novel for our organs to process)
- steal vital nutrients needed for essential body functioning
- compromise liver, kidney, and gut health (thereby affecting bile flow, gallbladder health, lymphatic health, and gut flora balance).
- some opiate-based medications activate mast cells and increase histamine release
- are habit-forming and prevent some other natural therapies from working
- we don’t really know how many of them actually work
The Ultimate Migraine Medicine
- Reduces histamine load
- Reduces estrogen dominance
- Balances the gut flora
- Balances electrolyte levels
- Balances blood sugar levels
- Raises blood pressure and thereby improves blood flow to the brain and extremities
- Improves vitamin/mineral absorption
- Supports liver, gallbladder, kidney, pancreas, colon, adrenal and thyroid function
- Improves sleep
- Improves digestion
- Improves energy levels
In other words, a truly holistic medicine will have POSITIVE SYSTEMIC “SIDE-EFFECTS”. The Simplywell Migraine Protocol is the ultimate migraine medicine.
Medicine by the People, For the People
(ie, Folk Medicine)
- discovered by laypeople without expertise or specialized training
- easily accessable, affordable or free
- self-administered, ie, self-empowering
- free from unwanted side-effects
- safe, gentle, and effective
- easy to comprehend and therefore, relay to others
- easy for our bodies to process
- natural, nourishing and supportive
- low tech and open-source (free from trademarks and patents)
Wellness comes about through a lifestyle of self-care, firsthand experience, self-experimentation, and community gossip about what works. Most of my approach to healing can be described as an expression of Folk Medicine. Folk Medicine is happening. It’s not prescriptive – it’s descriptive of what people prefer and are creating, rediscovering, and sharing as laypeople, as the “Folk”.
To learn more about Folk Medicine, read my article “Resuscitating Folk Medicine – for Migraine Headache Relief and Beyond”
