Somewhere, at some point, you may have heard there was some sort of link between migraine and stroke – more specifically, that having migraines meant you were at a heightened risk of a brain infarction. Most likely, you heard this from a major television or print media outlet that gave you a few cursory tidbits […]
Author: Josh Turknett, MD
Migraines and the Hypothalamus, Part One: Towards a Grand Unified Theory
If you’d told me five years ago I’d be writing a book about migraines in the future, I doubt I would’ve believed you. Not that I wasn’t keenly interested in the subject, mind you. It’s just that at that time, though I knew there was still much to learn about migraines, I thought that […]
How to Trigger a Migraine, Part 2: It’s an Elephant!
In part 1 of this series, I discussed the classic view of migraine triggers. This is important information for sure, and has helped a great many migraineurs over the years. But it’s not the whole story. As some of you may know, when I adopted an ancestral style diet four years ago, I didn’t expect […]
Migraine Miracle Reviews: Inspiring Early Feedback on The Migraine Migraine
I’ve now gone three weeks without so much as a tension headache! I’m in heaven. My brain is so happy, and I have loads more energy, just from eating differently. I could go on forever about the way I’m eating now and the reasoning behind it… – from the blog of Britta G. When I […]
How to Trigger a Migraine, Part One: The Classic View
In my 3 part series on the nature of migraines, we covered the ins and outs of just what migraines are. To sum up, they’re a bizarre, excruciating, and masochistic phenomenon in which the brain hijacks its own pain sensing circuitry. But how does all of it get started to begin with? As most of […]
The Benefits of an Ancestral Perspective
So, according to the commentary posted in this week’s JAMA Internal Medicine, we are in the midst of a “paradigm shift” when it comes to mainstream medicine’s conception of a healthy diet. In a study published in this month’s issue of the aforementioned journal, we learn that, in a prospective cohort of patients, the highest […]
What are Migraines, Part 3: The Great Mimic
So, to recap what was said in Migraine Basics, Part 1 and 2: Migraines happen in normal brains Migraines are the result of a malfunction in pain processing, or specifically pain processing in reverse Migraines are weird A classic, fully expressed migraine consists of four phases: prodrome, aura, pain, and postdrome To sum up, […]
Introducing the Migraine Trigger Tracker App
Recently, I introduced the trigger tracker worksheet – a simple and straightforward headache diary with one goal: to identify your own personal set of migraine triggers. Now I’m pleased to announce the release of the Migraine Trigger Tracker App for iOS devices. For those of you following the ancestral diet advocated here and in the book, […]
The Sweetness of a Carrot: Ancestral Eating and the Glorious Gustatory Reset
“…almost all the fruits our ancestors ate were about as sweet as carrots.” – Dan Lieberman, The Story of the Human Body Finally, it seems that sugar is all by its lonesome. Long defended as a harmless empty calorie, even mainstream nutritionists now view sugar as problematic. It, not fat, along with other forms of refined […]
7 Myths About the Paleo Diet
A lot has been said about the paleo and its related diets (aka ancestral, primal, etc.), in general, in the popular media. Some of it has been responsible and accurate. Much of it, particularly those reporting on Marlene Zuk’s book Paleofantasy, has not. Those in the latter category have often taken the form of hasty, […]