In this post I will tell you of an exciting advance in our use of stem cells and exosomes. There has never been a published report of successful stem cell or exosome treatment of migraine headaches. For this reason, we had not offered it to patients, as we try to be responsible in only offering these treatments where we have evidence of safety and efficacy. However, we recently had two patients who had dramatic relief of migraines unexpectedly while they were being treated for other disorders. The relief has been long lasting and unaccompanied by any side effects. We are incredibly excited because more than 40 million Americans and 1 billion people worldwide suffer from migraine headaches and we believe it is likely that this treatment will be of benefit to others with this disorder. There is no cure for migraines and response to medications is variable. And even when drugs are effective they are often accompanied by significant side effects. Migraines occur unpredictably, cause intense head pain that may last for several days, and are often preceded by a 5-60 minute “aura” that consists usually of visual, and sometimes sensory or language disturbances.
We are submitting the case histories of these patients for medical journal publication. The first patient was treated once with intra-nasal exosomes just as we have successfully treated patients with ALS, Parkinson’s, MS, Lewy Body Dementia, autism, trigeminal neuralgia, essential tremor and other brain disorders. The second patient was treated with intravenous stem cells which we use, as in this case, for gut, and autoimmune disorders.
CASE 1:
A fifty year-old patient had had migraine headaches since early childhood often lasting 12 to 18 hours per episode. He had kept track in a journal, and the migraines would regularly occur weekly or bi-weekly. We saw him at his 9 month follow-up after 2 daily intra-nasal exosome treatments for another problem and he mentioned that from the day of his exosome treatment his migraines virtually disappeared: such that instead of the roughly 24 migraines expected over this 36 month period he had only experienced two: and both were much less severe and shorter lived than his usual headaches. This represented a more than 90% reduction in his headache frequency. We do not know how long the effect will last, but at 9 months post treatment there is no evidence of recurrence. And if they do recur the treatment can be easily repeated. Based on our treatment of other intra-cranial disorders we believe that repeat treatment would likely also be effective – if it becomes necessary. It is remarkable that after a roughly 45 year history of migraine headaches, they were still instantly nearly abolished by two ten minutes treatments.
We should point out that we have found that the intranasal route is the most effective for brain disorders because the exosomes are able to bypass the circulatory blood brain barrier and instead gain access to brain tissue from the cerebrospinal fluid by entering through two small holes in the cribriform plate at the top of the nose. The treatment takes only ten minutes, is completely painless with no needles and we have seen no side effects of any kind after having performed hundreds of treatments. We use exosomes, small vesicles within stem cells that contain stem cell medicine, because they are much smaller and are better able to enter into the brain tissue.
CASE 2:
The second patient is a 60 year old health practitioner who had suffered from migraine headaches worsening since childhood despite medical treatment. He also had significant gut issues and this was the reason for his intravenous mesenchymal stem cell treatment. He had one treatment which helped his gut but also his headaches. He then had a second treatment which helped both even more – although he continued to take migraine medicines. Now almost two years after his second treatment his migraine frequency has dramatically decreased to one every 60 days.
CONCLUSION
We believe that exosome and stem cell treatment will likely be generally effective for migraine headache and we look forward to developing a case series of treated patients. In these two patients, while both treatments were effective, the intra-nasal exosome treated patient had the more dramatic effect. For this reason we intend to focus on intra-nasal exosome treatment as a primary treatment, unless the patient has a separate reason – as this patient did for his gut issues – to also receive stem cell treatment.
Treatment is carried out in our center in Naples, Florida. Interested persons should contact our office at 847-699-6810 or e mail [email protected] to set up a consultation.