Dhru Purohit Show - Masterclass on the Root Causes of Migraines and A Four Pillar Plan to Tackle Them Head On with Dr. Elena Gross

Episode Date: January 29, 2025

This episode is brought to you by BiOptimizers, Fatty15, and Levels. Approximately 15% of the population suffers from migraines, many of which are debilitating and impact daily life, work, and relationships. For years, migraines were seen as something people had to endure or blamed on genetics. Today’s guest, a chronic migraine sufferer, shares her journey to uncover the root causes of migraines and how to prevent them from taking over her life. Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with Dr. Elena Gross to discuss migraines, their top root causes, and her Four-Pillar plan to address them. Dr. Gross highlights modern lifestyle practices that can increase the prevalence of migraines and the toxins that can trigger their onset. She also shares insights from epilepsy research that shifted her perspective on how to address migraines effectively. If you’re seeking answers on how to prevent and manage migraines, this episode is a must-listen! Dr. Elena Gross is a neuroscientist with a PhD in clinical research and a former chronic migraineur. Her personal struggle with migraines and the lack of effective treatments inspired her to pursue an MSc in Neuroscience at the University of Oxford and a PhD at the University of Basel, aiming to better understand this debilitating condition and improve clinical care. Passionate about the therapeutic potential of ketosis and nutritional interventions, Dr. Gross focuses on mitochondrial functioning, energy metabolism in brain health, and disease prevention to enhance health span. As the founder and CEO of KetoSwiss and MigraKet, and the inventor of four patents, her groundbreaking migraine research has been published in prestigious journals like Nature Neurology. In this episode, Dhru and Dr. Gross dive into: The number one disabler for women under the age of 50 (00:00:30) The top root causes of migraines (3:15)  Dr. Gross’ journey with migraines (11:06)  The modern lifestyle practices and how they drive the prevalence of migraines (18:21) Properly fueling your brain and lessons from epilepsy patients (28:16) Dr. Gross’ Four Pillar Plan for tackling migraines (35:51)  Sources of toxins and how they can be triggering (47:11) Exogenous ketones (53:11) Dr. Gross’ Brain Ritual supplement (01:00:11) Nutrient deficiencies and triggers that can lead to migraines (01:03:11)  Dr. Gross’ Community and sharing resources (1:11:22) Also mentioned in this episode: Brain Ritual  Migraket: Use code DHRU30 for $30 off  Dr. Georgia Ede’s Practitioner List For more on Dr. Gross, follow her on Instagram, Facebook, X/Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, her Website, and other platforms, such as Keto Swiss and Migraket. This episode is brought to you by Bioptimizers, Fatty15, and Levels. Go to bioptimizers.com/dhru now and enter promo code DHRU10 to get 10% off any order and up to 2 travel-size bottles of Magnesium Breakthrough for a limited time. Fatty15 is offering an additional 15% off its 90-day subscription Starter Kit. Go to fatty15.com/dhru and use code DHRU to replenish your C15 levels for long-term health. Right now, Levels is offering my listeners an additional 2 FREE months of the Levels annual Membership when you use my link, levels.link/DHRU. Make moves on your metabolic health with Levels today.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Elena Gross, welcome to the podcast. You know, you're here to shine the light on a common neurological disorder that's destroying the lives of a billion people globally. In fact, since the age of 14, you've suffered from this disorder and it inspired you to go on a mission to not only discover its root causes and heal yourself, but also how you could take the learnings and apply to other brain disorders and mental health conditions even. So tell us what this disorder is and give us a sense of how bad the problem is for so many people that suffer from it. Hey, Jew, thanks so much for having me. Yeah, migraine is kind of the unwanted child of neurology. In a sense, it's not, it's so, so common. It's very debilitating, but it hasn't been very much studied or studied a lot. And not a lot of focus

and research money has actually been going into it, even though in women under 50, it's actually the number one disabler. So it's the biggest disabling problem, actually, for women. And if you can't men into it, it's still the second most disabler according to the WHO. So really is a huge problem. What does it mean personally? What does it feel like? Well, first of all, anybody who's ever been a strong pain knows that pain is hard to ignore. Pain is a warning signal that is designed not to be ignored. So if you have migraine, migraine is actually a spectrum disorder. And it can be very mild from like one or two attacks a year, all the way to being in pain every single day all the time.

And you cannot take painkillers on every single day because that's going to harm your liver. It's going to harm your whole body, right? You get medication overuse, medication overuse headache. But firstly, it's really this very strong pain in the brain, typically half-sided, can be both-sided. And it comes with associated neurological symptoms, such as light sensitivity, so light hurts, noises hurts,

even smell can hurt. You get nausea, some people throw up. Movement makes it worse. So with a tension type headache, you can go outside, you walk for a bit, you drink some water, it gets better. Migraine will wake you up in the night. You can't sleep through it. You can't walk. That makes it worse. And it really is moderate to severe mostly. And in its worst form, its chronic form, it basically deprives you of life. It's the presence of pain combined with the absence of life because you will miss important events of your kids. You will miss all those school. trips, you will miss school itself, work. Nobody really usually would take you seriously. I think it's changing, but it was also stigmatized a lot. So really what I want to do also with my work is

that it's real. It's not a psychological issue, even though in some people it can. It's a real disorder. It's a real problem. It's painful. And it means lack of life, even if you're not dying from it, at least not immediately. Now, before we go into your story, just give us a little bit of a preview. You know, our audience has heard a lot about the role that lifestyle and diet can play when it comes to all sorts of brain conditions, Alzheimer's disease, all the way up to headaches. And even in this instance, now you're talking about migrants. What are some of the top root causes? We're not going to go super deep, but give us a little bit of a preview. What are some of the top root causes that you found that significantly contribute to migrants?

This is really one thing that has changed my life and has the potential to change the life of many. If we stop thinking about very common civilization diseases, and I'm going to call anything a civilization disease that is more than a percent, because that really is not primarily a problem of genetics, most likely, but of lifestyle. And lifestyle includes the way we're born all the way to what we eat, drink, our friends, our sleeping behavior, all of that is kind of the environment, a lifestyle, right, that is changing the expression of these genes. So let's say anything that is very common is a civilization disease. Now, what we're currently doing as a civilization or also as a field, a medical field, is that we say, oh, there's my brain, there's Alzheimer, there's Parkinson,

and we treat all of these as if there were one disease with a single root cause. Now, one of the things I learned is that migraine has several different root causes and hence several different subgroups maybe that have a different root cause. and I think this could be actually true for a lot, if not all, common neuropsychiatric issues. And one of them, a very big culprit, let's say, in migraine and also associated or related, as you said, neurological issues can be metabolism and more malfunctioning metabolism. That is how we turn, in very simple terms, food into energy, but also how we fight off oxidative stress and we might go into these in a detail.

That's one. That can be a big factor. It was the biggest one for me. But we know in migraine, you also have hormonal migraine, also known as menstrual migraine. So, for example, if you're very potent antioxidant protection hormones, which is female hormones, for example, such as estrogen, progester, but also other hormones, if they're deficient close to your menstrual cycle,

you can also get migraine. The migraine is warning you that something is off. So they say there could be a hormonal issue. There might be a psychological issue also. And you've talked to Chris Palmer, for example, for brain energy. We also know that psychological issues, trauma can increase oxidative stress and be causing some of those issues if they're not resolved. Say if you lost a loved one or you have a super stressful job, that can also potentially be a root cause for migraine. So there's

several different issues that you can address. And the one that I have focused mostly for also selfish reasons is actually energy metabolism, which touches especially the brain, because the brain is the most energy demanding organ. It requires energy, whether we say, sleep or not, 20 to 25% of energy at all times, even though it only makes up 2% of our mass, it can't store energy very well because there's just no space in the skull, right? There's no way to expand. There's just a physical barrier. And then it's protected, luckily, by something called the blood-brain barrier, which only lets through very small molecules and not, for example, big molecules such as proteins or big fats that other tissues can eat.

So the brain is in a very vulnerable energy situation. It has a high demand and a limited supply and storage. And that's, I think, one reason that this metabolism is so important for not just migraine, but almost any neuropsychiatric condition. Well, let's go into your story a little bit, and then we're going to come back to some of these root causes and your recommendations, including your four-pillar plan, and some of the top things.

I think I saw a video of you recently that you made five things that people should absolutely avoid who are suffering from migraines, which I thought was fantastic. But let's set the stage a little bit and let's talk about your story. I mentioned in the opening that since the age of 14, something was going on. And you actually didn't even know what it was. Take us from there. January's here. Can you believe it?

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That's FATT-T-Y-1515.com slash Drew and use the code Drew at checkout. Yeah, so I started getting these debilitating headaches. I had no idea. My parents had no idea of bless them. They thought I was being a difficult teenager. So my dad said, I should just get some more sleep, you know, and they'd wake me up from sleep. And eventually we went to doctors and they were thinking, oh, maybe a brain tumor, you never know. So I went from scanning to psychologists, everything. It took about a year. And luckily, Dr. Google had just come around at that time to figure out that actually my grandma had these two, these debilitating headache. and then it could be migraine.

And then the diagnosis was basically confirmed by a big migraine clinic in Germany. But just thinking about that this is something that affects a billion people. It takes a year to get a diagnosis is already pretty crazy, right? It means there's not a lot of focus. And then I figured out later, much later, that there's only one hour of training from medical training of six years. There's one hour training on migraine. That's insane, considering that every seven,

person suffers from migraine. There's four hours on headache. 90% of people suffer from some form of headache. So that's just insane. So there's really also a lack of knowledge which we have to change. But once I had the diagnosis, I was thinking, okay, that's a very common problem. Now, surely we can fix it. But that couldn't have been further from the truth. So doctors were always very positive. We have this drug. We have this drug. They had a lot of side effects. This goes from anti-epaleptic drugs over to anti-convulsant drug, you know, as a teenager. It didn't really work. So we wanted to try alternative things like acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine. Nothing worked for the next decade.

It went from like episodic, so occasional migraine to chronic migraine halfway through my bachelor's degree in psychology. I was even thinking I would fail the degree. I wouldn't know how it's even passed my degree because I was either on drugs or in pain all the time. And this is when I then started to take to Pyrmate, which is a potent anti-apaleptic drug. And epilepsy and migraine are related. So what this drug does amongst others, it reduces the hyper-excitability in the brain. So the likelihood that neurons will fire, which is relevant for migraine attack as well as epidpsy. What I did know at the time is it also improves the survival of our mitochondria, the powerhouses in our cells.

Now, there is a metabolic link to almost all drugs that are used in migraine. But we'll come back to that later. Anyway, I took that to pass my degree in Oxford then because I then went into neuroscience. because I thought I could never lead a normal life or do normal job anyway. And I was very lucky to be accepted and have a medical doctor take me under his care. And I did both of my master's projects in migraine. The second one in neuroimaging and migraine, so I got to work with real chronic migraine patients like myself.

And one day, the scanner broke down. So that poor migraine patient had to come back so we can repeat her scanning. And she walked in and I almost didn't recognize her. She was coming in. She was beaming. She was walking up right. You know, she looked like a different person. And you can tell people that are chronic in pain.

You can see it. It's not as visible, but you can see them almost like crawling into the lab. Everything hurts. Everything's too bright. She looked so different. And I asked her, what have you done in the last two weeks? And she said, I have been fasting. And I have literally been having red wine every night, the most potent migraine trigger.

I haven't had a single attack. And at the time, I was like, how? How was that possible? I already thought about migraine being a warning signal and an energy deficiency in the brain somehow. Now this lady walks in, she had eating anything. How was her brain not starving? Didn't make sense. So then we had this habit after the scan as a little thank you for the way home.

We gave patients cookies. She ate the cookies. And that same night, she had the worst migraine again. She was worse. So I was basically giving her the migraine back without knowing it, right? And now, I mean, I always like to apologize to these are very early patients when I didn't have a clue what I was doing yet for not having an answer and even triggering their pain. When I finally was writing up my master's thesis and everything, I was procrastinating as usual. So it can be beneficial sometimes.

An epilepsy special that talked about the oldest treatment for epilepsy, which is a fasting, mimicking diet. and it even talked about the pathways, potential mechanisms. And sitting there, like, all the puzzle pieces fell together, and everything started to make sense. It was the biggest and maybe only big aha moment in my life. But this is where I knew migraine is an energy deficiency syndrome, but it's also a problem of glucose sugar metabolism. So if it cannot use the primary fuel we give it all the time, how is it going to work? So that patient that was eating enough calories the whole time,

was still starving in the brain. So the realization that calories doesn't equal fuel inside the cells was a big one that I hadn't come across. So she was fasting, but her brain was fueled for the first time ever since she was born, probably. So that was, okay, this is what I want to do with my life. I need to study this. Now, Oxford is conservative. There was no data on this at the time that this could work.

So in the end, I had to make the hard decision and actually leave and decide how I ended up in Basel, Switzerland, Tiny Basel, because they said I could do a pilot project on looking at ketosis in migraine prevention or in migraine management would be the regulatory correct version to say it. And so we did the first ever clinical trial on exogenous ketone bodies in a patient population in Tiny Basel, Switzerland. I did my PhD there. Never regretted it. And I'll have a startup working in that space. And I'm down to less than one migraine day a month, literally. It took a lot of trial and error to get there. It wasn't like I figured this out and then two days, two weeks later I was fine.

It took me years to figure out all the things that you mentioned in the four migraine pillars and learning about metabolism. But when I learned about metabolism and really got my own brain back, I realized that whether you get migraine or Parkinson or Alzheimer's may be primarily genetic, but how to get out if you have a metabolic problem can actually be fairly similar and that all of these different conditions while looking very different on the outside, if they have a metabolic root cause, then the keys or the past are getting better is actually fairly similar.

Now, in the V-T, in the vestibor, nobody would believe you, even in the scientist's world, when you say that a metabolic Alzheimer's patient and a metabolic migraine patient may have more in common than a hormonal migraine patient and a metabolic migraine patient, nobody's going to believe you, right? So that was the tricky bit 10 years ago, so I have mostly talked about migraine. But honestly, I do believe that we need to identify metabolic subgroups or certain subgroups with the common root cause, and then these can be very similar across civilization diseases, which means they're mostly lifestyle or environmental-related.

Well, let's tease that out a little bit. Talk about our modern civilization that we all live in and that you grew up in. What do you feel specifically when you look at the way that we eat or move or actually don't move the substances that many of us have in our life on a regular basis, alcohol, etc. What are those things specifically doing if you could identify some of them that are contributing to this civilization disease? because it's a major distinction. I'm sure at some point in time, early in your career, people were just telling you, or even when you were before you were at Oxford, and then ended up in your current program that you were in,

I'm sure people told you that, hey, migraines are just genetic. That's just what it is. Your grandmother had them, you had them. But you learned that that's not actually the case. While there can be a genetic component that could be there, it's not primarily driven by genetics. So how is our modern lifestyle driving this so that one billion people are going through it? Walk us through some of those things.

What are those things in our lifestyle doing that is causing this situation? Absolutely. Yeah, you need to hit the nail on the head. And luckily I studied psychology before. So I knew of twin studies that if you take identical twins, right, and you put them in different environments. And this could just be different families that feed them different things or that give them more or less love or whatever. They have a completely different outcome. But they're 100% genetically identical.

So this whole idea, it can only be genes, was never really appealing to me, even as a 20-year-old, right, when sitting at the top neurologist practice who's telling me, well, it's primarily genetics, not much you can do, but you can try this drug. So what I started to learn is always trying to look at things from an evolutionary perspective. And that made sound odd, basically trying to think about what was life like 10,000 plus years back before we had agricultural revolution. before we started moving to cities, before we started making new chemicals, right? What was life then? What were humans born into? What were the challenges and the lifestyle we had? Then, of course, we'll never know 100%.

But that's how I tried to answer problems. And what could be the adaptive advantages of anything we see today? Now, what has changed in that time? There's so many different things. But just to put it into maybe a pathway first, I think everything negative we do currently actually is elevating. reactive oxygen species. That sounds very complicated, but many of you have probably heard of this thing called oxidive

stress, which is basically when these small bombs, free radicals are very reactive molecules, a bit like a bomb, that whenever they touch something, it explodes and they cause destruction. It's the primary driver of aging and inflammation. Most civilization diseases, as it is. So we have these free radical bombs, and we have two little bond neutralizers. The bomb neutralizers are antioxidant enzymes. Now, what is actually in our world is elevating these bombs and making us sicker. This is, for one, you already touched upon it, is the food we eat.

In the last 100 years, not 100,000 years, just 100 years, I think 80,000 new molecules have been introduced in our world and are ending up in food, either directly because they're allowed dyes or just to random additions that have just been approved, or indirectly, just because they've sprayed on our soils, or they end up in water or air. So we have a lot of toxins and we are not even beginning to understand how bad these are for our bodies.

This could be heavy metals. It could be fat-soluble toxins. All sorts of things. Actually, if you analyze your blood, I recently did, it's shocking what you find. Even diesel fumes, it's insane. So you have the presence of things that weren't there.

You have also the presence of highly processed foods that weren't there even 100 years back, right? You look of pictures of American beaches 100 years back. almost everyone's slim, right? They were not all ketogenic. They were not all on a perfectly paleo diets. They didn't have the chemicals and they didn't have the processing,

which means the high carbohydrate foods, high sugary foods, processed seed oils, processed whatever it is, like not even food anymore, right? So that's the presence of things that weren't there. But then we also have the absence of certain things, which is nutrients. Our soils are more and more deprived, even if like me you try to eat a whole food diet with real fruit and vegetables, depending on what soil they're growing on, they might not have all the stuff you need, right?

So it's really hard to get adequate nutrients anymore just because even the best of our foods have been so processed or growing on soils that don't have the nutrients anymore. So absence of nutrients, absence of sunlight, absence potentially of movement. Now, sometimes in the case of my brain, we can then have the presence of too much movement. So instead of going for longer walks or lifting some stuff in your garden, you might now end up on a treadmill for 60 minutes.

And that is too much oxidative stress. Or you might do high intensity interval training, which can be great for some, but for somebody with migraine genetics can be a big trigger. So also physical activity can be beneficial or stressful in dung wrong or in excess. Some other harmful additions that are not on the chemical space, but on the physical spectrum. and this would be blue lights. Blue lights increase oxidative stress not only via your retina in the eye, but even via the skin.

So if you sit in your front of your laptop anymore and you're wearing one of these blue blocker car glasses, which I would very much recommend, even in the migraine case, right? You still need to watch out for the blue light that is radiating through your skin. Increases oxidative stress by over 50%. Then we have the addition of all these different pills, drugs.

For example, the contraceptive pill that is It ended out like candy to women, increases oxidative stress again by about 50%. When I did my studies back then, I added this question, when did your migraine get worse or start? When did you start the contraceptive pill? And there was a very interesting correlation that it was about half a year apart, that it either became chronic or it even started. I was prescribed the contraceptive pill with 14 because I didn't have a regular period. and my bones didn't seem to have enough estrogen. So they gave me a contraceptive pill that doesn't even have real estrogen, just a mimetic.

And half a year later is when I got my first migraine. Now, everybody's going to say this is just a coincidence. I don't believe in it. So that's one thing also that so many women, of course, they get their freedom back and all of that. But what we put in our body on a daily basis mimics of hormones that are not the actual molecule of the human identical hormones without knowing any of the consequences really, without any informed consent, it's really quite criminal in my perspective. So it's the other thing.

What else are we putting in our body? And then last thing, and I think it's a lot, and maybe do you have some points to add? Last thing, a rule that I abide to now is don't put on your skin what you wouldn't put on your tongue, because we put a lot of things on our body and skin thinking that's fine because it's not going to end up in your blood, but it will. So really watch out for hygiene products, water, air, all of that stuff. But really also, what you put in your hair and on your skin really matters as well. And what do you clean your house with?

Because that's going to be breathed through your nose. Perfumes. Perfumes, 50% of perfumes contain toxins that are not regulated. And your nose is the only place where the blood brain barrier that we talked about earlier is actually broken because otherwise you wouldn't smell. So via smell, these toxins have a direct entry into your brain. So we talk about cigarette smoke a lot these days. That's amazing.

But perfumes are your new cigarettes. At your worst, I believe, from your story that I heard, you were having like 20 days of like debilitating migraines. Yes. And that's migraine story, which, and I just want to add that because that's the other chapter I barely ever talked about is what came later that was even worse. I had chronic fatigue syndrome.

I still have it a bit. I was bedridden for a year twice in my life. And that is very related. It's broken mitochondrial. I literally had to decide to I pick up a glass of water on my phone because I couldn't do both at the same time. And that's something I don't think I've ever talked about on a podcast, but that's broken powerhouses of the cells.

And I had so many toxins in my body. My lap was through the roof. I genetically am not very good at detoxing. And my migraine genetic means I'm not very good. at making energy, and that was close killing me at a point. So that was also part of my medical story, which is why I know so much about toxins and mitochondria in general now, because I also needed that to survive, basically, and nobody knew what was going on. Well, I'm glad you mentioned it because there are more and more people that are like yourself that are out there that are

suffering. I've had many friends tell me how bad their migraines are, and they're just looking for any sliver of hope that can point them in the right direction so that they can actually actually function and show up. And many of them feel as you felt, which is why is this happening to me? And also, too, how could this be happening to a human being and the human body? Like, were we meant to be living this way? No. So something is actually going on. And it takes a lot of trial and error to get there. Why I'm bringing that up and why I appreciate what you shared is that you've mentioned that it's taken a lot of trial and error to dial things in so that you could be at this place where you're no longer suffering anywhere near the amount that you were suffering previously.

So I want to tease it out a little bit. I want to come back to diet because I think that you would agree, and I'll even ask you, that in terms of priority from all the things that you mentioned, right, diet is probably number one or number two up there with the stress that's there, right? And stress includes a lot of different components. But typically I've heard you and other people in your field start off with the diet because it's one of the biggest things that either underfuels the brain or overfuels the brain with the wrong items. So you had this aha moment where you had read this feature on epilepsy and had seen that the ketogenic diet essentially was originally created to help children in particular that had epilepsy. give us some of the iterations that you had tried with your diet,

things that you added in, things that you removed, and ultimately what the right combination was that you found dietary-wise that made the biggest difference for you and many of the people that you talk to and educate. All right, newsflash, if you don't have good blood sugar, meaning if your blood sugar is out of whack, which means that your metabolic health is out of whack, you're going to suffer.

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now is the time to get started. Thanks too. Yeah. So the disappointing answer will be, that this is very individual. There's a few rules. I think they're universal for everyone. And there's a few things that you literally have to figure out and see what works best for you. So I started off and I wanted to go ketogenic. Now, there wasn't a lot of information out there.

But I really thought that I need to get into ketosis, which I think at the time was probably the right call. I started out eating a lot of nuts and they have carbs too. So I failed a bit, lots of protein, lean protein, which didn't work. But at first I went ketogenic, but I was still eating dairy, cheese, you know, all this stuff. And I got into ketosis and it did feel a lot better for my brain, for sure. But my body didn't feel it's best. With a very strict ketogenic diet, you have lots of fat, as you know, like 70 to 80 percent of your calories have to come from fat. I was eating a lot

of dairy as well, which I now know was a bit problematic for me, which I didn't really realize. and I was not allowing myself any colorful vegetables really because they also have some degree of sugar and I wouldn't get my ketam bodies high enough otherwise and no fruits at all. It was very restrictive. And it was good to get me into ketosis. I think that was necessary.

But I knew and I felt like I'm not going to be able to do a super strict ketogenic diet for a long term. Also now I know the liver is actually the organ that primarily turns this fat into ketone body. Now, what a lot of migraine patients may also experience is that they have overused medication sometimes for decades like me just to survive, right? You have to function. You take painkillers day and day out, usually, or you take some stronger drugs. So the liver function is already suffering.

Now, if you add a very strict ketogenic diet, the liver must do two things. For one, it must make sure you have adequate ketone body levels to supply your brain and your heart with adequate energy because it cannot just take the fatty acids as they are. It must also ensure now that you have adequate glucose levels. Now a healthy body can make all the glucose you need, but it depends on the liver making that glucose. Now what I was figuring out at the time is that actually my morning blood glucose was rising, was getting higher and higher. And that's a good indication. If that happens to you that your cortisol is high, your body is stressed, your liver is struggling a bit. This is when I realized, okay, I probably have to put in some more carbs.

Now, I still needed some ketone bodies. This is when I realized and reached out to Dominic Dagnostino in the U.S. and Patrick Allen as a first chemist, then maybe there's a way to make those ketone bodies in a laugh rather than forcing my liver to make those even though it felt like it was struggling a bit. So my way actually even early on was that I went on a low carb diet. diet, a low-GI diet, and I have been experimenting with sometimes more carbs. Like even now, I eat sweet potatoes and fruit again, but I've come a long way. But just low-carb, not enough that my liver doesn't have to make all the glucose, but I get some glucose from outside. And then I was basically supplementated with the first version of my product, microcats or brain ritual at the time.

So exogenous versions of ketone bodies in addition to a diet. This doesn't mean everybody has to go this way. So you will see that there is really, like, migraine is a spectrum. There will be a spectrum of what you will basically require as a migraine patient. We see some people that just do a low-GI diet. What is that? So the first step

in every single patient is you have to get your blood sugar stable. Now, what you do when you go on high-carb diets, highly processed diets is especially migraine. Your glucose thermostat is broken. So usually you eat glucose or sugar, carbohydrates.

hydrates, and then your body senses this much sugar has gone in. Now we need exactly this most insulin, which is the hormone that grabs the sugar and brings it inside of the cell. And then you're back to baseline. Now, when something is working and that goes like this, it's very cool. You go up and then you go down to base on. Now, migraine, sugar comes in. If a lot of sugar comes in, the insulin answer is too late.

And then it's like, oh, there's still too much glucose. We have to send more insulin. Then you send much more insulin, then you have the glucose. And then it goes like this. And it goes down way below your baseline. So you're actually hypolychemic. You have too little sugar. Now what does this brain say you?

Tell you now, it says, oh, my God, we're hungry, we're starving. You have to eat more food. Now you eat more sugar. And then you have this roller co-sense very bad. And this will mean in this undersugure period, your brain will be starving. So the first step, even before you know whether you have glucose problems or not, is to make sure you have adequate glucose, adequate glucose all the time for your brain. So the minimum is low glycemic index diets.

That would mean you can still eat your maybe sweet potato or maybe whole brain wise sometimes. You've been still a food and veg, cut out all the c-cote out all the sugar, all the process. Real food. Non-negotiable. Eat real food. Now already a good fraction of patients feel better. This is not even going ketogenic, right? Now what we also must ensure, in order for your cells to make energy, your mitochondria, your powerhouse is to make energy,

they don't just need the fuel source, whether that's ketone or glucose. They also need micronutrients. And this is a bit like, I'm not good with cars, but a car needs water and oil in addition to the fuel to actually drive, right? So we have to give the mitochondria everything they need and the enzymes need. This is where you trace minerals, your minerals, your antioxidants, your fat soluble vitamins, all of these things, come in. So that's the next thing to ensure is that you actually are getting everything you need. If you're magnesium deficient, your body could be warning you. You might not be making enough energy, but that can be fixed. If you don't have enough vitamin D, that's a problem, right? So that would be the next level that you fix that. So we're talking about the pillars. The first pillar

would be stabilizing blood glucose. Real foods, something that people tend to overlook is that your blood glucose is not only influenced by your diets. When you don't sleep enough, your blood glucose will rise. Now, if you've ever worn one of those trackers, you will see that you have a bad night's sleep. It will rise dramatically. If you have stress at work, it will rise. If you have a latent infection, it will rise. If you are allergic to something you eat, blood sugar will rise, right? So there's so many different areas that we don't pay a lot of attention to that can mean your blood sugar will rise more than it should. So all of these things need to be taken care of to stabilize Lutchevere. First step, so your brain gets added with glucose, at least, if it can handle that.

If not, you'll notice, not good enough. Second, micronutrients. Third pillar is now tackling, very importantly, the oxidative stress part. That's those three radical bonds that we talked about. Now, if you have more of the stressor than you have of the stress neutralizer, you will get in trouble. You will age, you will get diseased. It's not good for you. Now, what do you do here? This is what we already talked about, tackling stress, but also stress from the chemical sense. This is toxins. Hygiene products, your beauty products, your cleaning products, the water you drink, the air you breathe. This is physical stressors.

Don't do more physical exercise than your body can handle because exercise is oxidative stress. If you can handle it, you grow, you get stronger, you build muscle. If not, you actually get weaker, right? and then as psychological stressors that will make oxidous stress. This could be your parents or your boss or a co-worker or somebody who's toxic in your life, really identifying these people that cause more stress than benefit and trying to get rid of them where possible

or at least changing your own response. This also will include perfectionism. It's trying to do everything at 100%. You set yourself up with failure, right? And that causes stress. So trying to do more an 80-20 principle. 80% of outcome for 20% of the energy. And then you want to build up your own antioxidant capacity.

And this can include, again, some micronutrients. You can take antioxidants in a powder form, like in myocet or other products. Kukuten, for example, is a famous one. Ketone bodies themselves are antioxidants. So really strengthening your antioxidant system will also include eating real food, right? Then lastly, now, if none of this is working, and this goes for migraine, but potentially other brain issues as well. This is when you really want to introduce an additional fuel source for the brain,

additional to glucose. And you have to fix the glucose first, right? And now if that is not good enough, then it can be great to introduce ketosis. Now, ketosis can come via the diet if your liver is handling this. If you feel good after an adaptation period, fantastic. You don't have to do anything else. If you struggle with that, then maybe a high-quality exogenous source can be beneficial. but it can also be a combination.

This is really up to the individual person. But that is why I say it's the pillars, because really some can already benefit from low GI or a low glycemic index or a low carb diet and some really have to go very strict all the way. And while you're doing that, now this is the last layer of complexity, I really encourage people to watch out for food sensitivities.

That's something I have not really done. I mean, the gluten is out anyway, right? But dairy was a big issue for me. I didn't want to believe it. I live in Switzerland. We have the most amazing raw milk, you know, cheese and fondue and raclette and all of that. I just didn't want to believe it. But I'm much better at leaving our dairy.

And there can be other things. Even vegetables are not always your friend. I mean, animals can run away. They don't need to have any chemical defenses. Their defense is legs. A vegetable doesn't have legs. Their defense is chemicals. Now, we know a very famous one is gluten, but there's also oxalates.

And there's other anti-nutrients hidden in those fruits and vegetables that can, for some people, be problematic. So if you are still struggling and you don't know where it's coming from, sometimes it's also good to do a bit of an elimination and check whether you are intolerant to some of the food or vegetables sources. Yeah, no, it's a lot. And I have a bunch of follow-up questions on that. That was fantastic. So a couple of things that I'll highlight and I'll go backwards. And I'm going to say it.

And if I got something wrong, please, you know, correct me. So the first thing that we were talking about is that my podcast listeners and many people on our community have heard the benefits of a ketogenic diet, especially when it comes to various brain conditions that people are working with. But one of the first sort of things that you mentioned is that strict keto, some people may do great on it for what they're dealing with. And other people, in particular, if it's there, I think you mentioned the liver, if the liver has been taxed, if the liver has been stressed, and in your case, it looks like it primarily was through medication and using medication for a long period of time, which was essential at the time, and you didn't really know any different, there was already so much stress on your liver. So a high ketogenic diet, in addition to it being, you know, a little bit challenging from a lifestyle factor to follow, it was actually stressing your liver. so a high ketogenic diet, in addition to it being, you know, a little bit challenging from a lifestyle factor to follow, it was actually stressing your body out a little further.

How long, is that correct in my understanding? I think that's correct. Of course, I will never know 100% whether that is the primary factor. I know I already said right. I also had heavy metal poisoning at a time and I still have quite a toxic load in addition to the drugs stressful on my liver and my mitochondria. so this can also be a reason. I do produce quite a bit of energy from something else. Technical glycolysis means outside of the mitochondria.

So if I take away all glucose, that can also be a bit stressful. But for several reasons, pure, strict ketogenic diets didn't feel 100% right for me or was a bit stressful for my body. Great. And I think that's good for people to know because the ketogenic diet can be very powerful. And largely, in the beginning, even from a lot of people that were in the space, it would be like, hey, go on a ketogenic diet and kind of stay there. And now more and more people have been talking about, of course, use it as a therapeutic

approach, tweak it to where it needs to be tweaked, lean on some other tools that could be part of it. Exogenous ketones could be one aspect of it, right? We'll double click on that in a second and explain what that is. But personalize it to get to the place ultimately where there's some form of metabolic flexibility, not just because it's easier to do long term, to be a human being and to be able to get, you know, to not only get all your fuel just from a, you know, a high fat, 70, 80, 90 percent fat is where your calories are coming from.

But that also, it could be beneficial to your body in other ways to be able to introduce some carbs and other things like that from whole food sources that are there for you. So that's one important point that I think that's there that's good for people to realize from anybody that's thinking about the ketogenic diet. Most people that thrive long term on a very ketogenic diet are males. Now, if you go back to 10,000 years plus back, it was usually the guys that are off on a trip hunting. I mean, there may be some females that did that as well, but the females were staying home gathering the food and the tubers and the roots and so on, right? so there could be something evolutionary to this. Also, because it can be sometimes disrupting to hormones,

I don't want to discourage any female from staying on a ketogenic diet long term, but the reports that I've had that especially for women, they can start losing their period, you know, they generally do less well on a super strict, endless ketogenic diet. And I also want to say again, tell me one culture where they would not eat honey when they find it or they would not eat any fruit and vegetable kind of things in the summer what it was available.

even thinking about the inulet, right? I don't think there's a single culture that would completely ignore carbs if it's available to them at some point during the year. So an endless ketogenic diet may not even be the natural state that a human was born in, but of course in an epilepsy patient

and a migraine patient where things are already broken, it may require different things to fix it than if we were just living a healthy life without being sick, right? So everybody needs to experiment, but I just wanted to add that to your good points. Let's talk about the toxins piece. You know, you mentioned it briefly,

but when did you figure out that toxins like heavy metals or other toxins were maybe a big part of why you were still feeling not well, even though you significantly improved from just going on a more balanced blood sugar diet, which is step one, is pillar one in your sort of four-pillar approach. When did you realize that toxins could be a crucial part of it and need to be addressed? Took way too long. Actually, interestingly, my migraine went down drastically, right, when I was in ketosis. And I was doing the ketogenic diet strip before almost a year, at least half a year. And because I wanted to do it well, and I thought at the time still that too much red meat is the enemy. And I was raised to go low fat and, I mean, at least low sugar, but definitely

low fat, mainly carbs, no meat, basically. I was eating a lot of fish. instead and even tuna and all of that. Nobody ever said there could be heavy metals or anything bad of that. Fish was also always supposed to be healthy. So I ate tremendous amounts of fish. At the same time, I was in Oxford drinking basically the tab water because I didn't know that tap water in Europe could be contaminated. And you know that in the UK, in very old buildings,

and that one was from 1427, you may still have lead pipes. So I was getting significantly worse in the sense that I was losing all strength and I would have these infections all the time and I was getting weaker and weaker and eventually got into a speciality clinic where they made this provocation test to assess for heavy metals. It almost killed me, to be honest, that completely got me to 10% because so much lab was mobilized. But that showed my lap was through the roof, probably a combination of a lot of fish exposure. exposure from when I was a child. We had these very old ceramic red plates and mug that I was always drinking from. And then potentially in combination with some lead pipes in the UK, it was just my bucket was overflowing.

And that's when I realized, oh, my God, there's these things called toxin that there's literally heavy metals around that basically mimic minerals. They replace the minerals, they especially replace iron. And if free iron is super toxic, this is another thing we're going to talk about, my number one migraine trigger always was free iron in a tablet, in an iron cast pan, because it causes so much oxidative stress. It leads to migraine in 30 minutes. So migraine is a super amazing warning signal. But there was down to 10% of function, not knowing if I would survive the year, to be honest, calling up on specialists, like there's a couple of specialists in Germany. They have a waiting

list of two years and they said half of the people on that list are dead by the time they called them. So I realized that's not true for me. I could hardly move. I was just bound to bed. My brain was kind of still working. Maybe also thanks to ketosis in that sense, right? But I lost mitochondrial function because of the heavy metals. So I just had to read and read and read and try to find experts that can help develop the protocol to safely remove heavy metals. And when I took the first tablet, it failed on day one.

So toxins is an understudied and completely overlooked topic from the medical system. So I always say there's going to be two pandemics, or they're already. happening. The first is the food pandemic, which we covered, which is the first area I went into reintroducing ketam bodies, micronutrients. That's making a lot of people sick. But it's already starting to become common knowledge, right? Many podcasts have talked about it. Many people that inform themselves kind of know the next pandemic will be toxins. And not just heavy metals. Heavy metals, you have so-called chelating agents. Not all heavy metals are toxic. Copper and iron are heavy, but they also have a physiological function. Mercury, lead, arsenic do not. But because

they're charged, you can use the other charge in a molecule to bind them and drag them out of the body. That's kind of an antidote that we have for heavy metals. We don't have an antidote for most other toxins that the world is flooded with, unfortunately, which are the fat soluble, the hormone mimicking toxins that are so ubiquitous these days. And for that, I have only recently found something, so I'm still not at 100%. I still can't do much exercise. I can walk again. I cannot go hiking for very long.

It is improving. But my biggest challenge is what to do with all these other toxins that have accumulated in my body because I'm a bad genetically equipped detoxer. My liver isn't working well to begin with. My twin died before I was born. But I found something that's very interesting. This is the last thing I want to say. And I don't want to recommend it to anyone because it's not yet, I think, approved in the U.S. But in Basel, we have a machine.

It's called an enospheresis. It just has different systems and a double filtration method that basically is taking out 75% of your blood. And then based on a certain charge and size of the molecules, it's taking out ultimmune particles. It's taking out some toxins, misfolded proteins. And I literally have photos of my blood before and after. You can see all this little dirt particles floating around. And that made the big difference for. me and I could also see what else is in my blood that I didn't have a chance to basically assess

before. So this has helped me personally a lot. I don't think that's necessary for everyone. But for the canaries and the comely like me that are bad genetically at detoxing and there's five genes, everybody can get tested, literally. I think even in the US that will tell you where you are standing on that front. I think it could be beneficial, but at least having on the radar that you limit exposure to these things can already help. So for some people with heavy metal poisoning that have just been eating too much, tuna, literally eliminating exposure, being aware of the problem can take you a long way. For some, they need to help a little bit more, supporting the body a bit more,

getting rid of some of those toxins. Should that be an issue for them? Let's talk about exogenous ketones. A lot of people on my podcast have heard the term. Different experts have brought it on and talked about it. I also have talked about my own dabbling and how sometimes I'll take things like before I do a podcast or I have like a really intense work session, you know, knock on wood, I'm not suffering from migraine or any brain disorder. But when I really need to go in the zone, I've used products

like ketone IQ. I'll take that and I'll go and like my brain power just like significantly increases. But still some people don't understand fully what is it and how is it made and why is it So just give us the basics of exogenous ketones. So I'll summarize that you can kind of pick it from there. You realize that an strict ketogenic diet was maybe a little bit stressful for you, but still you wanted to be able to have some of these ketones, which you can explain that your body can use as fuel. If you could just recap how your body and your brain is using them for fuel, that'd be great.

But you had to have an external source. So you mentioned that creating these ketones in a lab and getting an exogenous external source, could be a way for you to get the benefits of a ketogenic diet without having to stick to a strict ketogenic diet. So explain what are exogenous ketones and how does your body use that as fuel to be healthy and thrive? There's basically three molecules the brain can use for energy. One is glucose, you know that's sugar.

One is lactate. Lactate is actually produced when you exercise and it can also be used by the brain for fuel source, but it's not around a lot. And the third category is so-called ketone bodies. now ketone bodies because they're not actually ketones from a chemical sense. That's just a side note. It's not very important.

The important thing is it's a small molecule for Cs made from long chain fatty acids, from long chain fats. And because that they're so small, they can actually make it through this blood brain barrier and be used by the brain as an alternative. And it turns out even a preferred fuel source for the brain. So when the brain has the chance of using both, it prefers to use the ketone bodies. Because they're more efficient energy source,

so they need less oxygen when they're burned, to make the same amount or more of ATP. And they also have a lot of other nice properties. They're antioxidants. We talked about these free radicals that can be so harmful, so they can catch them. And when they're burned, they make less of these free radicals. Now, they're also anti-inflammatory,

which is a huge benefit for a lot of civilization problems that we have, right? inflammation plays a role a lot. Now, they reduce hyper-excitability in the brain. Hyper-excitability plays a role in epilepsy, the migraine, and some other conditions. So they have a lot of benefits to them when elevated. But when I say them, really the most potent or the molecule, the ketam body that has been studied the most is called beta-hydroxybutyates. There's three forms of ketam bodies. One is acetoacetate. And the last one is acetone. Acetone is that fruity smell. You might have smelled there before.

Acetone is very volatile. It's gone fairly quickly. But beta-adroxybutyrate is more like the storage and transport form, and that's really the most abundant ketone body anyway. Now, when it comes to exogenous ketam bodies, they're not all created equal. Now, I just want to give some information so people can make their own choices, and I try to be as unbiased as I can. Obviously, I do have my own startup.

But there is, first, there is, when you have a model, molecule that has different functional groups, like my two hands, right? They have the same fingers, but different ones. And no matter what I do, even though they have the same formula, I can never align them in space 100%, because they have a different alignment in space, even though it's the same ingredients. You might remember this from chemical class way back. That's called enantiomerism, which means that molecules that have different ingredients have different orientations in space. Now, when you chemically synthesize a molecule, you often get 50% of these two versions. But the body can only really well use one a lot of the times.

Now, with ketone bodies, there's L and D. There may be benefits to both, but when it comes to primarily energy metabolism, the body prefers the D version. this version in space, let's say. So when it comes to exogenous ketone bodies, and it's just the beta-adroxybutrate, I'm going to say BHP for short, bound to a mineral. That's how they usually sold.

So you have the minerals and that molecule attach. That's very natural. You have the choice between the mix, which is cheaper, and the pure D form that is primarily used for energy. So that's one thing. That's one differentiation. Now, these are called beta-adroxy butcherate mineral salts, BHB salts. They're basically using the human identical, this BHB molecule, and they're binded to a

mineral. So then you have this in sodium and potassium and magnesium form and calcium form. There's another way to make that molecule stable that has been used a lot that is called ketone ester. You might have heard of that. Now, not all ketone esters are created equal, but a lot of ketone esters. but a lot of ketone esters as a backbone that bounce, binds the BHB, are using something called butane dial.

Butane dial can also be bought on its own. Now, butane dial in a patient population can be very problematic because it is an alcohol. So a lot of these ketone esters have 50% butane dial, 50% alcohol plus 50% of the BHB that we actually want. Now, via synthesis and in the liver, can be converted to this BHP molecule, but it's eating up a lot of good stuff. Some might know this NAD plus, for example, a molecule that reduced with aging on the way, and it puts stress on the

liver. Now, if you chronically want to use exhaustionist ketone bodies and you're a patient that may already have a struggling liver, I just want you to be aware with a lot of ketonesters, you are ingesting significant amounts of alcohol. Maybe fine if you're an athlete. The good news about why ketonesters are so popular, despite their terrible taste as well, is that you can get higher levels because it's metabolized over time. And you don't have any minerals attached to it that may be given you diarrhea. So it has a longer half-life, but it comes with 50% alcohol, which very few people know. So I talk to medical doctors that have tried giving ketonesters to patients and they see signs of liver failure fairly quickly. Inhealthy people, liver enzymes typically rise over time.

So ketone esters are not good for your liver, period. So they have to make a choice. So that's why I want to say not all exogenous ketone bodies are created equal. There's no products that have the pure butane dial. And there again, if you're a healthy person and you just want to have a boost before your sports and so on, it's fine. Just be aware you are drinking alcohol. And I drink a glass of red wine here and there as well and I enjoy it by making that conscious decision because I know it's not good for me. I just, yeah, some people think they're doing themselves a huge favor and I'm not aware that they are actually also drinking alcohol at the same time.

So that's the choices we have, the ketone esters and the ketone body's salt forms. So when it comes to the ketones that you offer, they're primarily designed for individuals that are suffering from migraines or other brain disorders. Is that correct? Yeah, so we created a brand. It's called brain ritual and the first product, Migocat is designed for migraine. It's actually medical food for migraine. The medical food is something that sits between the supplement and the drug space in the sense that it is safe ingredients but against the disease. So we can say for the dietary management of migraine, it has to have clinical trials behind it.

And really what it is, it does have exogenous ketone bodies in mineral salt for a minute. It's an important ingredient, but it's a one-stop metabolism shop. So we have all the fat soluble vitamins, the water-soluble vitamins, B vitamins in their mesolative form, everything in human-identical form. It has the trace minerals. It has al-carotene to shuttle the fatty acids into your cells. It has antioxidants and high concentration, such as CO-Q-10. So it's really a cocktail of a lot of ingredients that you need for energy metabolism

in the first version designed for migraine. Because migraine studies have shown that, for example, B2 riboflavin, you need crazy high doses for it to be effective. So it's 400 milligrams. That's a lot of riboflavin. So we have put some of the doses of these nutrients at doses where migraine trials have been shown that you need those concentrations. We're working on photo products. We're currently doing a depression trial.

And we're also looking into aging. So there will be more products coming out. So one stop shop, not just exogenous keys on that's one part of it. But we also want to tackle Pillar 2, 3, as well as 4 in that product. You know, I watched a video that you made just continuing down this line about how important other key nutrients are. And you talked about micronutrients and also, you know, different things that could play a huge role when it comes to people's severity of migraines.

And one of them that you mentioned was magnesium in the video. Can you just talk about that? And are there other nutrients like that that you feel are super important for me to realize who are suffering from migraines, I mean, magnesium is important for everybody, but tell us, why does it play a role for people who are dealing with migraines? Whenever you are sick, you probably have a bigger demand at things. So this is the same thing. If your car is broken, it needs more than just a car that needs maintenance, right? So if you have to go to a mechanic with a broken car, it's going to require more energy,

efforts and tools than if you just go to maintenance, then the car is fine, right? So I see it a bit similar with patients. They just have a bigger demand because they're inflame, and they're sick. Now, magnesium actually plays a role in over 300 enzymes, also including our enzymes that are making energy. Now, with migraine, you have a hyperactive brain. That's the fact. So people have shown in migraine with neuroimaging that, for example, if somebody who doesn't have migraine looks at a white wall or a stimulus that doesn't change, it will habituate. It will not fire. It will stop firing to reduce energy demand. If a migraine patient looks at a not-changing stimulus, it will continue to fire.

It won't habituate, thereby spending significant amount of energy. So research has shown that even between attacks, migraine patients have about 20% less ATP energy in the brain compared to normal people, which is quite significant, right? So you have a higher energy demand met with suboptimal metabolism, which is a lower supply, which is really the perfect storm. So if a migraine patient, for example, isn't having enough magnesium, then the action of 300 enzymes will be disturbed,

but they're already working over time. So it will hit much harder, right? So if you're fine on magnesium, it won't help you, right? But if you're suboptimal, it will help to increase it. So that's why migraine studies, they're not all conclusive, not all show a significant effect in migraine. But the ones that do,

it's really around the 600-migrant. So that's why mycocat also includes 600 milligrams of magnesium, whereas a healthy person may get by with 360. So there's just higher demand in sum. That's why magnesium, but equally you could swap it out with say riboflavin, B2, there's been studies. Also at certain doses, very beneficial migraine studies, randomized controlled studies, that again, if you are bombarded with oxidative stress, and all migraine triggers have a common denominator. They elevate oxidative stress. If you already have a high oxidative stress load, you may to acquire more cool Q10 than a healthy person who just needs to basically ward off the normal load, let's say, or the healthy load. You know, you mentioned a super interesting fact that I didn't know about, and I have some friends that suffer from, you know, migraines ongoingly, is that you found for yourself.

And again, this is your story, but you've probably seen themes with other people that. when it comes to oxidative stress, there's certain things that were an immediate trigger, right? So initially you had mentioned that patient that came in that was doing the fast that you gave the cookies to and then they ended up getting sick again, that they noticed, like many people notice, that red wine is often a trigger for individuals, right? So that's pretty well established. That's pretty well known. You have wine now, now that you've sort of fixed your metabolism and you've gotten your oxidative stress under control. But you mentioned that iron. So, like cooking in a cast iron pan or having, as I'm understanding, like an iron tablet, right,

if somebody is low on iron taking that, that was actually your number one trigger that you noticed for yourself. Have you seen that for other people? And are there other triggers like that that people have that they may not be aware of that you've seen from this community of people that you're bringing together, which are all individuals that are suffering from migraines? On the starting with the first one, now for me, none of these works. in isolation. So it was really only when I brought ketosis in and a cocktail of my canutriens and antioxidants that are really helped fully. But for some, like if they're really severely just vitamin D deficient isolation works, but sometimes you have to do a combination

of stuff just to putting that out there. Now, for triggers, ion is an interesting one. Some, this depends again on your genetics, right? My antioxidants defense, because that's also a phase two liver enzyme, is quite mutated. So I'm not good at catching free radicals very well. If you have a migrainecation with low iron but strong antioxidant enzymes, they will probably get by on normal iron supplementation, at least for a while, might even make them better. If you have low iron migrate and you have weak antioxidants defenses or a very high oxidative threshold already, then it will probably trigger your migraine. This is why, for example, in our product we don't have iron because that's a very

individual thing. Similar as copper. Copper is, copper is less oxidative stress creating, but also so. So you give me copper on about day three to four, I get daily migraines. If it's unbound, now luckily there are products such as lactiferin that has bound iron in it, where iron is bound. Bound iron is safe. Or there's a recent thing that even now I can take, I always had low iron and I couldn't do anything about low ferretin. And now I found a product that even I was my vulnerable antioxidants defense can take, and it's iron bound in a Koji mushroom. So it's a mushroom that is injecting that iron, and now it's bound in the mushroom, and now I can tolerate that iron. So that's how I see, right? There's always individual problems, depending on your

genetics, that can be fixed with different creative solutions. Now, when you talk about what triggers could people be overseeing, this is one. If you feel like something is a trigger and you or have your diary, see if somehow it has a connection to oxidative stress. For example, perfume can be a huge trigger for people that they may not realize. Smells. Orders can have toxins in it, elevates oxidative stress. Tick, there's your explanation. Now, people sometimes say weather.

And I was like, my God, weather, that sounds so psychological. Like, what's the explanation that the weather change can change migraine? But they swear by it. And I think the patient is always right. So here, interestingly, when your weather changes, the pressure in the air changes. With a pressure air change, you get a change in oxygen concentration in the air, and less oxygen is less optimal metabolism equals less energy. And there are studies that show that change in altitude is a very reliable migraine trigger.

So even things like weather changes can be explained if you look hard enough. That's another one that people may not realize is weather changes, actually. Here's a weird one on that. If I could interject for a second. Yeah, please. I used to have a former employee in one of my companies that said that any time that there was a thunderstorm, afterwards, her migraines would trigger very heavily. And when we were looking into it a little bit more, it's like when there's a rainstorm,

thunderstorm, there's more ozone that's out there. And ozone can be oxidative to the body. And it could lead to, she would just notice there would be a rainstorm and thunderstorm and she'd be like, all right, my, you know, my migraines are going to flare up a little bit. And there's that connection again, or more free radicals in the body. These are all part of this personalized and individual approach where, yes, there are common themes that you are highlighting through all your work and you're sharing your story. But so many people have little, when your body is sick, there's all sorts of things that

could play a role. Some people might have a histamine issue. Some people might have an oxalate issue. Some people might have crazy migraines after a thunderstorm. How are you, or talk a little bit about how you're sort of bringing together a community of individuals that can all kind of like learn from each other, right? It's starting top down through your YouTube and obviously you have your products, which will talk about how people can find those in a second.

But I'm hearing part of what you're doing is you're trying to just bring people together so that even in your Instagram comments, I've seen individuals sort of sharing ideas and thoughts of things that have worked for them or haven't worked for them, which I think can benefit everybody that's suffering for migraines. Exactly. It's really hard with just the product for, you know, to really fix everything. So my two crados are first do no harm. And second, let food be thy medicine as much as it can.

So that's why, say, for example, the microhead formulation is like a broad baseline that can cover some needs. And if you're a bit of excess, it usually isn't a problem unless you're allergic. But it doesn't cover all of your needs. We covered iron, right? If you are iron, you might have to add or not, right, or copper. And that really needs to be discussed with somebody one-on-one or with each other. As you said, community is so important because we don't have to all reinvent the wheel.

So I try to share everything I know. I have a free YouTube course. Anybody can download a white paper. I've written a book. I still haven't gone around to publish. But that even has all the biomarkers in the blood that you can check for different problems. It's like everything I know from the last 10 years put in one resource that hopefully will be available at some point soon. And we have, for example, a Facebook group.

It's still small, but Facebook groups allow the chat more easily. And I really hope that's coming together and growing a bit more. I'm also in there answering as many questions as I personally can next to everything. And I love that you say that. And really people talking to each other, when you're sick, you really have to be your own detective. And it's literally detective work. You have to do your homework. You have to find the cues.

You have to write down your hypotheses and then try to disprove them because it's always hard to prove them. But maybe you can disprove them and move on to the next. So really trying to be your own detective. Use your medical professionals along the way as a resource. If you can, if you have them. Use your fellow patients as a sounding board. That's what I would probably do if I were in that position again. And that's what I'm trying to do, really.

is bringing patients together and really empowering everyone to have the right knowledge to make their own informed decision about how to go forward. You may not have it yet, but I know one thing that people regularly look for is that it can be, you know, there's a spectrum of where people are at and some people are more open to being their own detective. Part of the conversation today is that everybody kind of has to be a little bit of a detective in their journey. And then some people might need a practitioner or multiple practitioners.

I know a major request that I get from people that are in that sort of space of dealing with migraines. They're always asking for like, hey, who are good practitioners that they could work with, you know, whether it's in person, in Europe, in America, or even remotely. I don't know if you have a list or that one day you may put that list together. We have to make a list. We absolutely have to. And yeah, typically the people I would send people to don't have a clue about migraine because nobody really does or almost nobody. but generally I would say a functional practitioner is the way to go

because they will look for root causes, they will give you the labs that you're asking for that are outside the just standard blood count range by looking into the minerals, inflammation, the oxidative stress. And also more and more doctors have reached out to us now that are open. And I think really I just bought the other day we have to put a list together of people that are open to this functional, metabolic, toxic approach.

The toxin bit is difficult because, again, the knowledge is scars. But there's many people that are willing to learn. And, yeah, we might have to go away a bit of education and making a list of people that are willing to support along the way. Yeah, well, one fun fact I heard from one of your other interviews is that the migraine center that you were sent to as a kid that really was just doing the best they could but didn't really make a difference for you. They've now reached out to you to get some more education for their patients

and their doctors that are there. So I thought that's really cool. Yes, I was actually starting to make a whole new clinic for them, like a whole clinic program, but I just couldn't do it next to being a CEO. So they got a lot of times. There's only so many things you can work on at the same time. That's a plan of making a clinic that actually helps migraine,

like where people really can go to and relax and there has a dim lights and the food that they should be. and the whole analysis, that's still a dream for the future. Yeah. Well, while we wait for your list, you know, we've had Dr. Georgia Ede on this podcast from Harvard University. She has a really great list on her website where you can find practitioners that includes, you know, coaches, medical doctors.

You can sort by state. Some do telemedicine, some don't. You can see different specialties. If I was suffering from migraines and I'm looking while we wait for your list one day when, you know, comes out there, I think her database would be great because at least you know that those are open mind doctors that are going to use a food first approach. They're going to be running a lot of the blood work that you're going to be talking about and are going to be open-minded, even if they don't have a crazy amount of education in migraines.

They're going to help you sort of navigate. So that could be a good list that we could link to below. In addition to your white paper, that will link to that, the course that you mentioned, your YouTube. And then where do people go to find your product? And before you mention it, I just want to say, you know, I have no affiliation with you or your company. But I love when people are creating products, they're creating solutions for this community because that's going to be, that's a huge part of the solution. And anytime somebody's created something that's worked for them, I want them to shout it through the rooftop and be

able to talk about it for anybody that's out there that would be looking for a solution. So I am an entrepreneur in addition to being a podcast host. So I love the entrepreneurial spirit and people creating solutions. We need more solutions that are out there for a whole. host of things. So congratulations on taking that leap. You took two major leaps. You left Oxford and you went to a different program. I'm sure that was a major thing. You know, university was supposed to be the place where innovation happens, but you got told that, oh, there's not enough for you to get approval for this innovation here. You got to go somewhere else. And other leap is you went from, you know, solving your own issue to being an entrepreneur. So going from academic to being an

entrepreneur. That's a major leap. So congratulations on that. So remind us what's the name of the product and where do people go to get it if they are somebody who's suffering from, you know, any of these things that we've been talking about today. Thank you so much. And that means a lot, especially since whenever you make the product, just because you had two people like, oh, but she makes the product. She's biased, like as if I weren't a scientist or a patient anymore. So, yeah, this is made to please me and I'm the worst critic when it comes to what I put into my body. It's called Migocats by Brain Ritual. Brain Ritual is the master brand and we're rebranding because Migrakechats sounds a bit harsh. So this will in the future we call Brain Ritual, the migraine version of it. So you have to do something for your brain every

day. Your brain needs food every day. And you can see, I mean, I'm not sure if you can see this, but that is a list of ingredients. And they're all in human bioidentical, like the most bioactive form that you can get. And so easily available, don't need to be converted, should be ready to be absorbed. And you just start slowly so your gut can adjust to the ingredients. But yeah, it's brainwitual.com. Brain ritual.com. We launched in the US six months ago.

We have a few amazing testimonials already. So if you want to share how you feel on it, good or bad, we always get back to you. And yeah, we ship to Canada as well. Definitely share some with you also if you're curious. and would like to. Yeah, I'm totally game to try. As I mentioned to you, I'm a fan of ketones. You know, I've tried a bunch of different products and I'm game to try.

So, for instance, for myself, if I'm not somebody who's suffering from any migraines or headaches or other stuff, would it still be generally something that would be safe to be able to consume? It's safe. So the good news about medical foods is they're 100% only generally regarded as safe ingredients. It's a medical food. So it's let food be their medicine as a supplement. The only difference is it's against the disease, meaning that it has been studied in a given disease that has a metabolic component.

So it's designed to address the metabolic issue of a given disease. So it's metabolic issues in migraine. But all ingredients are safe. The only thing that once we do the general cognition version is that we will decrease, for example, riboflavin, that's somebody like, you may not be needing in such a high dose, but all the ingredients that are on the higher end are water soluble, so you'll just pee out the excess. So it would be amazing to see we've had testimonials that recently, a colleague Dr. Jamie Seaman, I don't know if you know her, she's fantastic.

She tried it. Her report was her fever. She took it for the headache. She had during her infection, her fever went away for five hours, which is the half-life, then she came back. She took it again, the fever went away again. Some crazy things are happening or let somebody talk about O.T. Mune getting better, losing weight, all sorts of things or like general headache getting better that we didn't expect at all.

They're just coming in. And of course, those are testimonials and need to be taken with a grain of salt. So nothing I say is medical device. It's personal experience. But yeah, I would love to hear how you feel when you take it. It should be a one-stop metabolism shop.

with key some bodies and a bunch of other stuff that your body hopefully is craving. Dr. Elena Gross, this was fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing your journey, talking about this mission that you've been on to not only heal yourself, but to help so many people, again, a billion people. I think you mentioned that, you know, 15% of the population that's out there is suffering from, you know, some form of migraine. For some people, it's not, you know, crazy chronic. And for a lot of people, it's so chronic that it is, as you mentioned,

and more so for women than even men, it's one of the main reasons that people are on disability is they literally cannot function. And that's crazy that in this day and age, 20, 25, with all the advancements that we have, with AI, with everything else, we're still dealing with some basic fundamental things that are actually quite simple. They come back to brain metabolism and mitochondrial health. And if we can tweak those in and dial it in, you can really get rid of a lot of suffering. And that's the hope that you've brought to today's podcast. So I want to thank you. Thank you for that. And I want to be 100% transparent.

This is not a metabolism. It's not going to fix all migraine, right? But it will help the proportion where metabolism plays a key role. We call it metabolic migraine, right? So if you have hormonal migraine, we know some that are getting better, but they may still need hormones, right? So it depends on the root cause. So we can't tackle all billion migraine patients at once with this, although we're trying,

we're developing other things. but we can hopefully also help other metabolic issues of other neuropsychiatric issues in the future. And maybe with knowledge and everything else that evolves, focus on other subgroups of migraine also in the future. Fantastic. Well, thank you again for being on the podcast. Thank you so much. This time flew by. It was a great pleasure. Thank you, Drew.