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Two Things - Oxygen and L-Methyl Folate

The subject says it all. Sorry for the length but I'm totally excited about this.

I've been trying to get my doctor to authorize a scrip for an oxygen bottle but he won't do it. I read long ago that sometimes pure O2 will fix a migraine at the beginning, midstream or at the end but I've been unable to test out the suggestion.

Well, I didn't realize that there's a ready source of O2 that doesn't require a scrip. I'm a grounded pilot (I didn't lie on my medical and they grounded me because of Imitrex) and there's a place here in Ohio that sells O2 for pilots and other "pilot supplies" so I bought a couple of small bottles on the cheap. I won't advertise for them so if you're interested you can google the keywords. Amazingingly, since I received the bottles my migraines have seemed to abated - it's been a week.

Second thing is I was talking to a buddy at work about migraines and he told me his wife has been taking L-Methyl Folate - this is a bioactive form of folic acid that is able to cross the blood brain barrier. They are in possession of one of those rare things - a doctor that knows their crap - a real-world unicorn - and he put her on supplement form.

There is also a prescription version called Deplin which is the same thing only much higher potency - it sometimes works wonders on folks with migraine and concurrent depression. He said his wife is taking the non-prescription OTC version (5000mcg x 3) verses Deplin (1 x 15000mcg). He said his wife has completely turned around - rarely has to take an imitrex and has tons of energy and positive attitude.

The research I've done on it suggests that people who have a genetic issue resulting in the inability to process folate (there's a really long name for it) are chronically low in serotonin. L-Methyl Folate seems to boost the pool in the brain and when used concurrently with SSRI's can make all the difference in the world in a very short period of time (that's for those with depression).

Imitrex appears to be some sort of serotonin agonist so L-Methyl Folate may actually work for migraine by replicating some of the effects on seritonin.

I'm going to order a bottle from my favorite massive on-line supplement provider and try it out. I'll report back my findings while huffing my oxygen bottles.

  1. Hi Tate,

    Thank you so much for your in depth comments. I do know oxygen is used to treat cluster headache, but isn't much research to back up that it works for migraine. Having said that I've heard from people who have good results with oxygen.

    There has been an association with the MTHFR gene mutation and many conditions; migraine with aura, ulcerative colitis, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and others. We have information on this topic here; https://migraine.com/blog/mthfr-genetic-mutation-affecting-migraine-treatment/.

    Nancy

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