65. Why The 'Latest' Migraine Supplement Won't Help You Get Better

Dr. Leslie breaks down a $100+ "miracle migraine supplement" that appeared in her Facebook feed, and reveals why it probably won't solve your migraines.

This new product contains ketones and ribose sugar, claiming these are breakthrough ingredients your brain needs. But Dr. Leslie explains why the science behind these claims is misleading, and sometimes flat-out wrong.

First, the website claims your brain prefers ketones as fuel. That's false. Your brain prefers glucose. Ketones are an emergency backup when you're fasting or starving. The ketogenic diet (rebranded from the 1980s Atkins diet) forces your body into a famine state, which can burn out your adrenals and disrupt hormones, especially for women.

Second, the product includes ribose sugar as a "shortcut" for cellular energy production. But your body already converts glucose to ribose naturally. This is kindergarten-level biochemistry for your cells. Supplementing what your body should make on its own creates "lazy organs" that stop doing their job.

Dr. Leslie asks the critical question: If you're so nutrient-deficient that you need a $4-per-day powder, why can't you break down and absorb nutrients from actual food? The answer reveals the real problem, and it's not a missing supplement.

If you're ready to stop chasing miracle supplements and address why your body can't function the way it's designed to, Dr. Leslie offers free consultations to help you identify what's actually blocking your healing.

You can book your free call here:
https://www.drlesliecisar.com/apply

Free Training: 5 Proven Steps to Being Migraine Free (Even if you think you've already tried everything.)

https://www.drlesliecisar.com/5SHMN

Connect with us:

Website: https://www.drlesliecisar.com/

Free Facebook Group: Healing Migraines Naturally, with Leslie Cisar, ND

Ready to try something radically different that actually works? Read more about my approach here: https://www.drlesliecisar.com/map

Episode Transcript

hi there
welcome to the Healing Migraines Naturally podcast
I'm Doctor Leslie Caesar
and I am a naturopathic doctor
who specializes in working with women
who have chronic migraines
to help them uh
restore their health
so that their body stops generating the migraines
they can get off their medication
get off their fistful of supplements
that they're taking and I do this
because I used to be a chronic migraine sufferer
as well so
so I wanted to jump on today
because I was on my Facebook feed
and I got an ad and
because I am
in nearly all of the Facebook migraine groups
I have a free Facebook group
that you're welcome to join to
called Healing Migraines naturally with Leslie Caesar
Andy
so Facebook knows that I have an interest in migraine
so I get a lot of migraine content on my Facebook feed
so I was on the feed
and I got an advertisement for a new
miracle migraine supplement
so I was like oh boy
I really gotta check this out
so you know
everyone is looking for the Holy Grail right
what is like
the one supplement that I need to take
to get rid of these migraines right
so spoiler alert okay
there isn't just one miracle migraine supplement
I wish there were
I wish that I had found the secret herb from the Amazon
that no one else knows about
that would make you know
magically take your migraine
migraines away
I really wish I were the one that had found that okay
because then I would just be kicking back and
and so on but that's we're never gonna find it okay
so here we go
here's an advertisement for the next miracle
migraine supplement okay
so I was like alright let me check this out
so I went on the website and first of all
I was blown away by the cost okay
so this is like
it's like a little powder that you would put in water
like this is kind of popular right now
we're kind of in the era of like element and liquid
and like a lot of things are now being packaged
instead of in capsules they're being packaged
the little powder packs that you put in your water
we're in that era now
so this is like right on trend right
it's in these little packs
and you put it in your water and you take one a day
so I mean
it was over $100 for 30 of these little I was like
holy cow is this expensive
you know
you thought element was expensive or liquid IV right
so in any case so there it's that's how it's packaged
the price point was quite high
and so I was like alright
what what's in this thing right
do we have like gold powder in here
like what do they have in here
so there's a lot of multivitamins and and minerals
in the powder so from that perspective
the vitamins and minerals
in the product
are very similar to what you would take in
like a multivitamin I would say
the amounts
are right in line with what you would get in it
like a multivitamin so
there really wasn't anything
that was sort of like a
cutting edge or standing out type
if you were to get like a
a Thorn multivitamin or something like that
it would be very equivalent to what they have in here
but the so
there were two things that they were really touting
as sort of like the breakthrough okay
and so those two things one of which were were ketones
okay so there were ketones in the product
and then there was a sugar called ribose
in the product OK
so you've probably heard of ketones because the
the keto diet OK
is very popular in the migraine community
a lot of migraine suffers are told to eat a ketogenic
diet okay
so many of you have probably heard about ketones
and then ribose is a sugar okay
so glucose is the main sugar in the plants we eat
but then there's also ribose sugar okay
so it's a little bit different molecular
structure than glucose
glucose has six carbons and ribose has five carbons
so those are the two unique
things that are in the product
so the website had
like a little write up as to why they put these things
in the product okay
so the website made the claim that our brain prefers
to use ketones or ketone bodies as its fuel
and I was really surprised to see this
because that's false
our brain prefers to use glucose as its primary
you would you could call it a fuel
but technically
glucose is like a nutrient that your cells use
every cell in your body
uses glucose to generate cellular energy okay
in a multiple step biochemical process
uses glucose to do that so your brain is no exception
your brain prefers to use glucose
it doesn't prefer to use ketones or ketone bodies
it can if there's an emergency
so when we are when we fast and you know
in the past
we humans would have been fasting pretty frequently
because if there's no food
you're gonna be fasting right
so if you're in a famine if food is scarce right
you know around the world even today
you know
millions of people don't have access to you know
consistent
three times a day food like we do in America so
you know fasting going without food famine
starvation I mean
this is something that we had to be prepared for
and so if we go without eating
if we fast we're going to go into a state of ketosis
okay so
this is a different type of metabolism
that our body shifts into
and it'll start to burn our fat stores
and when it sort of burns the fat
it liberates what are called ketone bodies or ketones
and your brain can use that as a fuel source
if there's an emergency okay
so this is so that we just don't drop dead
if there's no food to eat
but it's not the preferred fuel
I mean this is very well known
so I I was really surprised that the website said this
and when the when those ketones are present right
that's signaling to the body that there's like
we're in a problem situation
we're
we're in a famine or we're not in a normal situation
okay so this is a hypothesis that I have
I wouldn't say that this is
you know you know
quote unquote settled science
but you know
we have to start thinking about how our body you know
this is a our body is a very complex system
and so if we start introducing
you know if there's a lot of bodies in our bloodstream
wouldn't our body
think that we're in an emergency situation
that we're in a stressful situation
and then start adapting other things to
to that so that we can survive the famine
or survive the stressful situation
with a ketogenic diet in the 80s
it was called the Atkins diet
named after Doctor Atkins who developed the approach
and he recommended it for diabetics
but really the ketogenic diet
or the keto diet is really just the Atkins diet
with a rebranding of the name
so again in the migraine community
many people have been recommended to eat this way
you severely limit the plant intake
so plants are very glucose rich foods
all plants contain glucose
so you limit the amount of plants that you eat
and then you're going to limit the amount of glucose
that you're eating
and that's gonna flip your body into this famine state
your body it doesn't have enough glucose to function
and so it's gonna start burning your fat
and liberating these ketone bodies
and then your your cells
are gonna start using those ketone bodies for fuel okay
if you're diabetic
if you wanna get your blood sugar down quick
stop eating glucose it's it's pretty simple
and so he Doctor Atkins
developed that way of eating
specifically for diabetics
and if people want to burn through a lot of their fat
and you know
quickly reduce their body fat
the keto diet can be a way of doing that
it may or may not work very well for people
because
if your body is hanging on to that fat for a reason
even doing a ketogenic diet
you might not get sort of miraculous results from it
now because this way of eating has been around now
for decades there's been a lot of
studies on the long term effects of ketogenic diet
and um particularly for women
it's been shown that this is really not the best
long term way of eating because it
can severely disrupt our hormones
not just our sex hormones
but our adrenal hormones
when the body is in a state of ketosis
it's indicating that we are basically like in a famine
so if you're eating this way
you may be eating enough calories
but because you've severely limited your glucose intake
your body is going to think that it's in a
in a famine and so
then
it's going to increase the production of your stress
hormones your adrenaline
and your cortisol that your adrenals make
and particularly for women
if you keep on this for long term
you can burn out your adrenals
your adrenals are not you know
like we're not supposed to be in a constant
state of emergency we're supposed to have an emergency
and then hopefully
the emergency passes and things get back to normal
but if you're eating a ketogenic diet
for months and months
and your body thinks for months and months
we're in like a severe famine
you know crisis situation
and it keeps pumping that adrenaline and cortisol out
you can really deplete your adrenal glands
and then you've got all this excess cortisol
and adrenaline
it can impact the production of sex hormones
so they have done studies on this
and they have found that women are more prone to these
sort of you know
negative aspects than this
than men which really makes sense because we women
right we are supposed to have more body fat
and in a famine right it's the top priority for women
to get the most food to survive right
because we are going to carry on the species
you have to maintain the population of women
in order to you know
survive some sort of life threatening situation okay
one man
you know can impregnate many women but there you know
women are sort of the limiting
factor for population growth right
because we have you know usually one baby at a time
and it takes nine months to produce one right
so you have to keep the women alive
so it would make sense that in a famine
we would have evolved or been designed to you know okay
we're gonna give the women and the children
the food first etcetera
so our body is really not designed to
to withstand that type of long famine or fasting
so this is my hypothesis
I wouldn't say that this is again settled science
but what can we extrapolate you know
just from just logically from things
so in any case
a lot of migraine sufferers have been told
the only way out of your migraines
is to go into ketosis
eat a ketogenic diet and for the rest of your life
you're never gonna be able to have a cookie
or a piece of birthday cake or
you know a a soda pop at a ball game No. 1
it's not necessary okay
I eat like a regular well rounded diet
and I don't get migraines anymore
so it's totally not necessary
and then No. 2 who can actually do that
I mean a certain
percentage of the population can be that disciplined
and that like sacrificing
but most of us we're gonna wanna have a cookie
or a piece of birthday cake at some point in our life
right
so it's just not it's really not realistic and it's
it's it's not necessary right
so in any case ketone bodies
or ketones are not the preferred fuel for the brain
glucose is our brain can use ketone bodies
if there's an emergency as its initial nutrient
that it uses to generate cellular energy
but it would prefer to use glucose OK
so I was a little shocked to see that on the website
I don't understand why they would say that OK
this this is very settled biochemistry
and just inexplicable to me
you know there are health conditions like if
if people have brain cancer
if they have severe epilepsy
there are studies that show that they
those people will do much better
as far as cancer remission
as far as epilepsy and frequency of epileptic attacks
that if they do go into a state of ketosis permanently
or for a very long period of time
but you know migraines are not brain cancer
thank god migraines are not epilepsy
thank God we don't have to go to those extremes
trust me to get rid of our migraines okay
so that's what I would say about the
ketones that are in this product
women with weekly migraines
if you're having eight or more migraine days a month
I'll show you how to drop them to near zero in 90 days
without adding more medication
or I work with you until you do
my client Katie
is a 35 year old wife and mother of two
who was struggling with severe migraines
that affected every aspect of her life work
home and social she had tried it all
every drug and natural therapy out there
none of it helped and she was only getting worse
in the beginning she was skeptical
but she trusted and followed the 12 week plan
and got incredible results
she said she finally feels like her normal self again
after suffering with migraines for over a decade
she has never felt more alive
because she can finally be the mom
she always knew she could be
I have worked with women just like Katie
from all across the United States
overcome migraines naturally
if you are serious about healing your migraines
naturally then tap the link in the description
and book a free console call
we do cap new clients monthly
so if the calendar is full
the doors are closed for now
so don't wait to reclaim the life you deserve to live
there is healing available for you
I look forward to chatting
click the link now to schedule your call
and then the second sort of more unique
thing in this product was the ribose sugar
so ribose is also a nutrient
that is used in this biochemical process
to make cellular energy so to make this ATP molecule
the body takes glucose
and it converts it to ribose sugar
that's one of the multiple steps in the process okay
so what the product is claiming is that if you consume
the ribose you're sort of doing like a shortcut right
so you're you're you you don't need the glucose
you can just supplement the ribose
and then you're sort of you're not
you don't have to go through so many steps to make the
cellular energy that would be sort of
like the rational for including the ribose
in the product okay
so couple things on this so No. 1
we can get ribose sugar in the foods we eat
is particularly prominent in animal foods
so we could get we
we can consume ribose in the food that we eat
but we can make ribose so again
we don't want a body that requires you know
hundred and twenty nine dollar a month supplements okay
we like this is like basic biochemistry
that every cell in the body
this is like kindergarten level for the cell okay
like this is not complex stuff
this isn't like
you know advanced calculus advanced cellular calculus
this is like cellular kindergarten
converting glucose to ribose okay
the body should be able to do what
it is supposed to do without supplementation okay
sometimes we need a little supplementation
right
to just overcome a deficiency or something like that
I'm not saying that there's never a time or a place
for a nutrient supplement
but like a lot of the nutrients
and nutrient supplements right now
our body is supposed to make so again
if our body is struggling to make something
and we can take a little nutrient supplement for that
great thank god we have it
we can kind of fill in the gap
but we want to encourage our body
to be able to do the functions
that it is supposed to do right
so a lot of times with these types of supplements
where we're supplementing
something that the body is supposed to do
or make we're actually handicapping the body
so I'm going to use a very common example
within the natural medicine space
which is supplemental hydrochloric acid okay
so you're probably aware
our stomach makes hydrochloric acid
and we need hydrochloric acid in the stomach
to start the digestive process in the stomach
and properly break the food down and prepare the food
so that when the food goes into the small intestine
it's properly broken down and then the enzymes will
the pancreatic enzymes
will come into the small intestine
and the food is ready to be broken down by enzymes
so first I mean
if you want to get technical
at first the food starts getting
broken down by the saliva in our mouth
and then we've got the stomach acid
that we've got to have
enough stomach acid to really prepare the food
so that when it goes in the small intestine
those pancreatic enzymes they have the right kind of
you know prepared food to work well okay
so most people are aware of this
so within the natural medicine industry
a lot of times we will identify based on symptoms
sometimes based on testing
that there's low hydrochloric acid production
in the stomach okay
and this is actually something that I run across
pretty frequently with my clientele
I could tell based on their symptoms
that they don't have enough hydrochloric acid
production in their stomach
has gotten a little you know
a little sluggish little behind
it's just not able to make enough hydrochloric acid
to properly prepare the food
so most natural medicine practitioners
when they see this symptom picture
and they kind of pick up that pattern
they pick up that signal looks like
we've got a
hydrochloric acid deficiency issue going on here
most natural medicine practitioners
are going to supplement hydrochloric acid
you can buy
like tablets that have hydrochloric acid in them
and you can take them
and then that goes into your stomach
and it boosts up
the amount of hydrochloric acid in your stomach
so that is considered a
solution by a lot of natural medicine practitioners
but I don't call that a solution
I call that a natural band aid
because your stomach should make enough acid right
so what I do is I use typically
herbs
that encourage your stomach to make more stomach acid
so that your stomach is getting that signal
make more acid make more acid
I'm also looking at are there any habits
do you have some like habits during meal time
that would interfere with that
hydrochloric acid production again
like let's really look at like
why isn't this being produced
and also your stomach
has to have the nutrients
that it needs to actually make the hydrochloric acid
so many times the
the root of it is just a nutrient deficiency that has
that is preventing the stomach
from actually making the hydrochloric acid
so
we need to maybe introduce a little bit more nutrient
rich food or just
the overall state of the digestive function is poor
and it's
there's a nutrient deficiency just because of that
so as we work on the whole digestive tract
and getting everything up and running
and then the stomach is gonna get more nutrients to it
from the food that you're eating
and then it just starts making more acid right
the things start working properly
with that type of approach
if you're just going to give a capsule of stomach acid
and call it a day
we're not actually correcting the problem and in fact
you can promote what I call lazy stomach right
cause your stomach is like
well if you're just gonna
give me a capsule of hydrochloric acid
why should I make this right
so in the natural medicine industry
a lot of a lot of supplements do this
they generate a lazy organ
because instead of like
really getting to the root of why the organ
isn't functioning properly
isn't really pulling its weight
isn't making all the stuff
or doing all the things it's supposed to do
they just give a supplement
that kind of replaces the organ function
this would be the same with pancreatic enzymes
you can take capsules of pancreatic enzymes well
shouldn't my pancreas make the enzymes
like
what's preventing my pancreas from making the enzymes
so again if
there's a temporary reason to use something like this
that's fine but this is not a long term solution
this is like a little natural Band Aid
or a little Natural Bridge
but you know a bridge is great
as long as we're actually going to cross the river
and get to the other side
and get to the destination
we don't wanna
stay on a bridge for the rest of our life
we wanna get over to the other side right
so a lot of supplements
these days are using this type of approach where
you know instead of like
why isn't your you know let's
let's go with their hypothesis
that your brain is somehow
you know not making enough ATP from the glucose
or they think from the ketone bodies
which again
your cells can make energy from ketone bodies
but it's not ideal but you know
with their hypothesis well
your brain isn't making enough ATP cellular energy
so let's give you these nutrients so that your
you know we can take some shortcuts here
and that should help things well
it's like
why wouldn't my brain be able to take the glucose
and turn it into ribose and then
continue the rest of the biochemical reactions
to ultimately make the ATP
that's really what we should be thinking about okay
so I hope this helps I'm
I hope this like helps you break down some of the like
erroneous thinking
within the natural medicine industry okay
a lot of people find me
and they think I'm gonna be like
you know
really critical of the pharmaceutical industry
you know certainly everyone knows that just you know
medicating your way through this is not
treating the root cause everybody knows that
they're just taking medications because they're
they're desperate to not
be in bed all day with a migraine
and they're just you know
feeling like they're stuck by
between a rock and a hard place
I think everybody realizes that that
but so then they're looking for
you know the root cause solution
and they think they're gonna find that in a natural
supplement okay
and this is where people are being you know
they're kind of being let astray a little bit
the natural medicine
industry in general doesn't really think through
they say they're getting to the root cause
but they're not really getting to root cause solutions
and I'm in the natural medicine industry
so I think I should be more critical
of my industry than another industry okay
so so
I hope this kind of gives you a little insight
into how to think through these things
the final comment that I'll make is
if we're taking like a yeah
this is basically
like a vitamin powder that you put in your water for
you know $4 a day okay
so let me ask you like why
why couldn't you just eat food and get those nutrients
if someone is so nutrient deficient
that they have to put their nutrients
in a glass of water you know
from a little powder they're not
breaking their food down and getting their food out of
their nutrients okay
or
they're not getting their nutrients out of their food
so we should be able to eat food
a wide variety of food not just
you know migraine food
special migraine diets
we should be able to eat a wide variety of food
and then we should have good enough digestive function
that we can break the food down and get the nutrients
out of the food
and then we have to be able to get those nutrients
into the blood and circulated to the cells okay
this is a high level overview of what I
call the first principle to restoring your health
and stop getting migraines
so we should be able to do all of this
just with the food that we eat
so if we need supplemental nutrients okay
that's because our digestion is not functioning well
and we can't break our food down
and get the nutrients out of our food
so if you take supplemental nutrients
are you gonna be able to get those nutrients
into your body
you gotta get it through your digestive track okay
our digestive track is designed to get nutrients
out of food
it's not designed to get nutrients isolated
synthetic nutrients
it's designed to deal with actual living food
with vital nutrients in the food
that's what it's designed to work with
not these synthetic concentrated
isolated nutrients and
you can't put all of the nutrients that are in foods
in a powder or a capsule
there's thousands of nutrients in the food that we eat
you can't put that in a gummy in a little powder
in a capsule there's no way you can replace that okay
it's it's a drop in the bucket
if you're gonna take a nutrient you know
multivitamin these little nutrient powders
that you put in your water
that's a drop in the bucket I mean
maybe there were 30 nutrients in this product
you're you're eating thousands of nutrients every day
and again are you going to absorb any of this
are you gonna get any of this into your body
if you can't get the nutrients from your food
into your body
you're not gonna get it in through a powder
or a capsule or a gummy I guarantee you
so I hope this helps
I hope this gives you a little bit of
understanding of how to think
think this through and start to think about
you know how is how is our body supposed to function
what environment is our body designed to function well
in how does this complex system all tie together
etcetera so
let me know in the comments
if you've ever tried
some of these miracle migraine supplements
and what your experience has been
I'll talk to you guys soon have a great