Health & Fitness

Judy Mikovits, Ph.D. is a cellular and molecular biologist,¹ researcher and founding research director of the Whittemore Peterson Institute that researches and treats chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) in Reno, Nevada.

She is likely one of the most qualified scientists in the world to comment on this disease because of her groundbreaking research in molecular biology and virology. Mikovits is absolutely brilliant but, like many gifted researchers, her complex discussions on science are quite challenging for the average lay person to follow.

For this reason, I present her interview in a different format, cutting and splicing pieces together to present a more cohesive and coherent presentation of her many important points. I would encourage you to watch the initial, very short, videos first, so you will be well-grounded, and if you are motivated, watch the entire interview at the bottom of this article.

Because there were so many surprising and important revelations in this interview I will present part 2 next week along with an interview with Bobby Kennedy Jr. which will revolve more on the vaccine issue.

Mikovits Doesn't Believe SARS-CoV-2 Is the Cause of COVID-19

One of the most shocking revelations Mikovits reveals is that she doesn't believe SARS-CoV-2 is the cause of COVID-19 but merely serves to activate or wake up a dormant XMRV infection. To support her assertion, she states that COVID-19 patients have the same cytokine signature as the gammaretrovirus XMRV, which she published many years ago.

XMRV stands for "xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus." Xenotropic refers to viruses that only replicate in cells other than those of the host species. So, XMRVs are viruses that infect human cells yet are not human viruses.²

The XMRV retrovirus is actually the virus that has the same cytokine storm signature as COVID-19, not coronaviruses, which are far more benign. (I delve into what retroviruses are in another section further below.)

Additionally, there may be other infections that also are contributing to the infection, such as Borrelia and Babesia or parasites, which may be why some of the antiparasite drugs like Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine are working.

Vaccine Gammaretroviruses Have Adapted and Are Aerosolized

Getting back to the issue of gammaretroviruses, Mikovits' research showed that many of our vaccines are contaminated with them. How did this happen? In short, vaccine viruses were replicated and grown in animal cell cultures that were already contaminated with retroviruses. In other words, the root of the problem stems from the use of contaminated cell culture lines.

Vaccine manufacturing frequently involves the use of animal tissues and many vaccines are grown in animal culture cell lines. As noted in the 2010 paper, "Of Mice and Men: On the Origin of XMRV," published in Frontiers in Microbiology (which Mikovits did not work on):³

"The novel human retrovirus xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV) is arguably the most controversial virus of this moment. After its original discovery in prostate cancer tissue from North American patients, it was subsequently detected in individuals with chronic fatigue syndrome from the same continent …

The detection of integrated XMRV proviruses in prostate cancer tissue proves it to be a genuine virus that replicates in human cells, leaving the question: how did XMRV enter the human population?

We will discuss two possible routes: either via direct virus transmission from mouse to human … or via the use of mouse-related products by humans, including vaccines. We hypothesize that mouse cells or human cell lines used for vaccine production could have been contaminated with a replicating variant of the XMRV precursors encoded by the mouse genome."

Mikovits goes even further, explaining that, "It became clear in 2011 that these [gammaretro]viruses had adapted to become aerosolized." This is a rather shocking finding, and this, Mikovits says, is what allows the gammaretroviruses to spread in laboratories from one cell line to another.

This could be related to research catalyzed by Charles Lieber, the former head of Harvard's chemistry department, who is a nanoscience expert and was arrested by federal authorities in January 2020 for working with the Wuhan Virology Institute.

Lab workers may also be inadvertently spreading them as they are using cell lines contaminated with retroviruses in vaccine production that could result in the spread of these retroviruses via the finished vaccine. Mikovits suspects COVID-19 may in fact be a type of vaccine-derived or vaccine-induced retroviral infection.

"I don't believe [COVID-19] is infection from without," she says. "I believe the spread across [210] countries⁴ is from injection, and there's enough evidence to support that."

SARS-CoV-2 — A Combination of SARS, Gammaretroviruses and HIV

Another of her theories is that SARS-CoV-2 is unlikely to have had a zoonotic origin but is likely synthetically produced. She believes it originated in and escaped or leaked from a biosafety laboratory. Mikovits believes both scenarios might be at play, where a lab-created virus, SARS-CoV-2, is causing serious infection and/or death only in those who have underlying retroviruses in their bodies.

Mikovits suspects that people who do not have retroviral infections, SARS-CoV-2 causes no or only mild symptoms. Another possibility is that the SARS-CoV-2 virus is the result of growing coronaviruses in retrovirus-contaminated cell lines, producing a gammaretrovirus-carrying virus.

According to Mikovits, her 2009 through 2011 work suggested 25 million to 30 million Americans were carriers of XMRVs and other gammaretroviruses. That estimate is over a decade old now so the number is likely far higher.

"There is a family of gammaretroviruses, most likely [in] contaminated blood supply and vaccines that are still to this day, almost 10 years later, being injected," she says.

"We don't need an infectious virus if you inject the blueprint, if you inject the provirus. And … there are a lot of data to support COVID-19 is not SARS-CoV-2 alone, that it's SARS-CoV-2 and XMRVs (human gammaretroviruses) and HIV."

Might Wearing a Mask Worsen Your Odds of Illness?

Mikovits is also highly critical of the recommendation (and in some places mandate) to wear a face mask or fabric cover such as a bandana around your face. She believes:

"Wearing a mask is going to cause more secretions and give more cells a home and amplify any viruses. [Wearing a mask is] immune suppressive; it's going to limit your body's ability to produce Type 1 interferon.

You're driving the infection in yourself and you're not preventing the spread. [Instead], you're amplifying [replication of] not just [SARS-CoV-2] but also many other [viruses], including your XMRVs, influenza or other dormant viruses.

What keeps those dormant viruses dormant? Your natural killer (NK) cells, your mast cells, your macrophages. That's where you're getting the inflammatory signature.

So, every virus you amplify is driving the inflammatory signature, and you're going to get sick. [The resulting illness] doesn't have to be SARS-CoV-2 at all. You're making yourself sick [by bringing dormant viruses out of dormancy]. It's insanity."

Wearing a face mask after getting a live flu vaccine may further worsen your odds, she says. Why? Because you're injecting three or more live flu virus strains into your body, which lowers your immune function. You're also going to shed the viruses contained in the vaccine. If you wear a mask, Mikovits says, you'll shed those viruses into the mask, which could encourage illness.

On the other hand, not wearing one might jeopardize the health of others. "If you're shedding [the viruses] into the air, you're going to make somebody else get another upper respiratory infection that's going to allow [SARS-CoV-2] to make them sicker," she warns.

Why PCR Testing Is a Bad Idea

We're also being lied to about the prevalence of infection. At the height of the pandemic, we saw inflated case numbers for the simple reason that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped requiring doctors to do testing in order to confirm that a patient is in fact infected with SARS-CoV-2 or died from COVID-19. The numbers now include "suspected" and "assumed" cases.

Naturally, without widespread and accurate testing, there's no way to get a clear idea of how prevalent the infection is, and how many actually get sick and die from it. The initial emphasis on PCR testing resulted in massive false positives and greatly inflated numbers of those infected.

As noted by Mikovits, confirming each case through testing matters greatly, as there are hundreds, if not thousands, of microbes that can cause upper respiratory infections, including seasonal influenza viruses. None of those should be lumped in with COVID-19 if we want to understand the true nature and danger of this disease.

What's more, the initial decision to use RT-PCR (reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction) testing instead of antibody testing was an unwise one, as it virtually guaranteed an overestimation of the problem. RT-PCR is now being used to diagnose an active infection by detecting the presence of SARS-CoV-2 genetic material.⁵ However, by doing that, you end up with high rates of false positives. Mikovits explains how the RT-PCR test works:

"We're taking a swab and scraping some epithelial cells [from the back of the sinuses or throat] because that's what coronaviruses infect … We get a little RNA — because it's an RNA virus — we reverse-transcribe that, meaning write it backwards with enzymes in the lab, and then we amplify it [through a] polymerase chain reaction …

We're only taking a piece of the virus, we're not taking the whole virus … The first thing about [the PCR] test is, it was admitted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the CDC that the tests put out by the CDC were contaminated.

And when you amplify something a million times, or 10 million times — whatever they do in the 30 cycles or so — it's logarithmic that RNA then is way overestimated … [But] no [viral] particle was identified or isolated from your saliva or from your nasal passages. Nobody took the secretions from your nose or your mouth and isolated the [actual] viruses.

[When I isolated] HIV in 1983, I isolated it from saliva. What you do is you take the virus and grow it in any human cell, in an appropriate cell line, and you make many copies. [Viral replication] means you have [a positive test for] that virus. Then you sequence the whole virus.

A PCR [test, on the other hand] can give you a lot of false positives [by amplifying RNA fragments].

We [also] showed the people that had [HIV] infection had antibodies; that they had been fully exposed and it was not a piece of nucleic acid in a biopsy or in their throat or in their nose. [A piece of nucleic acid] is not a virus. And it's certainly not infectious.

If RNA is there and in the tiniest amount, I'm not going to cough it on somebody, especially if I'm not coughing. I'm not going to breathe that [out and infect] somebody because there's no evidence of an infectious virus."

Better Testing Strategy: Antibodies

Rather than using PCR testing, "what should have been done is test for antibodies," Mikovits says. This is what was done in South Korea. An antibody test will tell you whether you had the infection at some point, and have developed a strong immune response or immunological memory that will allow you to fight the infection should you encounter it again.

"Epidemiology is not done with PCR. In fact, Kary Mullis who invented PCR, Nobel Laureate, and others, said PCR was never intended for diagnostic testing. So that puts that to bed.

It takes nothing to develop a really good serology [i.e., antibody] test … [It takes] a few weeks. It's pretty easy because the people who have recovered have antibodies. So, you isolate those antibodies, you take their plasma, you purify the antibodies, and then you can grow them.

Then you develop the tests... It's usually ELISA or Western Blot [which check for] the protein and the antibody binds. You form an immune complex, and you detect it with a dye. You can do that test with a finger stick … and it takes 15 minutes to get the answer, almost like a pregnancy test."

My belief is that the use of PCR instead of a proper antibody test was intentional, as it inflates the case numbers. Mikovits agrees, saying "I wouldn't get any tests right now. I'd simply wash my hands and drink hot lemon water as I always do for any flu season."

Evidence SARS-CoV-2 May Be a Lab-Created Virus

In the Epoch Times documentary, "Tracking Down the Origin of the Wuhan Coronavirus,"⁶ Mikovits details some of the evidence supporting the view that SARS-CoV-2 is not a naturally-evolved virus, but rather a laboratory concoction.

One piece of evidence is that the virus contains a protein envelope from the HIV virus. It's also very similar to SARS which, according to bioweapons expert Francis Boyle, is an engineered bioweapon.

As explained by Mikovits, an Indian paper^7,8 detailed the presence of Gp120, a protein envelope from the HIV virus. That paper was quickly retracted due to political pressure. However, Mikovits colleague, Luc Montagnier, made a similar discovery, finding Gp41 in the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which is the transmembrane domain of the HIV virus.

"The folks from India also had GAG. That's structural proteins. That gives you a clue that it wasn't a CRISPR technique or a pseudotyping where the envelope was expressed in a gene therapy-type of way. If it were CRISPR, you wouldn't put the GAG sequences in there.

What was done is, the virus was acquired as they grew SARS-CoV-2 in Vero-E6 cells — the monkey kidney cells where you get HIV.

Simian immune deficiency virus was the origin, and we were told all the way back in the 80s that somebody forgot to cook their food in Africa and a few promiscuous men spread this [HIV] virus around the world. So, you can see again the patterns of the lies and of what people end up believing."

The addition of this envelope protein from HIV gives SARS-CoV-2 the ability to impair the immune system. It also contributes to its pathogenicity. Mikovits continues her explanation:

"The first thing is, you must grow a virus to make a lot of it. So, you grow it in cell lines. They didn't take [SARS-CoV-2] from the bat and it jumped into a human. It normally goes through another cell [from] a monkey or a smaller animal. The cell line that supports the growth and expansion [of viruses] are monkey kidney cells.

Maybe [SARS-CoV-2] is not engineered at all … but the end result is, now it not only infects the epithelial cells of the lungs, it infects the white blood cells, it infects the immune cells. We see the splenomegaly in large spleens, we're seeing penias, cytopenias. We're losing cells like HIV-killing T-cells …

So, it's got not only an expanded host range, but also disease symptoms that make no sense for a coronavirus.

Hence, we're killing people because they're treating an upper respiratory infection, and you're getting that inflammatory disease signature because you're infecting the very innate immune response, the macrophages, the monocytes, the natural killer cells, the T cells. And it's primarily the T-cells in the macrophages because those are the cells HIV 120 and Gp41 infect through CCR5 in the CD4 receptor.

So now you're going to lose your adaptive immune response, you're going to drive the inflammation. And it's the fire [of inflammation] that does the tissue damage."

Another piece that hints at SARS-CoV-2 being a manufactured virus is the construction of its spike proteins, which bind to ACE2 receptors to gain access into the cell. This appears to be an engineering feature. According to Mikovits, it's quite clear that the spike proteins came from the original SARS virus, which also infects through ACE receptors.

There are also "single point mutations there that make it far more infectious, easier to spread," she says, "and how those were acquired, nobody really can say." At least not yet. Nanotechnology may also have been used to aerosolize it for ease of transmission.

"The nano[size] further increases the host range. So now you can go into every cell. Now you can go across the blood brain barrier. That's nano. Now you don't need a receptor. You can breathe it, it can go into every cell of the body. You don't need the gatekeeper. You don't need the receptor. You don't need the lock and key."

Contaminated Cell Line Shared With Wuhan Biolab

According to Mikovits, one contaminated cell line is the Vero monkey kidney cell line called Vero E6, which was given by Fort Detrick — a U.S. Army Medical Command installation that hosts many of our national biological defense programs and houses the National Cancer Institute laboratory where she used to work — to the biosafety 4 laboratory (BSL-4) in Wuhan, China. This cell line is what the Wuhan lab used to grow and study coronaviruses, she says.

The Vero cell line is listed in the 2015 paper,⁹ "A SARS-like Cluster of Circulating Bat Coronaviruses Shows Potential for Human Emergence," co-written by University of North Carolina researchers and Dr. Shi Zhengli, a Chinese virologist at the Wuhan lab who in 2010 published a paper¹⁰ discussing the weaponization of the SARS virus.

The contaminated Vero monkey kidney cells were also used in the production of polio vaccines, Mikovits notes. The original polio vaccines were passed through mice brains, as we didn't have cell lines in the 1930s when that vaccine was originally developed. According to Mikovits, the spread of this Vero retrovirus has occurred through laboratory workers and hospital caretakers for decades.

"That's why the family studies we did were so important," she says, referring to studies in which retroviral transmission was tracked to determine how it spread between family members.¹¹

Alas, whenever patterns were detected, she was always directed to cover them up. Her refusal to hide the information from the public was what led to her firing in 2011. According to Mikovits, we're seeing the same pattern of sweeping evidence under the rug now during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"The patterns are the same as far as the science goes, and the patterns are the same as far as the political corruption, the plague of corruption, in covering up data," she says.

Mikovits Pioneering Research in XMRV

In 2009, Mikovits got embroiled in controversy when she wrote a paper reporting that a retrovirus known as xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus may play a causal role in CFS and other diseases, including autism.

Her career background and past troubles also involved Fauci who, according to Mikovits, is guilty of scientific fraud. She details this in her book, "Plague of Corruption: Restoring Faith in the Promise of Science."

According to Mikovits, Fauci does not appear to have changed his stripes, and is still misleading the public and hiding the truth about SARS-CoV-2, just like he did with the HIV virus and retroviral-associated diseases.

"I think the way to think about the background of what's going on right now is to go back to my first interactions with Dr. Tony Fauci when I was a 25-year-old lab technician in the National Cancer Institute. At that time, we had isolated — from blood and saliva — the lymphadenopathy virus.

[Lymphadenopathy-associated virus (LAV)] was the name given to it by Luc Montagnier, the Nobel Laureate, [who] first isolated and discovered that virus and its association with HIV/AIDS.¹²

In that situation, Fauci delayed the serology testing [to find out] who was exposed [to HIV]. It was politicized such that the only people that were [said to be] susceptible to getting infected with HIV was gay men [and] IV drug users.

The country was told not to worry about it. It was only spread through blood and body fluids and shouldn't be a problem for most other people. So, the testing that could have been done wasn't done because of political reasons, and the treatments weren't done because Fauci had patents, and — we didn't know this at the time — the wrong type of treatment was used. That led to the spread and [death] of millions worldwide …"

The Discovery of Human Gammaretroviruses

Ultimately, Mikovits and her colleagues discovered that the HIV virus was spread through a contaminated blood supply. After that, they proceeded to look into other "clearly retroviral-associated diseases," such as CFS,¹³ certain kinds of autism, cancers, leukemias and lymphomas.

Gammaretroviruses¹⁴ are viruses that can cause cancer, leukemia and immune deficiencies in various animals. Examples include murine leukemia virus, feline leukemia virus and mink focus forming virus. As explained in a 2011 paper on gamma retroviruses:¹⁵

"Retroviruses are evolutionary optimized gene carriers that have naturally adapted to their hosts to efficiently deliver their nucleic acids into the target cell chromatin, thereby overcoming natural cellular barriers …

Retroviral vectors are fascinating and efficient delivery tools for the transfer of nucleic acids. As a hallmark, all retroviruses are capable of reverse transcribing their single stranded RNA genome into double stranded DNA, which will be stably integrated into the host cell genome.

As highly evolved parasites they act in concert with cellular host factors to deliver their nucleic acid into the nucleus, where they exploit the host cell's machinery for their own replication and long-term expression occurs."

The key take-home here is that retroviruses are "integrated into the host cell genome," and infection can result in "long-term expression." In other words, once they're in your body, they can remain dormant, only to reactivate when conditions are favorable. In this regard, they're quite different from your average virus that, when you're exposed, invades your cells, replicates and causes symptoms, and is eventually eliminated from your body through your immune response.

In 2009, Mikovits and her team discovered and isolated the first human gammaretrovirus family of retroviruses, known then as XMRVs. As mentioned earlier, XMRV stands for "xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus." Xenotropic refers to viruses that only replicate in cells other than those of the host species. So, XMRVs are viruses that infect human cells yet are not human viruses.¹⁶

My Entire Interview With Judy Mikovits

To reiterate some of the key take-home messages Mikovits delivers in this interview:

Last but not least, if this topic intrigues you, be sure to pick up a copy of her new book, "Plague of Corruption: Restoring Faith in the Promise of Science." You can also find more information on her website, plaguethebook.com.

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Migraine affects an estimated 1 billion people worldwide, and is the third most common disease globally.¹ In the U.S., self-reported migraine and severe headache affects 1 in 6² Women are up to three times more likely to suffer with migraines than men, likely due to hormone fluctuations.³

Despite its high prevalence, decades of research have failed to pin down the exact mechanisms behind the attacks — most of which tend to recur once or twice a month.⁴ The pain, which often occurs on one side of the head only, can be moderate to severe in intensity.

Along with throbbing, piercing or "burning" pain, other common symptoms include nausea, visual disturbances, dizziness, numbness in your extremities or face, and extreme sensitivity to light, sound, smell and touch.⁵ Attacks typically last from four hours to three days,⁶ often requiring bed rest in complete darkness and silence.

Reigning Migraine Hypotheses

While the exact mechanisms remain unclear, a number of different hypotheses have been raised. Over the last decade or two, researchers have started leaning toward migraine being a disorder of your central nervous system, most likely originating in your brain stem.^7,8,9,10 While most brain regions do not register or transmit pain signals, the trigeminal nerve network does.

Pain is relayed through the trigeminal network to an area in your brain stem called the trigeminal nucleus. From there, it is conveyed to the sensory cortex in your brain that is involved in awareness of pain and other senses. As explained by Migrainedisorders.com:¹¹

"[P]eople with migraine illness have a nervous system that is not working normally. It overreacts … when stimulated, there is an unusual wave of brain activity that leads to a headache.

Almost all migraine sufferers have a problem with a specific part of the nervous system, called the trigeminal nerve. The trigeminal nerve is a network of wiring that attaches to special sensors.

When stimulated, they send electrical signals to the brainstem with connections to nerves of the cortex and its covering, the dura. Normally this system allows us know what is going on in the world. When the system does not work properly, electrical signals set off a slowly moving wave of electrochemical activity across the surface of the brain.

People with migraine start to experience odd sensations, such as white sparks in an eye (a misfiring of the ocular nerve) followed by an intense pain in some part of the head and concluding with a long period of nausea (activation of the gastrointestinal system) and exhaustion (general inflammation and swelling of the cortex)."

The initial activation of your trigeminal nerve is thought to be triggered by a variety of internal and external stimuli, ranging from stress, hormone fluctuations and irregular sleep to a variety of foods, flashing lights, noise and weather changes.¹²

Still, migraines can sometimes occur even in the absence of an apparent trigger, suggesting we still don't have a complete picture of the phenomenon. Mitochondrial dysfunction also appears to be part of the puzzle. As noted in one 2013 paper:¹³

"Abnormal [mitochondrial] function translates into high intracellular penetration of Ca(2+), excessive production of free radicals, and deficient oxidative phosphorylation, which ultimately causes energy failure in neurons and astrocytes, thus triggering migraine mechanisms."

The influence of neurotransmitters such as calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP)^14,15 may also play a role, as may nutritional deficiencies. At the very least, studies have identified nutritional deficiencies that significantly raise your risk of migraines. Among them is riboflavin (vitamin B2).

Riboflavin Deficiency Linked to Migraine

A paper,¹⁶ published in Frontiers in Neurology in 2017 looked at riboflavin's influence on migraine and Parkinson's disease, highlighting its neuroprotective potential.

According to this paper, "riboflavin ameliorates oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, neuroinflammation and glutamate excitotoxicity; all of which take part in the pathogenesis of PD, migraine headache and other neurological disorders."

Here, the authors link migraine pain to neurovascular dysfunction, inflammation and "dysfunction in cranial vascular contractility," and cite research showing people who have migraine with aura have lower levels of antioxidants and higher levels of oxidative stress than migraine-free controls.

They've also been shown to have higher levels of mitochondrial dysfunction, and at least two polymorphisms in mitochondrial DNA have been shown to heighten migraine susceptibility. The authors also note that:¹⁷

"[C]ommon triggers of migraine have the ability to generate oxidative stress; mechanisms include mitochondrial dysfunction, calcium excitotoxicity, activation of microglia, activation of NADPH oxidase, and as a byproduct of MAO (monoamine oxidase), cytochrome P450, or NO synthase. Collectively, it is indicated that oxidative stress is an important hallmark of migraine disease."

Riboflavin may help by ameliorating many of the hallmarks of migraine, including oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, neuroinflammation, homocysteine neurotoxicity and glutamate excitotoxicity, as shown below.¹⁸

The paper goes into some detail, explaining the biochemical influence of riboflavin on all of these, so for a more comprehensive understanding, I'd suggest reading through the original paper.

Are You Getting Enough Riboflavin?

In conclusion, the authors of this Frontiers in Neurology paper note that:¹⁹

"Riboflavin has demonstrated its ability to tackle significant pathogenesis-related mechanisms in neurological disorders, exemplified by the ones attributed to the pathogenesis of … migraine … In addition, riboflavin is required for pyridoxine activation.

Riboflavin and PLP, the active form of pyridoxine, play essential roles in homocysteine metabolism, and tryptophan-kynurenine pathway. Indeed, any accumulation of homocysteine or kynurenines due to vitamin insufficiency can lead to significant neurological consequences.

Taking into consideration the limited riboflavin absorption and utilization in 10–15% of global population, long term riboflavin insufficiency could participate in the development of multiple neurological disorders, emphasizing the importance of long-term riboflavin-sufficient diet especially in vulnerable populations."

Since riboflavin is a water-soluble B vitamin, you need to get a consistent supply from your diet. Foods rich in riboflavin include:²⁰

Spinach	Beet greens
Tempeh	Crimini and portabella mushrooms
Pastured eggs	Asparagus
Almonds	Organic turkey
Grass fed beef liver	Grass fed beef tenderloin

Identifying Riboflavin Deficiency, and Dosing Suggestions

While riboflavin deficiency is thought to be rare in the U.S., older adults, women on birth control pills, alcoholics, pregnant and lactating women, vegans and those with liver disorders are at increased risk for deficiency.²¹ Common signs and symptoms of deficiency include:²²

Fatigue	Swollen throat	Blurred vision
Depression	Itchy or cracking skin	Dermatitis around the mouth
Liver degeneration	Hair loss	Reproductive problems

Urine analysis can identify a riboflavin deficiency. As a general rule, deficiency is said to be present if your urinary riboflavin is below 40 micrograms per day.²³ The recommended daily intake is 1.3 milligrams for adult men, 1.1 mg for adult women, 1.3 mg for male adolescents (14 to 18 years of age) and 1.0 mg for female adolescents.²⁴

If you struggle with migraines, however, you may need far higher doses. As noted in a study published in the European Journal of Neurology in 2004, researchers found 400 mg of riboflavin per day reduced migraine frequency by 50%, from four days a month to two days a month, after three months of use. The duration and intensity remained largely unaffected, however.²⁵

Other Vitamin Deficiencies Implicated in Migraines

Aside from riboflavin, other nutrients deficiencies that have been implicated in migraines include:

Migraine Prevention 101

When it comes to migraines, your best bet is to take preventive action, as treating migraines acutely is very difficult. Migraine medications often do not work, and can have serious side effects.³⁸

Your first step would be to identify and avoid potential triggers. While there are many (and what triggers a migraine for one might not trigger it in another), the list below includes some of the most common culprits. Keeping a journal where you record and track suspected triggers can help you determine any correlations.

Food and drink — Especially wheat and gluten, dairy, cane sugar, yeast, corn, citrus, eggs, artificial preservatives or chemical additives, cured or processed meats, alcohol (especially red wine and beer), aspartame, caffeine and MSG.39

Allergies — Including food allergies,40 food sensitivities and chemical sensitivities. Research41 published in the journal Lancet back in 1979 showed migraineurs with food antigen immunoreactivity experienced profound relief when put on an elimination diet. Another randomized, double-blind crossover study42 published in 2010 found that a six-week-long diet restriction produced a statistically significant reduction in migraines in those diagnosed with migraine without aura. If you suspect you might have a food allergy, I suggest doing a diet elimination challenge to see if your symptoms improve. Keep in mind that depending on your typical migraine frequency, you may need to avoid the suspected food for a few weeks in order to evaluate whether it had an effect or not. To confirm the results, reintroduce the food or drink on an empty stomach. If the suspected food is the culprit, you will generally be able to feel the symptoms return within an hour, although migraines can sometimes have a longer lag time than, say, bloating or drowsiness.

Hormones — Some women experience migraines before or during their periods, during pregnancy or during menopause. Others may get migraines from hormonal medications like birth control pills or hormone replacement therapy.

Light, noise and smells — Bright lights, fluorescent lights, loud noises and strong smells (even pleasant ones) can trigger and/or exacerbate a migraine. A study43,44 from Harvard Medical School found even blind migraine sufferers who still had melanopsin receptors were sensitive to light. Blue light in particular can be problematic. Many digital devices and LED light sources emit mostly blue light. Research has found that this light increases migraine pain and activates your trigeminal nerve, associated with the pain of migraines.45 Meanwhile, green light may help ease migraine pain and photosensitivity.46,47 At this time there are no lightbulbs or sunglasses that increase your exposure to pure wavelength green light that are cost effective. However, there are orange or red-tinted glasses that will block blue light, which may be helpful. You may also consider eliminating your exposure to your digital devices while you're in the middle of a migraine.

Changes in sleep cycle — This includes both missing sleep and oversleeping.

Stress — Any kind of stress or emotional trauma can trigger a migraine, even after the stress has passed.

Dehydration and/or hunger — Skipping meals or fasting are also common triggers.

Physical overexertion — Extremely intense exercise, and even sex, has been known to bring on migraines.

Weather changes, and/or changes in altitude

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