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Hello and welcome back to the Holistic Women's Health Podcast.
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On today's episode, I have Dianne.
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She is the Master of Migraine Investigation.
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She has a unique approach to blending traditional Chinese medicine and cutting-edge technology
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to get to the root causes of your migraines on top of genetics.
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Unlike conventional approaches that focus on eliminating foods, Dianne adds new ones.
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Her dedication to unraveling the mysteries of migraines has even inspired a podcast,
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Migraine Heroes, and her company, Nectar Health, is at the forefront of this remarkable journey
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towards migraine relief and wellness.
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I'm super excited to have you, Dianne, and I would love it if you could just start off
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by telling us about yourself, how you got to focusing on migraines.
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Very very nice to be here.
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So basically, I was born and raised in Belgium, and when I was 17, I had this massive skiing
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accident where I broke my femur, I lost half of my blood, and I shrunk a kidney.
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And I was never transfused, and it was in 2001, and there was a lot of contaminated
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So they thought, oh, she's really borderline, but she'll survive, and she'll just make up
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her blood, and we don't have enough in the banks, and it's probably safer that way.
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And from there, my body really really changed, and I really really struggled.
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I started to gain a lot of weight, I had trouble concentrating, and I would need to nap, like
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I would nap from 2 p.m. to 8 a.m. the next day.
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So work was pretty hard and intense, and then I went to Harvard, and at Harvard I would
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still have these just crazy naps whenever I could, until I went to China, and in China
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I discovered this incredible doctor, Dr. Yifang Zhang, who I went to see out of curiosity,
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and it was, I don't know how many years later, she put me back, when I was 29, she put me
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back to where I was when I was 17, in just a couple of weeks, with just a couple of food,
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and I was blown away.
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And I went back to work, and my colleague said, oh, it must be placebo.
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And I'm like, no, no, no, no, it has nutrition, it's not placebo.
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Yeah, it's placebo, it's in your head, and I was thinking to myself, oh my God, my cycles
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went from being so irregular, like 45 days, 53 days, 36 days, to now being on the clock.
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There is no way I can control that, guys.
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It doesn't happen just like that.
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Anyway, so what I did, because I have so much empathy when people don't have, therefore,
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their body at full potential, I took a lot of family members.
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So I took my parents, and siblings, and friends.
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Whenever they would tell me, oh, I have this little thing that really bothers me, or that
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big thing that worries me, I'd always take them to heart.
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But then I went to live in New Zealand, and I was on my own to figure these things out.
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And at that time, my godfather died of a glioblastoma, which is a very virulent form of brain tumor.
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And leaving four children behind, it was really, really traumatizing.
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And one of my sisters tells me, hey, I didn't want to tell mom, and I don't want to worry
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her, but I have these massive migraines.
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And so I'm really concerned I have this thing.
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So I did a couple of MRIs, but they say they see nothing.
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But I'm really anxious.
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I also have three children.
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I'm really anxious this is what I have.
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And I told her, look, I know someone who can help.
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Let's call her together.
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We're going to write her a really long email with all of your symptoms.
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And then I'm sure she can help us and figure it out.
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So we call her together.
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She explains what my sister has and what foods to eat.
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And four months later, my sister no longer has migraines.
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I go back to New Zealand, and life continues.
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Until one day, my other friend calls me and says, oh, you know, I need her.
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And she says, I've had this really confrontational conversation with my dad.
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And she's like, I've had migraines for seven years.
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I'm like, wow, seven.
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We've known each other for three.
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She's like, yeah, I usually don't mention it.
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Just every cycle I have them.
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And my dad basically tells me I need to get medicated for life, including having injections in my brain.
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I said to her, whoa, whoa, whoa, who does that?
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That sounds completely unreasonable.
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It sounds dangerous.
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I know someone in China.
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What I'm going to do is I'll send you a bunch of questions via WhatsApp.
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And then I'll tell you what to eat.
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And look, if it doesn't work, you still have 49.5 years to medicate yourself with, you know, whatever you think you need.
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And so we exchange on WhatsApp and the doctor exchange on WeChat and then recommend a couple of foods.
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Four months later, she no longer has migraines.
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And in the conversation after, I say, why did your dad say you should medicate for life?
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And she says, my dad is a neurologist, a renowned neurologist in New York.
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And I thought, well, that's that doesn't make any sense.
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So I went on the Internet to understand migraines.
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And you need to understand before I had.
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No idea, no idea on the entire world of migraines.
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I was like one of those people who when you say you have a migraine, they understand, genuinely understand that you have a headache.
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And so I discovered this entire world, these groups on Facebook and the prevalence on like 18 percent.
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I'm like, how many times was I such a bad friend that I heard a headache?
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And then I started to research medication.
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I thought, you know, the food I must have given her must be very close to medication.
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And and I realized that the medication is trying to silence the pain.
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And I'm like, oh, there have been killers.
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Oh, no. But what I was trying to do was to listen to her pain.
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And by listening to her pain, finding what's the problem, fixing it and the pain stops.
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And I thought it was really logical.
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And I had this really amazing business career which was not providing me any purpose.
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And I was seeing all of these people online, these walls of sadness and these walls of of.
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Yeah. Like I have no words to express, you know, like the level of pain people are in.
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And I really felt compelled to do something about it.
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And so this is where I started. Sorry, it's a bit of a long story.
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It's very unusual. People tell me it would be a lot simpler if you were just saying you had migraines.
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I think I think if I had migraines, I would have been able to solve people who had the same migraines as I had.
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But not that we have done it right.
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No journey is just linear. It's up and down and around in circles and all bundled up.
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So I can totally resonate with just all the going back and forth.
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But I had a couple of questions for you just based on everything you were saying.
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The doctor that you saw in China, were they recommending just foods or foods in combination with herbs to help these migraines?
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When I saw her in the first place, she just I told her, look, in Europe,
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we've had these crazy stories with people losing their kidneys over trying to do diets with herbs, et cetera.
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And so they have a really funny reputation. And I don't think I feel that comfortable.
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I think that reputation has gone by now. But I said to her, can we just do with food?
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And she said, look, food is super efficient. All you need is a little more patience and a lot of discipline.
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And I'm like, it's OK. I have both. And so with her and I, we've only done foods ever.
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And I've been blown away by how efficient it is.
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So I love your title, like nutrition moderation, because it's just all about that, all about that.
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And what infuriated me is in work and in business, I was surrounded by men and they would say there's nothing into it.
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It has been looked at. You know, this is all complete BS and placebo.
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And and so that's why I thought, you know what, I think you can do an AI and actually prove that it works.
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And there was a small resentment part of me saying, you know what, to stop with that, it doesn't work because it does.
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And it's just that we haven't put the money and the resources to actually prove it.
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That's something I see all the time with food and, you know, some natural herbs and supplements is just there's not a lot of money behind it.
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But we see it with clients every day or friends or family members who experience these things, who change their diet.
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And it's like, oh, you can see a change in them.
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And physically with migraines, you would be able to physically feel a difference.
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And so, like you said, it's just implementing those changes.
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And then another thing you said was the for some of us who don't have migraines, some of us can be ignorant and just say, oh, it's just a really bad headache.
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Can't you just take some painkillers and, you know, whatever it is, go about your day or go to that party or go to that event?
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But can you tell us the difference between your run of the mill headache versus a migraine?
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Yes. So a migraine, unfortunately, the name's really bad.
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It's a full body experience. So it may very likely include massive head pain, but not necessarily.
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You can also have silent migraines. They're a bit more rare, but they exist.
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And you're going to have full body experience.
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It's going to include, for some people, nausea, vomiting, like extremely violent vomiting, but also visual disturbances, seeing dots, prisms in the eyes.
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It can also include trembling sensations, perhaps spasms.
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They will include dizziness, fogginess, you know, extreme fatigue.
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And so those migraines, what they're called attacks, these attacks can last anywhere on paper between four hours to three days.
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In practice, they can start and never stop.
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So I have met women who, for example, after a traumatic brain injury are going to start a migraine that is going to go on in perpetuity forever.
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I mean, until we meet and, you know, you know, it stops happening.
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But otherwise it would be just in constant pain.
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Yeah. And so it is genetic.
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One more important part. It is genetic.
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It's not something that's going to come out of the blue.
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They run in families. And so there's one to 14 children that have been associated with migraines.
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Another question I had, are there different types of categories or do we just identify them as migraines with aura and different types of migraines?
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Yeah, there's lots of different categories that in Western science we try to do to sort of bucket people by types of symptoms because these experiences can be incredibly different.
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Indeed, like you said, you have migraine with aura or without aura.
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So these are the visual disturbances.
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By the way, you can also have aura as a silent migraine.
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And you're going to go to the ophthalmologist and they're going to see you have a migraine and say, I have no head pain.
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And this is still in the same family. And that's very true.
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But then you have also a lot of other words like hemiplegic migraine or vestibular migraine.
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There's lots of names to distinguish them.
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So a silent migraine is experiencing some of the other aspects of migraine, just not the head pain.
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Is that what a silent migraine is?
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What is a vestibular migraine?
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Vestibular migraines will include a lot of dizziness and vertigo and sensations in the eyes.
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It's almost like, you know, if you're in an airplane and the cockpit has massive fog and can't pilot anymore.
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It's almost like you can't pilot your body anymore.
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That sounds really frustrating.
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There was a question from my audience when I told them I was interviewing you and someone specifically asked on your thoughts on effects or for vestibular migraines.
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Do you have any thoughts?
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So basically, when you look at medication for migraines, there's very few medications that have been created with migraines in mind.
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A lot of the medication that we've used will be borrowed from other conditions.
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In the case of effects, we work in the antidepressants category, which is very oftentimes used for migraines.
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Now, it's a little bit of a chicken and egg with antidepressants because the doctor might say, no, I'm so sorry for your pain.
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You must be very depressed.
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Yeah, because I'm in pain every day.
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So you're very depressed.
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Well, no, I have a really a big personality, but, you know, it's really hard to be in pain every single day.
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So you're depressed.
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We might think of antidepressants and like, yeah, but I'm not depressed, am I?
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And they start to go home and they lose their self-confidence because they start to doubt themselves.
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I'm not like that.
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You know, I don't think that's who I am.
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But is it who I've become?
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It starts to be very confusing.
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And so sometimes antidepressants like this one can be recommended.
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My view is, look, first of all, I'm not a doctor and I'm not here to, you know, I can't make these recommendations.
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And it's really important that your migraines be well diagnosed by a doctor.
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However, it is also really important to be able to listen to your body and to the root causes of your migraines.
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And masking your symptoms with a antidepressant might actually make your body a lot more complicated exposed.
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So imagine a little bit and a lot of these medications are painkillers.
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Imagine for a minute that your daughter jammed her door, her finger in the door of the bathroom.
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Yeah. And so she's done that and she starts crying.
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And so you go to the doctor and you say, oh, my God, my daughter, she just cries nonstop.
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And the doctor says, I'm so sorry.
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Here are some earplugs.
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So you put one on the left ear and one on the right ear and then you go back home.
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It should be a lot better.
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So the woman puts them on and then she goes back home and she's like, oh, yeah, that does feel better.
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I mean, there's still a little sound.
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It's not perfect, but much better.
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Now I can get back to laundry and cooking and all of that.
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And then the daughter tries to cry louder.
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And so the woman is like, oh, seriously, louder.
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So she goes back to the doctor and the doctor says, I'm so sorry.
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I'm going to give you the new Bose headset.
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And you know what?
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It has this new special feature of noise cancelling.
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She goes back home and now she feels, oh, yeah, indeed, it's much better.
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I don't hear that sound so much.
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And then her daughter starts to hit on the door.
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And now the whole house is trembling.
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And so she goes back to the doctor and says, now what?
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So the point is, can you, you know, if your daughter says something, she means it.
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And so if your brain says, hey, we don't see clearly anymore.
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I constantly have vertigo.
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My vision is not clear.
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You know, is it just your body being, you know, upside down?
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And should you just, you know, mute that pain, mute that signal?
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And my view is not.
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Yeah, that's a great analogy that everyone can visually picture.
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It's like a house on fire.
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The house won't stop being on fire just because you walk out of the house.
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Absolutely, absolutely.
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And so some of these medications are a bit more like, hey, your alarm, your house.
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I love the alarm analogy.
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You know, your house has an alarm.
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So it's born with an alarm.
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Some houses have an alarm.
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Some houses don't have an alarm.
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And it's the same as if it goes on.
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You take a hammer from the doctor and you hammer the alarm box.
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And then you're at the top of the ladder and you think, and oh, my God, I also have smoke.
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What's wrong with this house?
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Well, you know, just get off your ladder and try to find the root cause and then just put a bit of water and it will go away.
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And so before it gets fully on fire.
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And so when the hammer doesn't work, sometimes you receive a big pair of scissors to cut the current of the house.
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But what are the consequences?
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And so this is my call for, you know, like for just challenging what you're told.
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OK, you have a migraine because.
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It's you because it's because you're a woman.
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You know, it's one fifth of women.
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So our one fifth of women who by design that Mother Nature says, oh, we're going to make women the childbearer of society and they're going to reproduce all society.
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And one of one fifth of them are also not going to have their brain straight.
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Well, one fifth of them will be a lot more intuitive than four fifths of them.
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And this is just an invitation for reflection.
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Just think for yourself, like, you know, is that so?
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Was I born in pain?
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Why is there pain?
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What else is going on?
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Is that the statistic one in five women get migraines?
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Yes, that's a statistic.
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And one in 21 men.
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So because migraines are a genetic, it's five percent of boys and girls, which seems logical and fair.
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And then the incidence is going to triple to quadruple for women at puberty.
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And so 18 percent of women suffer from migraines.
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It's the first cause of disability worldwide, depending on the stats you look at.
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But in terms of days lost to the disease, it's a really, really big issue.
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And it's very, very silent in society.
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Once you know, Alex, you'll see, you'll hear it from your friends.
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You might recognize it.
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But when you see someone acting in a non-usual way, one of your friends acting in a non-usual way, you may also ask, are you OK?
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Are you buying a child going through a migraine?
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When they say that, you can reply like, I hear they're really debilitating.
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You know, can I, you know, I'm sorry.
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Just, you know, showing compassion and consideration for how much pain people show up with and try to pretend that, you know, nothing's happening when for them it's really hard inside.
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That's very interesting. I didn't know that it increases at puberty.
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Does it have to do with hormones or what's causing this increase specifically for the girls at puberty?
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Yeah. So when you look at when you look at Western science, they say, well, we don't understand why it goes from five to 18 percent.
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Because pure hormonal migraines do not account for the difference.
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It's only a fraction.
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In traditional Chinese medicine where women have been observed and have been the focus of health in Chinese and Mandarin.
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When you write the woman, the health character, it's a woman under a roof.
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And so it means is the idea of when you put the woman under a roof, society's safe.
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So it's the idea of health and safety. It's a very broad and very important concept of society.
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And so and so they understand why so many things can go wrong.
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So if you take a man's body, a man is going to have a daily cycle and one sex hormone.
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So he wakes up and every day his body does the same. It's a very simple machine.
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It's also a machine that's going to produce sperm. Sperm is really important as a central, but it's a very simple, you know, thing to produce.
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Now, a woman is going to produce a child. OK, eyes, skin, nails, a heart, you know, a liver, a brain, a skull like hair.
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All of that comes from the woman's body is her production.
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So if you were having to compare a man's factory and a woman's factory, which one would you say is more complicated?
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Well, clearly the woman's factory. And which one would you say has more buttons in order to call for problems?
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Oh, this button is slightly broken. That wire needs rewiring. That wheel needs replacement.
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And so the woman's body complains more or tries to alert more for problems or will warn more of dangers.
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Don't be too stressed. You know, you know, eat on time, sleep enough, you know, all of these things.
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And so, yeah, so it's, I guess, part of our massive wired intuition system,
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which is also why it explains that so many women who have that gene actually made it through the ranks in evolution.
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You know, they were really good with their own longevity because they had an internal longevity tool.
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So is our cycle impacting these migraines as well as we're going throughout the month and our hormones are changing?
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Yes, absolutely. And that makes it very confusing for women because they will,
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they will have triggers and life events impact them, but also in function of their cycle.
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So in social media, lots of people are going to talk about triggers,
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such as if there were things that were always a trigger for all people all the time.
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In practice, triggers would also be influenced by the time of cycle.
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So, for example, you might have a woman say, oh, you know, I thought wine was a trigger.
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And then I had the other day I had a massive migraine and I had it yesterday and I didn't.
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And I'm really confused. Is wine a trigger or is it not?
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It really is going to depend on what is the load of some of the female systems in the body.
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And if we're at peak time, so for example, before menstruation,
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adding that one glass of wine is going to be the end of the world and it's going to result in a massive migraine.
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But if we're more vulnerable, then that glass of wine may happen just nice and smooth.
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And so when women will journal their migraines,
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it's really important that they journal their menstruation alongside so that they start to see patterns.
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Like when are they more resilient to stress, for example, when are they more resilient to certain foods?
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And so, yes, cycles will massively impact migraines.
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When you recommend journaling and writing down where they're at in their cycle,
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do you also recommend anything else like sleep or stress, anxiety, depression, any of those things while they're journaling?
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Yes, I think you should have the date. You should have your level of pain, your pain location.
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I think you should also have your level of energy.
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You should have maybe some triggers that you suspect, you know, like your cycle.
[22:47]
And then one really important one, your bowel movement. What does it look like?
[22:52]
There is something online you can look for the Bristol chart.
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Bristol chart will give you seven types of different bowel movements.
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And you can start to see, observe correlation between your bowel movements and your migraines.
[23:05]
Interesting. So there's also a correlation with digestive health and migraines, too?
[23:10]
Yes, absolutely. So we're on completely on the gut brain axis completely.
[23:15]
Yeah. And so the same way, if you think of pure nutrition law and you're trying to optimize the concentration of someone,
[23:23]
you might do that with foods, right?
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Well, it's the same idea. It's like the more your gut brain axis performs really well,
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so the more your vagus nerve is, you know, top of its shape, the more the person is going to be focused,
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concentrated, will have the appropriate response, nervous response to the appropriate situation.
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And so all of that can be done through the gut and so therefore through food.
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That's so true. I know about the gut brain axis. I just, migraines are not as much on my radar.
[23:53]
Yeah, completely. Do you see what I mean?
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And it's the, you know, when we look at Western science for so many years,
[24:02]
we decided that specialists would focus on a part of the body, right?
[24:07]
And so a neurologist is going to really important role, extremely important society.
[24:11]
I have a deep respect, really hard studies. The focus of the curriculum is, you know, brain and above.
[24:18]
But from the moment the brain and the gut are so interlinked,
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then when we look at a migraine, we have to look at the gut.
[24:26]
So, for example, if you have a leaky gut, you're likely going to have forehead migraines.
[24:31]
And if you have IBS, you might have migraines on the temple and on top of the head.
[24:36]
If you have, if you have diarrhea, when you have your menstruation,
[24:41]
you're likely someone who has maybe migraines during ovulation.
[24:45]
So this is all of these different parts of the gut brain axis that we indicate different imbalances.
[24:52]
And so what I do in my role is just really try to just listen.
[24:56]
So going back to that little girl who jammed her finger in the door is just open your eyes.
[25:01]
OK, your daughter is there, but just maybe, maybe just tell her mommy's there and mommy's going to help her.
[25:06]
Then very gently reopen the door. And maybe in the process, she's going to still hurt,
[25:12]
but she'll see that you're trying to make an effort.
[25:14]
And at some sometimes she's just going to have that moment of rest of thinking, OK, someone's listening.
[25:20]
And then, you know, put a bandaid and do all of that care until she heals.
[25:25]
And I really think that that's really important.
[25:29]
Yeah. And the body's complicated. So it's like the girl jamming her finger.
[25:34]
It's like, well, which hand was it? Which finger is that? Where does it hurt? How does it hurt?
[25:39]
Completely, completely. And there's this thing in Chinese that says when you have cured 10 men,
[25:47]
you still haven't cured a single woman. And that means the female body,
[25:53]
the female gut-brain axis is a lot more complicated.
[25:57]
In Western folklore on social media, you might have seen that joke where it's like a man's brain
[26:02]
and there's a button on off and then a woman's brain is like all sorts of buttons and regulations, etc.
[26:08]
And it's very true. It's very true. And on top of that, things are going to change in different parts of life.
[26:15]
So a woman who had let's take the woman who starts to have migraines around puberty, she might go in her 20s.
[26:22]
Fine. She might go or she might have more migraines in her 20s and nothing when she's pregnant.
[26:28]
It's just heaven. I was on the phone with one. She said, you know, pregnancy,
[26:31]
best part of my life, you know, and breastfeeding, best part for some terrible.
[26:35]
Right. This is going to depend on the underlying imbalances.
[26:40]
And then maybe she has more and then maybe she has not in menopause, a lot in perimenopause.
[26:45]
So each time it's not only just the cycle, but it's also the time in her fertility life as a girl versus as a young woman with puberty,
[26:58]
versus as a nursing mom, versus as a perimenopause new spring woman, her migraine patterns are going to change.
[27:07]
And that makes the it's just like you take them. Yeah.
[27:11]
The the the the fabric, like the I'm sorry.
[27:17]
You know, and you have to regulate it in a different way. The factory.
[27:20]
Sorry. You have to regulate it in a different way because it's changed.
[27:23]
What it does changed used to make babies. Now it makes something else.
[27:27]
You know, I don't know if you know off the top of your head, but is there an age that women are most affected or is it just totally random and dependent on the person?
[27:35]
Statistically, fertility years are more prone.
[27:39]
Childhood is less and full menopause tends to be less.
[27:44]
Perimenopause, however, can be very chaotic.
[27:48]
That being said, I have met in my practice women who had done hysterectomy in the hope to get rid of their migraines and it didn't work.
[27:57]
And it's possible to know before, depending on the type of imbalances you have.
[28:02]
So, yeah, so it's going to really depend.
[28:05]
And then for journaling, is there an app you recommend or do you just like pen and paper?
[28:10]
Start pen and paper. Feel, feel, feel your data.
[28:14]
I'm a big fan of pen and paper because it lowers screen time. You can do that, you know, in the evening next to your bed.
[28:22]
You can record it. You can, you know, highlight tips, just make inferences with your data.
[28:28]
Over time, you can go with an app. And actually, you know, I have my own app and and we're going to launch a freemium to allow you to track and start to share some.
[28:39]
You know, if your migraines are quote unquote simple, you know, give you advice on how to manage your migraines.
[28:45]
Currently, it's an app with just a full service me inside the chat and recommending you all of the foods that will de-trigger you from your migraines.
[28:55]
And so very sophisticated and full service. I aspire for me.
[29:00]
I have an obsession about accessibility.
[29:04]
I think there's a lot of single moms out there with migraines.
[29:08]
If this is you, like all of my thoughts with you, you know, just so, so, so hard and with really small income.
[29:14]
And so I really obsess with, you know, can we make this really affordable and really easy to execute?
[29:23]
And also for also young girls, you know, like, can you, you know, start on the right step and learn to make your system work really well rather than add medication that will make everything more complex, faster.
[29:36]
You'll have to let me know the name of the app and I can put it in the show notes.
[29:40]
Yes. Yes. It's called My Nectar Health Nectar, because when I was when I started, like all of the women were on my wall as flowers.
[29:49]
And so I, you know, I put all of their evolution.
[29:52]
That was my way to keep their identity confidential while still remembering who's who and and because of the food.
[30:00]
So that's how it became like that.
[30:02]
I like that. That's everybody's just a unique little flower.
[30:06]
Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly that's exactly that.
[30:09]
So I would always, you know, whenever I was, you know, even, you know, walking the street and seeing a really beautiful flower that completely catch my attention.
[30:16]
I love walking. You know, I have a thought of I'm like, I'm sure I'm going to meet someone really special, which I have so many women over the years.
[30:25]
Oh, that's beautiful. And speaking of screen time as well, what are some of the most common triggers that you've noticed in your clients?
[30:36]
A lot of a lot of triggers. So, first of all, triggers are very personal.
[30:42]
They vary person by person. And so it's really good to look online at what people say they are.
[30:48]
And I can name a number and then really look at what are my triggers now.
[30:53]
So they vary by person. They vary by your life stages.
[30:56]
So, for example, some triggers you will not have before long COVID and then after long COVID you suddenly have new triggers.
[31:03]
That's normal. Your body's changed. Your underlying imbalances have changed.
[31:07]
And so if you think of the vagus nerve being this this massive tree in your body where it's going to plant its roots around your heart,
[31:15]
around your liver, around your stomach, around your large intestine, small intestine,
[31:19]
then all of these ramifications going in your trunk, slightly along your spine and then plugging in like a Tesla in your brain.
[31:25]
And then from a Western perspective, we've lost all the signal.
[31:28]
When you have, for example, a long COVID, you're going to damage certain parts of that vagus nerve that are going to be numb.
[31:35]
Therefore, you're going to have all sorts of these weird symptoms like numbness and trembling sensations, massive fogginess, fatigue.
[31:43]
Really a symptom that can be very impressive and quite dismissed.
[31:49]
Your triggers are going to change because on that vagus nerve, different foods will make something weak, weaker.
[31:57]
It's going to vary by moments of your cycle as well.
[32:03]
And we talked about that. And also, they're not all instantaneous.
[32:08]
I think people think of their triggers as something that gives them migraine instantly.
[32:13]
The reality is it's a bit more pernicious. Some foods that look very healthy might make something weaker and you might not notice.
[32:20]
So some of the most common triggers are coffee, chocolate, cheese, because those will impact your liver.
[32:30]
They will give more load to your liver.
[32:33]
Keystamine and tyramine food might also give you more load to your liver system, which is going to impact a lot of your body functions.
[32:43]
But not for everyone. You see, coffee is even something that is using some medication.
[32:50]
So if you react really well to Exedrin, for example, as a medication, you might have coffee relieving your migraines rather than aggravating them.
[32:58]
And it's true of most foods.
[33:00]
So it can really be, you know, even yesterday I was on the phone with a woman.
[33:06]
She said, you know, chocolate gives me a lot of energy and I need like a small 70% dark.
[33:10]
And I'm like, great. And just embrace it. If it works for you, it just works.
[33:14]
Other triggers that are completely uncommon is, for example, or untalked about is, for example, ginger.
[33:22]
Ginger is loaded to be a migraine reliever.
[33:25]
And it's true for certain types of migraines. If you're in perimenopause, careful with ginger.
[33:30]
OK, that's going to make you, it's too warm in nature and it's going to make you even more dry.
[33:36]
And so accentuates the dryness of your stool, your bowel movement and the dryness of your brain.
[33:42]
But it's also true for turmeric, for example. Amazing food. Amazing.
[33:46]
Lots of properties, but it's really warm in nature.
[33:50]
So again, if you're around perimenopause, don't have it too much.
[33:54]
But also if you're actually pregnant, it may give you a miscarriage without you really, really realizing it.
[34:00]
Intuitively, you're going to know, but you will never have the proof.
[34:04]
So be very mindful. This is really something specific to you.
[34:11]
Now, what I've just done, Alex, and it's new from like today, we've created a test for triggers
[34:18]
because we realized that a lot of women have these sometimes really healthy habits,
[34:23]
things that they try to do for their best that gives them triggers.
[34:26]
I'll give you an example of a woman in the US and she was having one liter of kombucha a day and she had a candida.
[34:32]
And I'm like, wow, your candida is speeding up that kombucha.
[34:35]
And she was really making that effort. And I'm like, whoa, it's a great food.
[34:39]
Not for you, not in that quantity. And so basically, if you take that test, you can, you know,
[34:45]
within a minute, know about all of your triggers and understand some of them are slow, slow triggers.
[34:51]
Which test is this?
[34:53]
It's a trigger test on my website.
[34:55]
So it's really a test just designed in accordance to all of the things that you can see in your body
[35:01]
without taking a blood test, etc.
[35:03]
Things that you can see like where is your head pain, but what are also your feminine symptoms,
[35:09]
your other symptoms, what are your likely triggers?
[35:12]
And then we'll explain to you in an email sequence, like, you know,
[35:15]
why does each of these food trigger you more?
[35:19]
And so among food, there's also things, light can trigger, screen can trigger, absolutely.
[35:26]
Now, much more importantly, the same way someone who really suffers,
[35:32]
and if this is, you know, this is so hard, you can't stay like that.
[35:39]
There are also foods that will de-trigger.
[35:42]
And I think you of all people would understand that.
[35:45]
If a food weakens a part of your gut, relaxes, well, clearly another one's going to reinforce it.
[35:51]
And so finding this is quite complicated.
[35:55]
But once you know what to take in which quantity, etc., it's actually very easy to implement.
[36:01]
And so that's what my app is all about.
[36:04]
That's what I try to do specifically designed strictly for migraines.
[36:08]
Before we get into the foods that will help, if you could myth bust, does the weather impact migraines?
[36:16]
Yeah, absolutely. Weather does impact migraines, does impact.
[36:20]
So let me try to, I've never done this, let me try to explain why.
[36:24]
Because I think it's important.
[36:26]
Okay, so your skin is something which is very permeable.
[36:31]
So if you take a bath for a really long time or you go into hot springs, you know, let's make it fancy,
[36:37]
your skin at some point is going to become really mushy.
[36:40]
And so you're going to start to, that water is going to start to sort of enter your body
[36:45]
or at least enter the barrier of your body.
[36:49]
And if you have an imbalance of dryness or humidity inside your body,
[36:55]
if you have either too little water and your skin, therefore, is going to look very dry,
[37:00]
or if you have too much water and can be compared to, for example, an estrogen dominance or just extra weight,
[37:09]
you're going to be impacted either by really dry weather or very humid weather.
[37:15]
And when there are storms, the humidity level is going to change.
[37:19]
And that change will be perceived in the woman's body.
[37:24]
And so she's going to feel it quasi instantly.
[37:27]
Yeah, so absolutely, absolutely.
[37:30]
Yes, it's very true.
[37:31]
However, when your body is in balance and your skin is actually much firmer and filters more what goes in,
[37:38]
what doesn't go in, but also that everything is in harmony, then you don't have those sensations anymore.
[37:47]
So it sounds like there's a lot of factors at play and our hormones and foods that help, foods that hurt,
[37:54]
all sorts of outstanding factors.
[37:57]
How big is genetics compared to external factors?
[38:02]
Yeah, that's a great question.
[38:04]
Genetics will vary.
[38:05]
It's a little bit to say like some house have a firearm with one sensor
[38:10]
and some have a house with a firearm with 16 sensors.
[38:14]
So I would say the best proxy is how early did you have your first migraine onset?
[38:21]
If you were five years old when you had your first migraine, it's likely that your genetic profile is slightly more.
[38:27]
And by that, I mean that your firearms are going to kick in faster than if your first migraine happened when you were 40
[38:36]
and that you completely burnt out.
[38:38]
So you have the whole spectrum.
[38:40]
And so, yeah, so I think that's a big one.
[38:44]
And then it's the depth of the problems, right?
[38:51]
The depth of imbalance.
[38:54]
How big is the imbalance?
[38:57]
And I'm sure everybody would love to know, and I know you mentioned in your bio,
[39:01]
adding in foods as a means of helping migraines.
[39:07]
So what are some of the types of foods that we can add in?
[39:11]
So first of all, I work with 560 foods.
[39:14]
And I love your title of nutrition moderation.
[39:17]
The more you can, if you don't know anything, just go as wide, as colorful, as different as in season.
[39:25]
So go to the supermarket and take all of the stuff you've never cooked, you've never looked,
[39:29]
go in an Asian supermarket, discover some of their vegetables.
[39:35]
It depends on the types of migraines you're going to have.
[39:38]
One ingredient, for example, that in 1985 was proven in a scientific paper to help was chamomile.
[39:46]
And so in 1985, they did these studies on women with migraines with chamomile.
[39:52]
And what they noticed is that they could get rid of a lot of women's migraines, which is very true.
[39:57]
But that other woman would have diarrhea as a result and would not have their migraines helped.
[40:03]
And they couldn't quite understand it.
[40:05]
And so here with just that chamomile example, I want to give you an example of a food that helps and how to combine it depending on you.
[40:15]
So chamomile, first of all, is a FODMAP.
[40:19]
So it has fructans.
[40:22]
So if you have IBS, chamomile will make you instantly bloating.
[40:27]
And so there is no doubt this is not a food for you.
[40:31]
Chamomile will also interact with some medications.
[40:33]
So if you take some medications that will interact with chamomile, don't have it.
[40:37]
Also, if you have a tendency to be all the time cold and have diarrhea, this is also not a food for you.
[40:44]
But if you're not any of those, then it's a food that will detox your liver and stimulate your liver.
[40:52]
But because it's really cool in nature, it might be nicer to assemble it with another food.
[40:58]
The combination of the two is going to help us more.
[41:00]
So one combination I love is a good chamomile and goji berries.
[41:04]
Goji berries will do a lot of wonders for the body.
[41:08]
They're also neutral to warming.
[41:11]
And so they're going to balance out the temperature of the chamomile and be really, really well tolerated and will accomplish a lot of things in your body.
[41:20]
So this is one that I really love.
[41:22]
Because they're both stimulating the liver, do not have them when you have your menstruation.
[41:27]
Otherwise, you're going to bleed way too much and we're going to create another imbalance, which we don't want to do.
[41:34]
So this is why I find there's a myriad of things that need to be taken into account.
[41:40]
And so I've really designed an entire system that would remember every single woman we've ever helped and how we've helped her.
[41:51]
And every man and children, by the way.
[41:53]
I talk a lot about women, but this is also very valid.
[41:56]
Children bounce back usually super fast.
[41:59]
It's beautiful to see.
[42:02]
They're more simple.
[42:05]
And and so how do you take all of these decisions into account?
[42:10]
So therefore, how to repair different systems in certain order.
[42:13]
But that makes sense.
[42:16]
And so that's why that's how we're trying to make it very democratic.
[42:20]
But every woman is different.
[42:22]
So if the woman has.
[42:24]
There are issues we also need to help with that.
[42:26]
If she if her mood is up and down, also that if, you know, if she has acne, you know, we get rid of it.
[42:33]
Like with foods, because all of these symptoms, they need to go.
[42:38]
And then the good brain access is really repaired.
[42:41]
And then she can move on with her life and really start to understand that the first thing that's going to happen is that her anxiety.
[42:49]
Women who have migraines, they're extremely anxious about the next attack.
[42:54]
Extremely anxious. They don't know how long it's going to last.
[42:58]
It's a bit if you were saying to a woman, you're going to give birth, you know, five times a month.
[43:03]
And we're not going to tell you how long it's going to take.
[43:06]
We're not going to tell you, you know, it's completely traumatizing.
[43:10]
So they have a lot of anxiety.
[43:11]
And so I think the first thing that dissipates is their anxiety of the next attack, which is very, very precious.
[43:18]
Then little by little, they start to notice that they have control over their body, that they can remove symptoms,
[43:26]
that they can anticipate a storm and have a certain infusion and, you know, flower through the storm like a flower, like just nothing happened.
[43:36]
And so that's really, really beautiful.
[43:38]
And so it reconnects, you know, in school, Alex, we learn English and math and science and stuff like that.
[43:45]
We never learn body, you know, and there's a way that the body communicates.
[43:50]
And that way has been existing for millions of years.
[43:53]
It's just that, you know, teaching that to people, it doesn't bring that much money.
[43:58]
And I think we have a big money issue around health.
[44:03]
And I tell a lot of my clients on the podcast, one of the best things you can do is just pay attention to your body so you can better advocate for yourself.
[44:12]
And in this case, learn your triggers and what helps and what hurts.
[44:16]
And it sounds like what you're saying is a lot of it is through prevention.
[44:22]
And a lot of these things we should be doing earlier, you know, all throughout the many months so that we can prevent some of these migraines.
[44:31]
If someone has a migraine, is there anything they can do in the moment that you recommend?
[44:37]
Do you recommend that they have those migraine, the cooling helmets that you put in the freezer or the feet in the hot water, Celtic salts under the tongue, anything like that, if they're currently experiencing a migraine?
[44:50]
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
[44:51]
So, I mean, funny that you mentioned in the app now we have something called a migraine now button.
[44:56]
And it's exactly what you imagine.
[44:58]
It's exactly that.
[45:00]
the friend in your bucket that says,
[45:01]
okay, for this margarine, this is what you're going to do.
[45:05]
But otherwise you're going to need
[45:06]
to really use your intuition.
[45:09]
And see, maybe also back to your tracker,
[45:13]
if you write that down,
[45:15]
you can write what you tried and what worked,
[45:18]
and you might start to see a pattern.
[45:21]
Before my menstruation, actually, a foot bath really helps.
[45:25]
Or when I feel them on the foreheads,
[45:28]
the ice pack is really the way to go for me.
[45:31]
Or, yeah, it's just all of these things.
[45:37]
And then I also find something, you know what,
[45:40]
really, really important, is your emotions.
[45:43]
And I've just done a podcast
[45:44]
with Wellness Mama on this topic,
[45:47]
on letting go and what we can learn from migraine sufferers.
[45:51]
So in Western science,
[45:53]
we've discovered the gut-brain axis fairly recently.
[45:55]
It's been around for about 2,000 years
[45:58]
in traditional traveling, especially in Ayurveda.
[46:01]
But it's something that we're still missing
[46:03]
in this picture, is not only does the gut impact the brain
[46:06]
and the brain impact the gut,
[46:08]
it's also the emotions are going to impact certain organs,
[46:11]
and certain organs are going to impact emotions.
[46:14]
So for example, in my work,
[46:16]
I can be with women who will say,
[46:18]
I love my children, but sometimes I get so angry
[46:21]
and I'm ashamed that, you know,
[46:22]
I just wouldn't latch on to them like that,
[46:23]
or I try to really not to,
[46:26]
but I kind of really bite inside.
[46:28]
And it's two-way streets between the imbalance
[46:31]
that she's going to feel
[46:32]
and how it's going to manifest in her emotions.
[46:35]
And so a trigger can also be a person
[46:38]
or a relationship or a situation.
[46:44]
So it can be, you know,
[46:46]
in-laws living under your same roof.
[46:48]
It can be a bad boss.
[46:49]
It can be a very toxic relationship with a friend.
[46:54]
And so if that happens, then try not to terminate it.
[46:58]
Try not to be positive or negative.
[47:00]
Try to be neutral, just less of that person,
[47:02]
less of that relationship, less seeing them,
[47:05]
to really help to calm your emotions.
[47:08]
And if they're really strong,
[47:09]
and if you feel really angry,
[47:10]
then cry a bit, crying really helps.
[47:12]
Try to find different emotions,
[47:15]
not always by trying to control not to have an emotion,
[47:18]
but by trying to have another emotion.
[47:21]
Yes, because that's going to really, really be important.
[47:27]
I think in Western science,
[47:27]
we're able to see the impact of traumatic childhood.
[47:31]
So sexual abuse or war or things like that
[47:36]
on the vagus nerve of children.
[47:38]
So this is where we see,
[47:39]
hey, if the situation is extreme
[47:42]
and isn't a child who's still growing
[47:44]
and forming all of their organs for the future,
[47:49]
then we can see physically and prove a causality
[47:52]
between that really strong emotion and that physical impact.
[47:57]
But in traditional transmedicine,
[48:00]
it goes much, much beyond.
[48:02]
In Western folklore,
[48:04]
I think we say to someone he's very liverish,
[48:06]
and we mean they're very angry,
[48:07]
but yes, we associate, he's very liverish.
[48:10]
Then we also will say,
[48:12]
oh, you know, this person died of cancer.
[48:15]
Yeah, I mean, he was always stressed
[48:17]
and always working so much and always stressed.
[48:20]
And we make these facial expressions saying,
[48:22]
I'm not sure, but intuitively,
[48:25]
you can't be stressed for such a long period of time.
[48:28]
And so, again, in traditional transmedicine,
[48:30]
these are tools that are used.
[48:32]
So a big invitation on trying to be very self-aware
[48:39]
of your emotions and trying to mitigate them.
[48:45]
It's okay to have emotions.
[48:46]
Emotions make us move.
[48:47]
It's not okay to stay stuck in an emotion.
[48:50]
It's staying stuck that will create an entire imbalance
[48:53]
and create a big domino effect
[48:55]
on which you're gonna completely lose your body
[48:58]
and lose understanding of anything.
[49:01]
Then things become really, really hard.
[49:03]
Are there any resources that you recommend
[49:05]
for people in this arena?
[49:07]
Do you recommend Louise Hay or reading a specific book
[49:11]
or how do you recommend going to therapy?
[49:14]
How do you recommend people go about their emotions?
[49:16]
I'm gonna have a very surprising answer.
[49:20]
I would recommend making the best use of YouTube
[49:26]
if you feel really sad
[49:27]
because you're going through something really tough,
[49:29]
pick a stand-up comedian and watch them,
[49:34]
And so it's gonna make you laugh,
[49:36]
but making you laugh is gonna accelerate your heart rate,
[49:38]
gonna make your diaphragm move.
[49:40]
And all of these things will benefit your well-being.
[49:45]
And so that's gonna help.
[49:46]
I don't know yet enough resources on this topic.
[49:51]
So there's this podcast I have just done
[49:54]
with Wellness Mama with Katie Wells.
[49:57]
That's the one resource I know
[49:58]
because I've shared so much in there,
[50:00]
but otherwise I haven't come much across,
[50:03]
certainly not in the context of migraines.
[50:06]
For sure, I've never seen anything on this topic.
[50:09]
If anything comes up in the future,
[50:10]
you'll have to let us know.
[50:12]
You'll have to go post about it.
[50:14]
Something that you're mentioning too
[50:16]
that I'm thinking about is,
[50:17]
do you take into account
[50:19]
a lot of traditional Chinese medicine practices, Ayurveda,
[50:22]
and do you combine the person with the food
[50:25]
and the herbs as well
[50:26]
based on traditional Chinese medicine or Ayurveda?
[50:30]
Yes, completely, completely.
[50:33]
So there's really a mix of Western science
[50:35]
and traditional Chinese medicine.
[50:37]
And then just the very fact of doing it,
[50:40]
and I think you probably saw that in your work,
[50:42]
is like the more you do it, the more you're good at it,
[50:44]
the more you see things that aren't written,
[50:46]
but yet will impact the person in a certain way.
[50:50]
And so there's a ton of additional things we've discovered
[50:54]
just by getting things done.
[50:57]
Yeah, so for example,
[50:57]
we've noticed that when women
[50:58]
were having migraines during their menstruation,
[51:01]
most likely they had actually clots stuck in their uterus,
[51:05]
and by having foods that would remove their clots,
[51:07]
their migraines during menstruation would go away.
[51:10]
And so this is something that wasn't written.
[51:12]
It's just that we figured out, we tested that,
[51:15]
and we saw, okay, this is gone,
[51:16]
the migraine's gone, we're brand, wonderful.
[51:20]
That's very fascinating.
[51:22]
There was something that you did mention as well
[51:26]
way earlier in our conversation.
[51:27]
You mentioned TBIs, traumatic brain injuries,
[51:31]
and my partner was just listening to a podcast
[51:33]
with Navy SEAL, Ryan Larkin,
[51:36]
and so he was like, you have to ask Deanne,
[51:38]
ask her about TBIs and the impact on migraines,
[51:41]
because he was saying, yeah,
[51:43]
this particular Navy SEAL had a TBI,
[51:47]
and then it just impacted everything in life.
[51:51]
Massive, everything, everything.
[51:54]
It breaks my heart when I see that.
[51:58]
So yes, so if you go back to the gut-brain axis,
[52:01]
you may have underlying imbalances before TBI.
[52:05]
And so for me, there's almost two families of TBIs,
[52:08]
that self-inflicted TBI,
[52:10]
and that something came at you legitimately TBI.
[52:13]
So for example, let's imagine a woman
[52:17]
who fell on the floor,
[52:21]
and she hit her head against a massage table
[52:23]
because she got dizzy.
[52:24]
So she stood up, she got dizzy,
[52:27]
she was dizzy when standing up,
[52:29]
and then she lost her balance,
[52:31]
and she hit her head, and she has a TBI.
[52:33]
That TBI is inflicted
[52:34]
because she has an imbalance in the first place,
[52:36]
or there was a scooter coming at her,
[52:39]
and because her aura and her sensitivity to light,
[52:41]
she was just slightly, ever slightly,
[52:43]
a millisecond too slow to see that scooter,
[52:46]
and she got injured.
[52:49]
Versus a rugby man, for example,
[52:51]
we have lots of rugby men in New Zealand
[52:53]
who got his head hit for the fifth time,
[52:56]
and who's likely to recover again like the other times,
[53:01]
and it's not self-inflicted,
[53:02]
it's just someone hit him really hard.
[53:05]
And so for me, there's a distinction
[53:06]
in between the two,
[53:08]
because for the first person,
[53:09]
there is an underlying weaknesses.
[53:14]
Once the TBI hits that first person,
[53:18]
life is gonna change extremely strongly,
[53:21]
and very abruptly,
[53:22]
because everything's gonna get exacerbated.
[53:24]
So when you think of the gut-brain axis,
[53:28]
that axis gets super impacted,
[53:31]
and so not only is the brain impacted,
[53:34]
but all of those ramifications
[53:36]
along the side of the vagus nerve will be impacted too,
[53:42]
in your body, you have 100 billion nerve cells,
[53:45]
and so all of these are coordinated by the nerve.
[53:48]
And so once you've impacted at one side,
[53:50]
you impacted at the other side,
[53:51]
and so the person is gonna have
[53:55]
all sorts of things that are non-functioning,
[53:58]
and so how do you do that,
[53:59]
is you understand from their symptoms,
[54:01]
and from their brain pain,
[54:03]
what are the different imbalances
[54:05]
in which foods will actually repair these axioms?
[54:10]
And so you take it one at a time.
[54:12]
And so we've done,
[54:14]
like you mentioned at the beginning of the podcast,
[54:15]
we've done something called Migrant Heroes,
[54:18]
which is a podcast where women share their experience,
[54:20]
and one of them is Jessica.
[54:22]
If you listen to Jessica,
[54:24]
Jessica had a TBI.
[54:25]
She was in pain every single day after that.
[54:28]
Before that, she had sporadic migraines,
[54:30]
but then after that,
[54:31]
just became a constant level of pain.
[54:33]
She could only focus about 10 hours a week.
[54:36]
When I met her after we had our consult,
[54:40]
I had to ask her to go and sleep in my daughter's bedroom.
[54:43]
I said, are you gonna drive?
[54:46]
She's like, you know what,
[54:46]
no one ever asked me that question.
[54:47]
I'm like, you know,
[54:48]
would you like to sleep in my daughter's bedroom?
[54:49]
She's like, I'd love to, I'm exhausted.
[54:52]
And she bounced back within two months.
[54:55]
At the time when I met her,
[54:57]
the local insurer had told her,
[55:00]
look, we've tried everything on you.
[55:03]
Take some MTD prescriptions, get back to work.
[55:05]
And she was like, I can't work.
[55:07]
and they were saying,
[55:08]
you don't take enough medication.
[55:10]
She said, you know,
[55:10]
they gave me so many side effects.
[55:13]
There was really a big battle.
[55:16]
And she really said,
[55:18]
because she's also written a verbal testimonial,
[55:21]
which is on the website.
[55:23]
I don't know where I would be in my life without you.
[55:27]
And indeed, you know,
[55:29]
if I wouldn't have anyone to recommend,
[55:32]
this is something really, really special
[55:34]
that with a lot of love and a lot of craziness,
[55:37]
oftentimes when I've done my job, Alex,
[55:39]
I felt a bit crazy because the level of complexity
[55:42]
that these systems I've put together are
[55:44]
is beyond anything I would have ever imagined
[55:49]
But it's just by doing it, doing it, doing it,
[55:52]
that it provides me so much joy
[55:56]
to see these lives completely changed.
[55:58]
And Jessica was the first one.
[56:00]
She was like four or five years ago.
[56:02]
And it just fills my heart with just inexplicable joy.
[56:08]
Yeah, so you can really listen to her testimonial.
[56:10]
And a lot of them are now coming,
[56:12]
not coming because they're sponsored.
[56:14]
They're just coming because they say,
[56:16]
you know what, enough, this was too hard.
[56:17]
And if it can help just one life,
[56:19]
then it was all worth, you know, coming forward.
[56:22]
That's something that not a lot of people think about
[56:24]
is the impact of not being able to work
[56:27]
or drive or be independent.
[56:29]
And that Navy SEAL that I was talking about
[56:31]
ended up committing suicide
[56:33]
and donating his brain to science
[56:34]
because they just could not figure out
[56:37]
what was causing these migraines,
[56:39]
what was actually the root of the problem
[56:41]
and nothing worked.
[56:42]
And that's something that not a lot of people
[56:44]
think about day to day
[56:45]
is how these people are impacted
[56:48]
in a lot of areas of their life.
[56:50]
Yeah, in a lot, in so much, you know, in so much.
[56:53]
A lot of women, I have a chat in my app
[56:56]
and I'm in touch with them daily.
[56:59]
And a lot of them, you know,
[57:01]
when we speak to each other through the chat system,
[57:04]
they'll cry, you know, they'll say, you know,
[57:05]
it's just, it's so hard.
[57:08]
When they start in the onboarding call,
[57:10]
a lot of them will cry.
[57:11]
I'm also very emotional because, you know,
[57:14]
And when I hear these stories, they're crazy.
[57:17]
And so, so when I was hearing your stories,
[57:19]
I was like, oh my God, you know,
[57:21]
after I had my sisters and my friend,
[57:25]
you know, I thought, oh, you know, it's a migraine.
[57:29]
But then, then I received people word of mouth,
[57:32]
And I thought, oh, I said I could do migraines.
[57:34]
I never said I could do this.
[57:37]
This is what I thought in my head, I can't.
[57:39]
So I called Dr. Zahir and I'm like, I got this.
[57:42]
This is way beyond anything I imagined.
[57:45]
It's just like, it's okay, you just go harder at it.
[57:47]
I'm like, okay, let's just go, you know, lean in, squat.
[57:50]
And, you know, and it's the results
[57:52]
that just carries you forward.
[57:54]
And I, I can so much relate.
[57:56]
I mean, their life is completely put on hold.
[58:00]
They're not dead, but they're gonna be sort of inexistent
[58:03]
or feel inexistent from society for, you know,
[58:05]
maybe 10 years in total when they add it all up.
[58:09]
And what really, really makes me sad, Alex,
[58:12]
is when I hear, sometimes I hear an occasional podcast
[58:15]
or a testimonial, and those women will try
[58:17]
all of the medication.
[58:19]
And by doing that, they make their whole body
[58:20]
so much more complicated than what it needs to be.
[58:24]
And they really lose themselves.
[58:27]
And I, I, I'm trying to combat that,
[58:30]
just doing, trying to do my part.
[58:31]
And I was telling yesterday to my husband,
[58:33]
look, I feel in many ways excited because, you know,
[58:36]
work is taking so much shape.
[58:38]
At the same time, it's so easy to destroy a female body.
[58:42]
You know, with a few wrong medications.
[58:44]
And I said to him, I feel a little bit hopeless
[58:49]
because I feel, you know, it takes time to repair one,
[58:52]
and it takes a second to break a new one.
[58:55]
And I feel I'm repairing much slower than the number
[58:59]
of people who are having more problems.
[59:01]
And he said, you know, just, you know, just keep going.
[59:04]
What you're doing is amazing and you're contributing
[59:06]
and, you know, just, you know, be faithful,
[59:08]
just, you know, power through.
[59:09]
But do you see what I mean?
[59:11]
And you probably see that too,
[59:12]
is how much you can destroy a physical body, right?
[59:16]
Just injecting the wrong thing inside it.
[59:21]
I see that all the time when people blindly supplement
[59:25]
or, you know, they're eating specific foods
[59:28]
that are worsening, whether it's their gut
[59:30]
or their hormone issues, or they heard their best friend
[59:33]
or their neighbor taking this miracle supplement,
[59:35]
so they started taking it.
[59:37]
But a lot of people don't know supplements can interact
[59:39]
with each other and medications,
[59:41]
and it's just not right for specific people.
[59:44]
So I have like a whole database in the system
[59:46]
to look at, you know, foods that contradicts
[59:52]
And that's why usually I don't give a lot of,
[59:54]
I don't talk about foods to add
[59:56]
because it depends on your medication.
[59:59]
I had, yeah, do you see what I mean?
[60:01]
And I don't know the, like, and people will not remember.
[60:05]
And so I always feel like, you know, you have to be,
[60:09]
yeah, you have to take the whole puzzle into account.
[60:12]
That is really easy because you just execute it.
[60:15]
You have to understand, yeah, what to do,
[60:17]
otherwise you can make things more harmful.
[60:19]
And this is really not my objective, you know?
[60:23]
Do you have thoughts on any effective treatments
[60:26]
that aren't medication like magnesium, Butterbur,
[60:30]
Feverfew, some of these herbs and supplements?
[60:34]
So there's a number of supplements
[60:36]
that have been researched to really help with migraines,
[60:38]
namely the ones that you talked about.
[60:40]
So magnesium, absolutely, there are different forms.
[60:43]
If the magnesium that you take
[60:44]
gives you a really runny bowel movement,
[60:47]
stay away from it, just go for another kind.
[60:51]
Feverfew, absolutely, Butterbur, CoQ10.
[60:55]
What I will say, however,
[60:57]
is if you're taking all of these supplements
[60:59]
and they don't work for you, stop them.
[61:03]
Do not add complexity.
[61:05]
So it's a little bit like if you take the energy
[61:09]
of the girl and you might say,
[61:09]
I'll try to feed her because she might be hungry.
[61:12]
That's what usually children cry because they're hungry.
[61:15]
So you try to feed her and she continues to cry
[61:17]
and you continue to stuff her.
[61:19]
She's like, mom, it's not the problem, my finger's trapped.
[61:22]
Yeah, yeah, but continue to eat, you know?
[61:24]
It's like, I don't have access to a bathroom.
[61:26]
How can I reject these, you know,
[61:28]
like expend these supplements?
[61:30]
So like try to be logical
[61:31]
if it is not helping you to not take it.
[61:34]
And in the same way,
[61:35]
if you feel you started to take something,
[61:37]
for example, you change contraceptive
[61:39]
and it's giving you more migraine, run away immediately.
[61:43]
And if your doctor does not want to consider, insist.
[61:50]
If you, for example, you changed pill
[61:52]
and you say that pill I think is giving me more migraines
[61:54]
and they say, oh, you know, maybe not.
[61:56]
Try a bit more longer.
[61:58]
Just say, look, I take this very seriously.
[62:00]
I really don't want this to worsen.
[62:02]
So will you please accept that I stopped it?
[62:04]
Or can you please, you know, win me off this?
[62:06]
Because the more you're not going to listen,
[62:08]
the more there will be a domino effect.
[62:11]
And that is the complexity.
[62:13]
You start to create a maze of complexity.
[62:17]
Do you see what I mean?
[62:18]
And so at some point you can't find yourself anymore.
[62:22]
Yeah, and then please reach out for help.
[62:25]
You know, please reach out for help.
[62:26]
Like this is your life.
[62:28]
This is your life.
[62:30]
Last couple of questions
[62:31]
because I don't want to take up too much of your time,
[62:33]
but I'm loving this conversation.
[62:35]
And one of my very first clients
[62:39]
had very severe migraines to the point
[62:41]
where she couldn't even fill out the intake form.
[62:44]
So she had to print it out, get her mom to fill it out
[62:46]
and then scan it and send it back to me.
[62:48]
And she, it all started when she was in a car accident
[62:53]
and had whiplash on her neck.
[62:56]
Ever since then had migraines and she was in the States
[62:59]
and went to every single, like the Mayo Clinic,
[63:02]
everything, did the Myers cocktail, IV therapy,
[63:05]
every single supplement under the sun.
[63:07]
We did everything, the histamine foods,
[63:10]
we removed all sorts of foods, add all sorts of foods.
[63:14]
And after she had been suffering for years and years
[63:17]
and years and nothing helped.
[63:19]
Have you ever had a difficult client like this
[63:22]
and were there other avenues that you were searching under
[63:25]
or how did you help a client like that?
[63:28]
Yeah, so maybe let's comment on that person
[63:31]
and then on other people.
[63:33]
It's really hard when you try everything and nothing works.
[63:37]
It's just so hard.
[63:39]
What you need to try along the way
[63:41]
is not to make things worse.
[63:43]
It's a little bit like if we go back to the factory,
[63:45]
there's an alarm going on and you start to press
[63:48]
on all of the buttons frenetically.
[63:50]
Okay, don't do anything frenetic.
[63:52]
Do not go from one medication to another frenetically.
[63:56]
Try not to, if it's possible.
[63:58]
Again, I'm not a doctor,
[63:59]
I'm not here to recommend medication.
[64:01]
Try not to just go from, try too many solutions, right?
[64:06]
I find sometimes type A women
[64:08]
can send them through the wall faster
[64:11]
because they're gonna go very logically
[64:13]
and very analytically
[64:15]
and they're gonna try everything by elimination
[64:18]
and it can lead to a lot more problems
[64:22]
because you start from a whiplash, which is very serious,
[64:26]
but you made it even more serious
[64:28]
and so you lost yourself along the way.
[64:31]
I would say in a situation like that,
[64:32]
I think you would, the head pain is so strong
[64:36]
that it's probably really obsessive
[64:37]
to think about the head pain.
[64:39]
Really need to try to find
[64:40]
what else is still broken in her body.
[64:42]
So this is where I would start.
[64:43]
It's like, okay, what else is she still in?
[64:46]
So I have a test, which is 97 questions
[64:49]
and really looking at, okay, what else?
[64:53]
To give you hints and then start from there
[64:55]
and repair that and see how the body responds.
[64:58]
And in general, I have found that
[65:04]
communication was really key to problem solve.
[65:09]
So normally what I do is a woman
[65:11]
who's gonna take 97 questions
[65:14]
and then we discuss, I onboard her,
[65:17]
I explain to her, really understanding her migraines
[65:19]
is really the first step.
[65:20]
Explain to her all of her migraines
[65:22]
and how they've evolved over time
[65:24]
and why they are where they are today.
[65:25]
That is usually a moment of, oh my God,
[65:28]
finally, something that makes sense.
[65:30]
Thank you so much.
[65:32]
They're like, this starts to be a whole keen,
[65:34]
but also just an intellectual understanding of,
[65:36]
okay, my body's not crazy, I am not crazy.
[65:39]
I understand, now what?
[65:40]
And so I put the app together
[65:42]
and in the app, there's everything I've ever met
[65:44]
or I've ever seen in terms of triggers,
[65:47]
in terms of also something I call regressors,
[65:49]
something that can happen to her
[65:50]
that will make her slow down.
[65:52]
So she understand what makes her slow down in her progress
[65:57]
or make progress faster.
[66:00]
But then sometimes, and we chat,
[66:02]
we chat about everything
[66:03]
so she understands everything along the process
[66:05]
and she can really not only just know how she feels,
[66:10]
So not only know, okay, this food is gonna help prepare that
[66:13]
and these are the symptoms,
[66:14]
but also feel these symptoms dissipate.
[66:17]
But then sometimes, sometimes there's something missing.
[66:22]
I'll give you a very concrete example.
[66:24]
I had a woman, an American woman,
[66:26]
and she had massive fogginess and migraines,
[66:28]
like eight out of 10 about every single day.
[66:31]
And so we bring that to one,
[66:33]
and then it's one and then it goes to zero.
[66:36]
And then blip, blip, it comes back.
[66:38]
Blip, blip, it comes back.
[66:39]
And I'm like, okay, we need to talk.
[66:40]
There's something I'm missing
[66:42]
because normally if it stops, it shouldn't come.
[66:44]
So there's something in your day-to-day
[66:46]
that is happening that is changing things.
[66:50]
And she says, every time I have intercourse,
[66:54]
I have a UTI unless I take a antibiotics.
[67:02]
So every time we have intercourse,
[67:03]
I basically take antibiotics.
[67:05]
And I'm like, oh, that's the one.
[67:06]
That's the naughty one.
[67:07]
That's the one that's giving you the fogginess.
[67:09]
That's the one that's altering your gut.
[67:11]
Each time I repair it, it breaks up again.
[67:14]
And I'm like, oh, we're gonna change that.
[67:17]
Yeah, we're gonna change the rule codes
[67:18]
that gives these UTIs so that you no longer have them.
[67:21]
And therefore, you no longer need to medicate.
[67:23]
And therefore, the fogginess stays away.
[67:26]
But you have to explore.
[67:32]
There was another one.
[67:32]
She was having peanut butter every morning.
[67:34]
I'm like, oh, yeah, I've never put that in the triggers.
[67:36]
But yeah, this is just not a friend for you.
[67:39]
Can you have it once a week?
[67:41]
And meanwhile, can we obsess about something else?
[67:42]
Here's a laundry list of things
[67:44]
that might be better for you.
[67:45]
And so there's that investigation that still remains there.
[67:50]
There's just situations in which,
[67:54]
I'll give you another example,
[67:56]
is a woman that was going better, better, better, better.
[67:58]
And then she spikes again.
[68:00]
And I call her because I don't understand why.
[68:02]
And her daughter had tried to commit suicide.
[68:04]
And so it's just that pain.
[68:06]
And so you have to understand the context.
[68:08]
And so, yeah, so I still,
[68:11]
so what we're trying to do
[68:12]
is we're trying to,
[68:13]
so if you don't know us,
[68:15]
follow us on My Nectar Health Instagram.
[68:18]
What we're trying to do is create just a whole movement
[68:21]
of can we at least make it very simple
[68:23]
for the people for whom it's not complex yet?
[68:27]
And so channel those ones so that they understand,
[68:29]
oh, with a few foods,
[68:30]
I can actually live a really good life
[68:32]
and teach them how to be intuitive.
[68:34]
And for the ones who it's very complicated,
[68:36]
still have the human to do the troubleshooting
[68:39]
and trying to find, okay, in your life,
[68:41]
okay, what are we missing?
[68:42]
And the what are we missing is really important.
[68:45]
Yeah, it's really important.
[68:47]
And you, yeah, sometimes it can be really crazy
[68:54]
Yeah, and I find even just with the stories
[68:56]
that you're telling,
[68:57]
it's helpful to have a third party person
[69:00]
outside of your life who can take in all this information
[69:04]
and then be able to tell them,
[69:05]
oh, well, it's because you're taking these antibiotics.
[69:08]
So let's fix that and see if they get better.
[69:10]
And some people might just not even make that connection
[69:13]
and not even realize.
[69:14]
So it's helpful to have a practitioner like yourself
[69:16]
who is doing that deep work
[69:19]
and figuring it out and supporting you.
[69:22]
Completely, completely.
[69:24]
Yeah, yeah, it's really important.
[69:27]
You have to fight for yourself.
[69:28]
You have to advocate for yourself.
[69:30]
You have to put yourself first.
[69:31]
You also have to really think your body
[69:35]
is a beautiful machine and it's a very logical one.
[69:39]
And so even though things may not appear logic,
[69:44]
I've never seen someone who is really profoundly logical.
[69:47]
And so when I start,
[69:49]
I always tell women once they are in the app,
[69:52]
like no matter what,
[69:53]
you can feel you're abusing me with how much we talk,
[69:57]
but always express things.
[70:00]
The more I'm inside your body,
[70:01]
the more I can help you navigate out.
[70:04]
And if there's a problem,
[70:05]
if things don't work, just manifest it.
[70:07]
And we have a conversation again and we talk again
[70:09]
until we can figure this thing out.
[70:12]
And so it's a bit like they're an onion
[70:13]
and I'm unpeeling them layer by layer until,
[70:16]
you know, this is, the nightmare is we're beyond it.
[70:21]
And she has tools to navigate her life.
[70:24]
And sometimes they come back.
[70:25]
Sometimes they say, oh my God, I've had long COVID now.
[70:28]
And, you know, everything's changed.
[70:30]
And I'm like, okay, it's okay, we'll just fix that.
[70:32]
And, you know, and yeah.
[70:37]
Well, I could keep you here a lot longer,
[70:39]
but I will let you go back to your day.
[70:42]
And I just really appreciate you sharing
[70:44]
all this information, answering my questions
[70:47]
and questions I had from my audience.
[70:49]
And so the very last couple of questions,
[70:52]
everybody loves any type of book recommendations,
[70:55]
resources, quotes,
[70:57]
anything that you can share with people going forward.
[71:00]
So the one book I love and it changed my life
[71:04]
in many ways, it's called
[71:06]
Holistic Guide to Beauty by Dr. Yifan Zhang.
[71:11]
And I find that book makes you understand your symptoms
[71:15]
and it's really nice to understand your symptoms.
[71:19]
And then for the French speakers,
[71:21]
I have this really weird recommendation,
[71:23]
which is Montreux,
[71:24]
just a good standard comedy shows for your own day to day.
[71:29]
I think it's really,
[71:30]
laughter is maybe the one that I find in a Zoom world
[71:33]
and in the world where we are all remote
[71:36]
is missing the most.
[71:37]
So, you know, don't forget that small aspect of life,
[71:42]
like trying to feel all emotions.
[71:43]
Anger is easy, stress is really easy to feel.
[71:47]
Joy and just laughter is a bit more rare.
[71:49]
So take that time too.
[71:52]
So yeah, so you feel good.
[71:55]
And now where can everybody find you,
[71:58]
connect with you, work with you?
[72:00]
So my website is called mynectarhealth.com.
[72:06]
Our Instagram is also mynectarhealth
[72:09]
and we're also on YouTube.
[72:12]
You can take the test for triggers.
[72:14]
I really invite you to do that.
[72:15]
It's very instantaneous.
[72:16]
It doesn't cost anything
[72:17]
and it's going to help you question something, you know,
[72:21]
and give you pathways to think about it.
[72:25]
If you really suffer,
[72:27]
come, you know, just come for a diagnostic.
[72:30]
Diagnostic is really $30,
[72:32]
which is very symbolic in the sense
[72:34]
that I give them back to you if we don't work together.
[72:37]
I deduct them if we do,
[72:39]
but it's just for you to understand.
[72:41]
Understanding your migraines in the first place
[72:43]
is really, really, really important.
[72:45]
Understanding your gut-brain axis,
[72:47]
why your body's making sense.
[72:49]
And if you're in pain and you're not ready to take action,
[72:54]
And I wish you like my deepest, deepest, deepest thoughts.
[72:58]
If you're not ready to take action,
[72:59]
listen on the Migraine Heroes to a podcast with Priya.
[73:05]
She is a painter who paints her visions and her migraines.
[73:08]
And she has some beautiful things to say
[73:11]
for people who are not yet ready to take action
[73:14]
or do not like to take the throughput pathways.
[73:16]
That's completely okay.
[73:18]
Priya coats with her migraines
[73:19]
through an amazing passion for painting.
[73:23]
And she meets people who will literally
[73:25]
have never met her,
[73:26]
but will come and cry and hug her
[73:29]
like they have been friends forever.
[73:31]
So big invitation to her artwork.
[73:35]
What a beautiful way to turn something painful
[73:38]
into a beautiful piece of art and just find that outlet.
[73:45]
And, you know, when we met,
[73:49]
I just thought we'd talk about her painting
[73:51]
and how things came.
[73:52]
And then we delved into how it brought peace.
[73:55]
It brought peace with her on her pain
[73:58]
and sort of a form of the time wasn't lost anymore.
[74:03]
She tried to vividly remember all of her visions
[74:06]
and put them in paint.
[74:07]
And then she would have these incredible,
[74:10]
she'd say, you know, in my gallery,
[74:12]
I would say when I expose,
[74:14]
I would sometimes see someone like stop
[74:16]
in front of the painting and stare.
[74:18]
And you can see like, this is what they've seen.
[74:20]
And it completely validates everything that isn't seen,
[74:24]
you know, because migraines,
[74:25]
you can't see them in MRI and blood scan, et cetera.
[74:29]
So, yeah, so it's beautiful work
[74:31]
and how it's really helped her find purpose and joy.
[74:35]
Thank you so much for listening to this episode.
[74:37]
If you are someone who has migraines
[74:39]
or you know someone who experiences migraines,
[74:44]
I can only imagine the pain
[74:47]
and the suffering that comes with these migraines.
[74:49]
It sounds absolutely awful,
[74:51]
especially with all the different types
[74:53]
and figuring out what works for you
[74:55]
and what doesn't work for you.
[74:56]
Feel free to share this episode with a friend
[74:58]
if they do experience migraines.
[75:00]
And I hope you got a lot out of this episode.
[75:02]
If you personally experience migraines,
[75:05]
you can also subscribe to the show,
[75:06]
rate and review the show as well.
[75:09]
I'll leave a link in the description box
[75:11]
and also a link on my Instagram.
[75:13]
If you want to submit any topics,
[75:16]
any guests you wanna hear,
[75:17]
definitely let me know.
[75:18]
For more health, wellness and lifestyle tips,
[75:21]
You can come say hi to me at Nutrition Moderation,
[75:24]
online at nutritionmoderation.com,
[75:27]
Nutrition Moderation pretty much across all platforms.
[75:30]
I am currently accepting a couple clients
[75:33]
to work one-on-one together.
[75:34]
And I also have a couple courses
[75:37]
if you wanna learn how to cycle sync.
[75:38]
If you experience cramps,
[75:40]
I have a course called Bye Bye Cramps.
[75:42]
Otherwise, I hope you truly have an amazing day
[75:44]
wherever you are and I'll chat with you very soon.
[75:47]
Thank you for watching!
