[00:00]
Welcome to Learning to Glow, a show about wellness, skin health, and self-development.
[00:12]
I'm your host, Jess.
[00:13]
I'm a mom, entrepreneur, and skincare expert.
[00:16]
I'm so excited to share tips on how to achieve healthy skin and bring amazing guests in the
[00:21]
field of health, fitness, aging gracefully, and personal growth.
[00:26]
Let's explore all different ways we can take care of ourselves as women, both inside and
[00:31]
out, to truly shine.
[00:33]
So let's get glowing.
[00:38]
Welcome to Learning to Glow podcast.
[00:41]
I'm really excited about today's episode.
[00:43]
We are talking about something that we've never talked about on the podcast before and
[00:47]
that so many of us are dealing with, which is migraines.
[00:51]
I've had complicated migraines in the past.
[00:55]
It's been a while, but it was when I was pregnant, so that's one type of migraine,
[01:01]
and that is something that I've had experience with.
[01:04]
But today, I learned so much more about migraines in general, thanks to our guest.
[01:09]
This is an issue that affects one in five women, so I'm so happy that I can share this
[01:14]
episode with you today.
[01:15]
My guest is Diane DeCarmen.
[01:17]
She shares her powerful story and what she's learned about migraines and how she's helped
[01:23]
so many women help with their chronic migraines.
[01:27]
We talk about triggers from hormones and stress to toxins and diet.
[01:32]
We also talk about how combining different healing approaches can help you find what
[01:36]
actually works for your body.
[01:38]
It's so individual.
[01:40]
She's a super informative guest.
[01:41]
I loved this conversation with her, and you can find out more about her.
[01:45]
You can find out how to work with her in the show notes.
[01:47]
If you go to my show notes, all of her information will be there.
[01:50]
If you know someone who suffers from this, please send them this episode.
[01:55]
This is episode 146.
[01:59]
Thank you for sharing it with someone.
[02:00]
If you are not signed up to my newsletter, also, make sure you go to SimplyJessSkincare.com
[02:07]
because I always send an email with a link to the week's podcast, and I share special
[02:15]
offers with my all-natural skincare brand, Simply Jess.
[02:19]
So make sure you go sign up.
[02:22]
It's very easy to do.
[02:23]
When you sign up, you automatically get a coupon code for 20% off anything in the entire
[02:30]
Let me know if you have any questions about that.
[02:31]
You can send me a message or an email at info at simplyjess.com.
[02:38]
Thank you for being here, and I hope you enjoy this episode.
[02:43]
Welcome to our show today.
[02:44]
We have Diane DeCarm with us, and welcome to Learning to Glow podcast.
[02:49]
Thank you so much for having me.
[02:51]
We are already having fun before we hit record, so I'm so happy you're here.
[02:56]
It's so fun to talk to somebody.
[02:58]
You have such an interesting story.
[03:00]
You have such an interesting background, but we're going to talk about migraines today.
[03:04]
I know a lot of people personally that suffer from migraines, so I'm really excited that
[03:09]
we're having this conversation.
[03:10]
We've never talked about it on my podcast.
[03:13]
Before we get into all of that, tell us a little bit about your background because it's
[03:17]
We want to know how you came to find the work that you're in.
[03:22]
Tell us about you.
[03:24]
When I was 17, I had a skiing accident, and I broke my femur.
[03:28]
I lost half of my blood, and I shrunk a kidney.
[03:32]
After that, for about 12 years, I was on paper recovered, but inside of me, my body is completely
[03:39]
For example, I would nap from 2 p.m. to 8 a.m. the next day without waking up.
[03:46]
I'd do that at least twice a month.
[03:50]
All my cycles would be, from being regular, they would have become 48 days, and then 53,
[03:56]
and then 64, super random.
[03:59]
These were things.
[04:00]
Then my weight, my weight had, and my energy, my metabolism had fundamentally switched.
[04:05]
Initially, I tried to be on weight-loss programs and try to sleep if I was tired and be on
[04:12]
the pill to regulate my menstruation, all of which, in hindsight, didn't make any sense
[04:18]
I went to live in China, in Shanghai, and I discovered a traditional transmission and
[04:23]
how food in three weeks got me back to where I was 12 years prior.
[04:28]
It shocked me because I thought, wow, this is so powerful.
[04:31]
My colleagues at work said, it's placebo, and I thought, there's no way I can command
[04:36]
these things in my brain.
[04:38]
Then fast forward in 2015, my sister had migraines, very severe migraines.
[04:46]
She thought she had a brain tumor because our uncle had just died of a terrible brain
[04:52]
I said to her, I know someone who can help, and together we helped her.
[04:56]
Within four months, she no longer had migraines, and I didn't think it was anything special
[05:03]
The daughter of a neurologist is a friend of mine, and she says, I have had migraines
[05:07]
for the last seven years, and my father says I need to get medicated for a lifetime and
[05:11]
have injections, including injections in my brain.
[05:14]
I said, look, I'm so sorry to hear that.
[05:17]
I didn't know you were suffering from migraine.
[05:21]
It turns out I've helped my sister.
[05:23]
You live in China.
[05:24]
Let me just try to help you for six months, and if it doesn't work, then you have 49.5
[05:29]
years of injections to look forward to, but now really, it just sounds so scary what you're
[05:35]
going to have to go through.
[05:37]
We try something else, and just on weekends and in between WhatsApp and WeChat, we sorted
[05:43]
out, and after four months, she no longer had migraines, and I thought, hold on.
[05:47]
That's just so bizarre.
[05:48]
I would understand why maybe a doctor would overlook her case, but I do not understand
[05:53]
why her father himself would not tell her what to do, and I think it's with all of the
[05:59]
naivety and that beautiful heart and intent that I started to help a few friends and family,
[06:07]
some with successes and some not, and I could not always understand why, and then with extreme
[06:12]
relentless resilience, love, care, kindness, committing to every single person that I was
[06:19]
coming across, that we managed to create Migraine Heroes and create a solution that is completely
[06:27]
natural to allow women to glow again.
[06:31]
When you have migraine every single day and that life is taken from you in the most profound
[06:37]
ways, your relationship, your work, it's just awful, and having that glow on your skin,
[06:42]
but also in your energy, in your mind, the hope, the joy, the presence, the saying yes
[06:49]
is really what drives me every day.
[06:53]
Everyone wakes up for a different reason.
[06:54]
That's why I wake up every day.
[06:57]
And have you ever personally had migraines?
[07:00]
So migraine, you need a genetic predisposition, and I'm not genetically predisposed.
[07:05]
I think if I had been after that skiing accident, it would have been a disaster because in addition
[07:10]
to all of the medication I received for the accident, I would have been medicated for
[07:14]
migraines as well.
[07:15]
So not me, my sister, my friend, and then one in five women, and so I started to realize
[07:21]
that I was surrounded by people who were suffering and that as a person, sometimes I had overlooked
[07:27]
it and really not understood what people were telling me when they were saying, I'm
[07:32]
I'm starting to have a migraine.
[07:33]
I'm going to go home before it hits me.
[07:35]
I would not completely understand what they meant, and you know, now I do.
[07:44]
I've had them myself, and I have some of my really good friends that have them, and I
[07:48]
think the frustration that I hear and that I felt was what is causing this, like the
[07:55]
unknown of like, why is this happening?
[07:59]
And I didn't know there was a genetic predisposition.
[08:02]
I want to break down this a little bit for people who are listening who might suffer
[08:06]
from this or have loved ones, and I didn't know it was one in five women either that
[08:10]
have, that's a huge amount, and they're terrible.
[08:14]
So they're terrible.
[08:16]
So what are some of the core reasons or root causes that one would have, say, you know,
[08:24]
they have the genetic predisposition, but what would be some of the reasons that they
[08:27]
would actually start having the migraines?
[08:29]
Yeah, that's a wonderful question.
[08:33]
According to the West, you have migraines because you have a genetic, what is called
[08:37]
neurological disorder.
[08:40]
However, the West does acknowledge and says, look, because it's genetic, it's 5% of boys
[08:46]
However, something quite uncanny happens is that the incidence is going to triple to quadruple
[08:53]
for women at puberty.
[08:55]
So we go from 5% of girls to 18% of women.
[09:00]
Even in the US, we're talking about 21% these days.
[09:03]
And then it doubles again around perimenopause if you take into account brain fog, dizziness,
[09:10]
vertigo, in addition to migraine and headaches.
[09:13]
And the West says, look, we're not sure why.
[09:16]
And the reason why they say that is because they say, well, from a hormonal perspective,
[09:20]
we can see that hormones do play a role in migraine, but they don't justify the delta.
[09:26]
Not everything can be hormonally explained.
[09:29]
So essentially, if you dig, dig deep into the science, you hit a wall that says we're
[09:34]
Now, it's quite fascinating.
[09:36]
So there's really an element of genetics and then an uncertainty.
[09:41]
In the East, what they did is because they would follow families for sort of hundreds
[09:47]
of years at a time, right?
[09:48]
So you would have generations of doctors meeting generations of families.
[09:53]
They could see there was a family component, an inheritance in the constitution.
[09:58]
However, what they realized is if you manage to tackle the root causes of other symptoms
[10:04]
and of the migraine, the migraine disappears.
[10:07]
And so what they realized is the migraine is like a fire alarm.
[10:10]
It's not the fire itself.
[10:13]
And if you manage to read what the fire alarm is saying, meaning is there smoke because
[10:18]
Is there like a towel burning on the stove or is there, you know, I don't know, a fireplace
[10:25]
getting out of control?
[10:27]
And if you manage to just distinguish that, then not only the symptoms go, the migraines
[10:34]
Yeah. And so and fast forward in in Western science, Dr.
[10:39]
Elizabeth Loader from Harvard Medical School has written a paper in 2002, and she talks
[10:44]
about why would it be genetic if it's a fifth of woman, right?
[10:49]
Like you think about it, it's like, well, could a fifth of woman have a neurological
[10:52]
disorder and be cuckoo? Because mother nature decided, why not?
[10:55]
That doesn't make sense.
[10:57]
And so she's challenging the science community and challenging and posing a question.
[11:02]
What would be the genetic advantage?
[11:05]
Well, you can predict the weather.
[11:07]
Well, you can say this is intoxicating, even though everyone does it, it's probably not
[11:11]
good. Well, you can see the situation is too stressful.
[11:14]
And so that people with that genetic advantage were able to survive more, to listen, to
[11:19]
have to their listen to their body more.
[11:22]
And so she also jokes word for word, migraine is like a firearm, probably not the fire
[11:28]
itself. Yeah, that's tough when you're because you were able to help people with like
[11:37]
kind of combining the Western and the Eastern.
[11:39]
But a lot of people here, they're like just Western medicine.
[11:43]
And I have had a neurologist like that.
[11:46]
There's no there could be triggers, but we don't know why it was.
[11:49]
There was a lot of like, we don't know for sure.
[11:51]
So when you are talking with people who have chronic migraines or even migraines, just
[11:57]
like once in a while, they don't have them every day or anything.
[11:59]
Do you see that some of them have certain things in common?
[12:03]
Absolutely. So first of all, I want to acknowledge that indeed, if you have a sample of
[12:08]
one, right, if you just analyze your own body, this is incredibly difficult, incredibly
[12:14]
difficult. I've been doing this since 2019, every single day now with the team.
[12:19]
And we're still discovering, I would say, 80 to 90 percent of the profiles and migraine
[12:25]
patterns we've seen and we master in many ways.
[12:29]
We're still sometimes discovering something new because it's incredibly complex and the
[12:35]
body is incredibly complex.
[12:38]
So if you have a sample of one, it's incredibly difficult in the in the in the West.
[12:43]
What we're going to try to do is we're going to mute the pain.
[12:47]
And so this is where it's difficult.
[12:48]
Indeed, when you only access the West, you obsess with let's mute it, such as if it was
[12:54]
irrational. Now, let's take an example for a minute and say you damage your knee.
[12:59]
You hurt your knee. You broke it.
[13:00]
You go to the doctor and you say my knee hurts.
[13:03]
What if your doctor was saying, great, here are some painkillers.
[13:05]
Go back home. You go back home for a month and you take the painkillers and it kind of
[13:09]
hurts less. But you also can't really walk.
[13:12]
So you start to have your limp, like you start to have things in your life you can't do.
[13:17]
Let's go for a run.
[13:18]
Well, I can't run. So then you go back to the doctor and you say, hey, it hurts again or
[13:23]
maybe more or it's more inflamed than it used to be.
[13:26]
And he says, OK, here's more or more strong painkillers.
[13:31]
And you might say, thank you very much.
[13:32]
That's really kind. And you go back home.
[13:35]
But the situation doesn't really improve.
[13:37]
And at some point you say, hey, we're going to do something else than kill the pain.
[13:40]
Right. Like at some point, we're going to tackle the root cause of my knee problem.
[13:44]
And and and I'm and this is where it is very difficult because in the brain is a massive
[13:52]
connection of a lot of different parts of the body.
[13:54]
Now, I am advocating to go to the doctor.
[13:57]
You need to get diagnosed properly.
[13:59]
You need to do the MRI, the CT scan.
[14:01]
You need to know that it's not something else.
[14:04]
It's very rare that something is, but it has to be addressed.
[14:07]
It has to be known.
[14:08]
Now, if if if this is, you know, it is migraines and you know how much you suffer, then
[14:15]
hammering it with medication actually makes it a lot worse.
[14:23]
It's really tough because initially it can be look, the story will be different for
[14:29]
everyone. But you could start like in childhood, I had a couple of headaches or I had I
[14:34]
started this job. I had a few headaches and migraines and I started to medicate over the
[14:39]
counter a little bit.
[14:41]
And then I upgraded to stronger medication.
[14:43]
Then it wasn't working anymore.
[14:45]
Then I started to take two, three, four at the time.
[14:48]
And then I had to go to the emergency room one day and they gave me a medication
[14:52]
cocktail. And over time, if you think with your brain over time, what happens is you
[14:58]
take painkillers that add toxins on your liver.
[15:02]
Now, your liver as an organ and as a system has a privileged relationship with your brain.
[15:07]
If you intoxicate your liver, leisure with a lot of alcohol, which none of your listeners are
[15:12]
going to do if they have migraines.
[15:14]
I'm sure they're saints and so good with their food and so good with their habits.
[15:18]
If you intoxicate your liver like a teenager, well, then you have a hangover, right?
[15:23]
Because your brain detoxes and your liver intoxicating your liver is going to cause that
[15:29]
sort of inflammation, that pain.
[15:32]
And so if you medicate for a lifetime, it's not any different than consuming a lot of
[15:38]
alcohol, a lot of different forms of toxins.
[15:40]
And your body will complain about it.
[15:42]
Now, this is quite well documented in Western science.
[15:44]
It's called medication overuse, headache or rebound migraine.
[15:48]
This is documented for over the counter medication triptans in the data.
[15:53]
And we have 60,000 trackers.
[15:55]
We have just so many so so much data of different people, different cities, different
[16:01]
parts of the world. What we see is overall, the more you take toxins of any kind and of
[16:08]
any forms of medication, the more you will have your brain expressing a complaint that
[16:17]
there is toxins and inflammation and that it needs to stop.
[16:21]
That makes total sense.
[16:23]
And yeah, speaking of alcohol, let's talk about the Eastern influence and the
[16:28]
philosophies that they have.
[16:30]
Like, where would we start if we're having not grabbing the medication as the solution?
[16:38]
But what are you helping your clients with in the beginning when you're like, OK, this is
[16:42]
an issue and this is something that like I'm interested in trying a different way than
[16:46]
what I've been offered in Western medicine?
[16:49]
Yeah, in order to understand what your brain says, you can start by listening what your
[16:55]
body says to the migraine can be so strong and so taking over your life, like takes the
[17:03]
way, the joy, the relationships, the dates, the weddings, the social events, the work
[17:10]
that it becomes all encompassing.
[17:13]
And that's all you see.
[17:14]
But if you take a moment to pause and to interrogate your body, am I feeling also nausea
[17:20]
with my migraine? Am I vomiting with my migraine?
[17:23]
Do I have trembling sensations?
[17:26]
Do I have paralysis of half of my body, one side or the other side or both sides or just
[17:33]
one side all the time?
[17:35]
Do I feel numbness, numbness in my arms, numbness in my legs?
[17:40]
Do I have a lot of eczema?
[17:43]
Do I have acne? Do I have cystic acne in my back?
[17:46]
Do I have a lot of urinary tract infections?
[17:48]
Do I have very painful menstruation?
[17:50]
Do I have no menstruation?
[17:53]
And all of these are other symptoms that will correlate and coexist with the migraine.
[18:01]
So they are the smoke and the fire.
[18:04]
And they will, to some extent, mimic and mirror the migraine.
[18:11]
And so the first step is to really take observation of what else is my body crying about?
[18:19]
What else is it that is different in my body than in other people?
[18:24]
For example, do I feel lethargic?
[18:25]
Like people say they are tired, but I feel intuitively I'm a lot more tired.
[18:29]
I'm going to sleep my eight hours.
[18:31]
Then I've slept them and I wake up and I'm so exhausted.
[18:36]
And so the first work is a work of observation of what else is my body trying to say?
[18:42]
For the anecdote, like we have at Migraine Heroes, like a migraine assessment.
[18:46]
And it's 75 questions linking the pain to the other parts of the body.
[18:54]
Just by taking that, you feel, oh, interesting.
[18:57]
Oh, do I have purple dots on my skin?
[18:59]
Purple dots on my skin.
[19:01]
What does that look like?
[19:02]
And the assessment will show you what it looks like.
[19:04]
It's inoffensive to have that, but it's a sign.
[19:07]
It could be related to left side migraines and evening migraines and hemorrhoids and dark circles around the eyes.
[19:14]
And how do I correct that?
[19:16]
And so the first is inquisitive mind.
[19:20]
So instead of saying it's a bit like your child cries and cries and cries and you try to shut it or you try to put on earplugs or like Bose headsets.
[19:28]
I mean, no mother would do that.
[19:31]
At some point, you're just going to listen and knee and say, what are you trying to say?
[19:35]
And so the first act is an act of fundamental act of kindness of saying, what are you trying to say?
[19:42]
What are you trying to tell me?
[19:44]
And and after that assessment, I usually spend an hour and a half.
[19:48]
Sometimes it takes up to three hours of conversation to play back what the body every step of the way from the first onset of migraine all the way to today.
[19:57]
Sometimes it's four decades, five decades of data, 50 years of data.
[20:01]
What is the body trying to express that we are repressing and making it try to mute?
[20:07]
So number one, listen.
[20:08]
And then number two, as a detective, start to interpret.
[20:11]
And then number three, we start to prioritize.
[20:14]
OK, so what is it saying the loudest?
[20:17]
OK, so let's imagine your child.
[20:20]
So I think you have an 11 year old.
[20:21]
Let's imagine your 11 year old was two or three and they were having their shower for the first time.
[20:26]
And you were so proud and they're so proud.
[20:28]
And on the way out, they jam their finger in the door and they start crying and they cry and they cry.
[20:36]
You go to the doctor, you say, oh, my child is crying.
[20:39]
Here's some earplugs.
[20:40]
Then you go back crying louder.
[20:43]
OK, here's some Bose headset.
[20:44]
And each time you take the mute button, you're like, hey, you know, I can I can do my laundry and my cooking and I hear less noise.
[20:51]
But still, the child is crying.
[20:53]
Now, over time, what is going to do is going to cry louder and it's going to start to bang on the door and express and do all sorts of things to attract your attention.
[21:00]
That's exactly what your body does.
[21:02]
And so we want to need and we want to listen and to see and to see what is needed.
[21:07]
Now, at that moment, your child will be in pain and there's an infection starting and probably stressed and wants to give you a hug and probably wants to eat a little bit and is hungry and probably thirsty.
[21:21]
OK, so we have five problems with the child now, not just one.
[21:25]
If you start with the food, the child is going to likely reject it.
[21:29]
It's the same as the body's like, hey, I am also hungry, but can we please take my finger out of the door?
[21:35]
So step one, take the finger out of the door.
[21:37]
Step two, you know, maybe give a hug.
[21:40]
Step three, you know, put a plaster and a bit of, you know, disinfectant, et cetera, et cetera.
[21:44]
And so with the body is the same is like listening and then saying, OK, what is the most acute problem right now?
[21:52]
What is it that if I don't tackle it, you're really stressed because something's coming up?
[21:57]
I give you an example. We had a woman with a massive migraine during her menstruation and we gave her a few foods.
[22:05]
And I was expecting that she'd have a few blood clots in her menstruation and she expects the blood clots the size of a baseball.
[22:12]
OK, very stressful for her body.
[22:14]
Her body is like, OK, unless she takes action, radical action, and I don't know how she's going to do it, we're having a problem.
[22:21]
Now, you can't see that on an ultrasound.
[22:24]
And the moment she came out, she thought, wow, like it feels like I've dodged a bullet.
[22:29]
And the body relaxes.
[22:31]
Her body starts to stop being so stressed.
[22:33]
So you could tackle the other problems.
[22:36]
You could say she also has intoxication of the liver.
[22:39]
She probably does.
[22:41]
But at that stage, what matters most to her body is that first problem.
[22:45]
So, yeah, so listening, listening, observing is really the first step.
[22:50]
It's really important, like what you said about there's so many different things that you ask about because, you know, here we compartmentalize our organs and our, you know, you go to a neurologist and then you go to a heart doctor and everything's very separate.
[23:09]
And what you were saying is like there are these systems that correlate.
[23:12]
If we're having issues with migraines, we could be having issues with our skin.
[23:16]
And maybe people don't realize that here in the West, unless they've seen acupuncturists or different, you know, worked with different people in Chinese medicine.
[23:23]
I think it's really important to note that like it is.
[23:26]
And I've said it like a thousand times on my podcast.
[23:29]
If you're having something with your skin and it's out of the blue, it's like, OK, what is that telling you?
[23:35]
It's like an alarm system.
[23:36]
And like you said, it's like that smoke alarm and to take a deeper look and try to figure out what's going on.
[23:42]
I think that's really that's such a good point that we have to remember, like growing up in the West.
[23:48]
And then I was going to ask you, and I feel very grown up in the West.
[23:51]
I come from a family of doctors.
[23:52]
And as a kid, I tended to be the one with the purple lips and the one, you know, sick often the one with the bronchitis and the ear infection, et cetera.
[24:00]
Nothing, nothing dramatic, but always, you know, having to pop an antibiotics or a pill of some kind.
[24:07]
And and without understanding, you know, then my parents would say, oh, you know, my mom would say to my dad, it's your genetics.
[24:13]
And my dad would say to my mom, it's your genetics.
[24:15]
And I was like, thank you. It's my body.
[24:16]
And my body's fine.
[24:18]
I'm like rocking it now.
[24:20]
Like, it's completely fine.
[24:21]
You just need to know what do you fuel the engine with so that it works.
[24:26]
And I think, you know, I grew up with a very Western mindset, so I really relate to what you say.
[24:31]
Like, this was me, too.
[24:32]
Once you discover it, there's a bit of a shock.
[24:34]
You're like, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute.
[24:37]
We can make that car drive better and faster.
[24:40]
That's so funny that you say that, because I was told by a doctor, I've shared this before, but there was a doctor who said because I was always taking antibiotics as well as a kid and as an adult all the time.
[24:54]
And this doctor was like, you just have like a bad immune system, like genetically.
[25:01]
And I was like, I was just born with it.
[25:04]
But like, meanwhile, then I learned later, I just all these antibiotics over so many times, like I would rush to the urgent care.
[25:11]
I remember like being in my early 20s and like being a little sick or not feeling good.
[25:15]
And I go straight to urgent care like I couldn't sort out how to just I should have just gone home and had some soup.
[25:21]
But I would go to the urgent care and then they would give me antibiotics every single time.
[25:25]
And it's just like over time, it just end with the stress.
[25:28]
You know, there was a compound reasons why I was sick all the time.
[25:31]
But it does it doesn't mean that I was born that way or that I had a weak immune system.
[25:38]
But I wanted to ask you before we go on, because I want to talk about something.
[25:42]
You did mention food for a minute, but I want to talk about that in a second.
[25:46]
You mentioned like there's so many different ways migraines present, like you said, some people get it during their period or they're during their cycle.
[25:55]
Some people get the evening migraines.
[25:58]
That is that just all about what type of underlying issues, like how it presents?
[26:03]
Like, have you heard of complicated migraines like where there's people have the visual, the visuals and the auditory, you know, like there's just a lot of things going on with that.
[26:13]
Like, tell us a little bit more about like the variety of migraines that people.
[26:18]
So the migraine can follow different patterns they can follow and sometimes no pattern they can follow.
[26:24]
I always have migraines before my menstruation, sort of a PMS pattern.
[26:28]
Some people can see I always have migraine the first day or a couple of days into my menstruation, or they can see I have migraines after my menstruation or they can see I have them two weeks out of four.
[26:42]
And it's just PMS during and after and they see it as one lump thing.
[26:46]
But these are different messages and different imbalances that are going on and can also be at ovulation.
[26:53]
So we have really different moments in the cycle that will reflect different types of problems.
[26:58]
So if it's during my menstruation, there's probably something stuck in my uterus, like some form of cyst, fibroids, unwanted tissue.
[27:04]
There's a lot of very natural ways to remove that.
[27:07]
If it's at ovulation, it's probably something related more to my ovaries and then more in the kidney system.
[27:14]
And so I'm also likely going to have more migraines when I'm stressed, either during the stress phase or each time I get to relax, bam, it tackles me.
[27:24]
Yeah, for some people, it will be triggered by more digestive things.
[27:31]
Some people might, because of a history of antibiotics, have very weak biome and therefore weaker gastric juices and be a bit more triggered by things like gluten or have a bit more food sensitivities.
[27:47]
They can also be triggered by, and this is where the Migraine Heroes podcast helps because we go through all of these one by one.
[27:54]
But for example, one of the things I've learned during the podcast is avocados, while super healthy food, will release the histamine in mast cells.
[28:04]
So if you have a lot of allergies and a lot of sort of mushy biome, a lot of mast cells, candida, etc., avocado will be a trigger.
[28:12]
No one's going to tell you it's a trigger because it feels like such a healthy food, but it's going to trigger a chemical reaction that's going to trigger a migraine.
[28:22]
And then you have, so you have the cycle can be one, you can have a daily cycle.
[28:27]
So it can be that every single day I wake up with a migraine or the migraine wakes me up.
[28:32]
It can be every day at noon.
[28:34]
It can be every day in the afternoon.
[28:35]
It can be every day in the evening.
[28:38]
And so all of these will correspond to different imbalances.
[28:41]
Like if it's in the morning, it's more of a chi deficiency, although you can't act on it immediately.
[28:46]
You'd have to fix a few things before.
[28:48]
And if it's in the evening, it might be more of a yin deficiency.
[28:53]
And then you can have them with seasonality during the summer month.
[28:57]
When it's really, really hot, it's going to consume a lot of your energy to cool down your body.
[29:02]
And you're going to start to overheat when the body overheats.
[29:05]
There's a bit of inflammation going on.
[29:06]
It's going to accentuate that inflammation.
[29:08]
So cooling it down, you will feel that even though you have migraines throughout the year, that time of the year is just more acute.
[29:18]
And you kind of know it.
[29:20]
But when you look at the data, it might not be so black and white because maybe also in the summer, you don't have the stress of work.
[29:28]
And so you start to have intuition.
[29:31]
But when you look at your data, it's really hard to interpret.
[29:35]
And so in the Migraine Heroes app, that's what we try to help you do is help you look at these patterns, but overlay them.
[29:43]
You know, you might also notice some foods will trigger you like wine or cheese or chocolate.
[29:48]
But you're like, but not always.
[29:50]
Like usually wine's a trigger, but sometimes I can get away with a glass of wine.
[29:54]
Why? Well, it's going to depend on your timing of cycle.
[29:57]
If you have a glass of wine just before your menstruation, chances are you're going to have a migraine because your liver is already overloaded before your menstruation.
[30:06]
Whereas if you have it mid-cycle, it might just be fine.
[30:11]
Yeah. And if you have it with a lot of stress at work, you know, and if the barometric pressure of the weather is also changing.
[30:17]
And so it's all of these all of these imbalances that make your threshold how fast you have your migraines lower.
[30:27]
So it means you reach your fed upness of the brain, your alarm system faster.
[30:32]
You make the smoke sensors more sensible, more sensitive.
[30:38]
And if you solve these imbalances and you solve for the cleanliness of the house, then it's going to be much easier for your body to live with a little bit of alcohol, to live with a little bit of toxins, etc.
[30:51]
Because the slate is clean.
[30:54]
It's a bit like if your house is on fire at some point, everything will be burning down.
[30:59]
It will be really hard to find what was the source of the fire initially.
[31:03]
It will require quite an inquisitive mind to find it.
[31:07]
But once you do, it's like you unpeel it like an onion, layer by layer, two layer at a time until you're like, ah, we'll come back.
[31:15]
And here comes the glue that Jess is talking about.
[31:19]
I see why working with somebody like you is important, because not only is everybody different, there are so many layers to it.
[31:27]
There's also what day of the cycle, what's your stress?
[31:31]
There's so many individualistic factors to this and trying to diagnose what is really causing this.
[31:38]
And there are so many, I didn't even know this, so many different types of migraines in so many different ways.
[31:43]
Is there something that is just kind of across the board a no-no for people who tend to get migraines?
[31:51]
Yeah, I think the biggest no-no of your brain will be toxicity.
[31:57]
So as a woman, we give life.
[32:00]
You're going to generously receive one cell and with that one cell, you need to be able to produce a child.
[32:06]
In order to do that, you're going to share blood.
[32:08]
You're going to decrease your blood times 1.5, increase it.
[32:12]
And that's going to make you produce the child, like, you know, come back to life.
[32:18]
And so at all times, your body will want the blood clean.
[32:24]
Now, to achieve that, you have your liver system to keep it clean and you have your menstruation.
[32:28]
You're going to lose 23 to 28 liters of menstruation.
[32:31]
That's almost half your weight in menstruation.
[32:34]
Why the body would do that is just to keep everything really clean.
[32:38]
So the one thing that's the first thing that usually the body will complain about is toxicity.
[32:43]
Toxicity will come from toxins in your house, detergents, etc.
[32:48]
It will come from toxins in cosmetics, but it will also sometimes come from toxins you take voluntarily when you medicate.
[32:57]
Now, medicating is important.
[32:58]
I'm not advocating not to medicate.
[33:00]
However, always take medication that serves you and that works.
[33:06]
Don't let something, hey, I'm not quite sure it works, but kind of I've been told to.
[33:09]
So I'm going to passively accept that.
[33:12]
I think if it doesn't work, really, you need to address that.
[33:15]
And then you need to, over time, find the root cause because it's a patch, a momentary patch.
[33:20]
Find the root cause of why, you know, is this happening?
[33:24]
And therefore, solve it.
[33:25]
And therefore, no longer require something, a crutch to live with.
[33:31]
So number one, toxins.
[33:33]
That's really like if you can eliminate that, that will serve you greatly.
[33:38]
That's good to know.
[33:39]
It's very easy to be bombarded with toxins right now, like in the world that we live in,
[33:43]
especially there's a ton of toxins in our food and like how we eat.
[33:48]
That's something that you address with clients with regards to food.
[33:55]
Because I know from what I know about Eastern medicine and Chinese medicine,
[34:00]
there is a certain way and it's not even like the specific foods.
[34:04]
Sometimes it is that I've learned, but it's like, for example, I'm drinking a hot tea right now.
[34:10]
And that's better than a cold iced coffee, which I already had plenty of this morning.
[34:16]
So I'm not going to pretend like I'm doing great here.
[34:18]
But talk to us a little bit how the diet or food can be a healing component of this
[34:24]
or something that could be not so good for people dealing with this
[34:28]
in the terms of like what you've learned with the Eastern medicine type of philosophy.
[34:34]
And you know, one of the things that in the West, we treat everything sort of black and white.
[34:39]
Like this is good.
[34:41]
And the reality is a lot more nuanced.
[34:44]
It's going to be great in some situations and not so good in others.
[34:47]
So it's all about understanding where am I and is this serving me?
[34:52]
So, for example, I'll give you one example that really strikes me
[34:55]
because it's such an amazing food and yet has a dark side to it too.
[35:02]
Let's take, for example, goji berries.
[35:03]
Goji berries are loaded for their properties.
[35:06]
They're qualified and adaptogen.
[35:08]
They're like close to perfection.
[35:10]
Goji berries will stimulate your liver.
[35:12]
It will detox your liver.
[35:13]
It's going to nourish your kidney system.
[35:15]
It's going to increase your blood.
[35:17]
It's going to remove inflammation.
[35:20]
It's a mini berries.
[35:21]
And it's so wonderful that if you only if you have it, you should only have eight to ten a day
[35:28]
because it's so incredibly potent that having more would be too much for your body to handle.
[35:33]
However, if you have a disease and you have a small virus that is just walking by.
[35:42]
So I have kids at home and they come back with stuff from school.
[35:45]
And sometimes I can feel I'm being gone through by something.
[35:50]
There's just a little bit of a, you know, I'm not sick,
[35:54]
but I can feel that if I don't be vigilant, I'm not going to get rid of this.
[35:58]
If at the same time I'm having goji berries as an infusion, for example,
[36:02]
I'm going to make my body more potent.
[36:05]
I'm also going to make that little virus more potent.
[36:08]
So if you were taking that every day, you could go from having a bronchitis to anemia
[36:14]
because it's a it's a powerful it's a blood tonic and it's a kidney tonic.
[36:19]
But therefore, it also identifies every organism in your body.
[36:22]
The same way as an antibiotic would kill any biotic, it would kill the good ones.
[36:30]
Yeah, the goji berry will boost any biotic, including the bad ones.
[36:35]
So you want to say, oh, OK, today I'm feeling slightly off.
[36:40]
My daughter's sick or my son's sick and I can feel it's in the house.
[36:45]
Like, I don't know if you see the days I'm relating to it.
[36:47]
Just you can feel like I'm not there, but I'm on edge.
[36:50]
And if I don't pay attention, I'm going to fall with my child.
[36:53]
OK, in those days, avoid tonics.
[36:56]
Yeah, that's one example.
[36:58]
Then, of course, in the food domain, also when we assemble foods, we change them.
[37:03]
So let's take coffee.
[37:03]
I think that's a great example.
[37:05]
Coffee has properties.
[37:07]
Coffee has properties because it's young, it stimulates, it increases energy.
[37:10]
It increases yang, it increases qi.
[37:12]
It helps, you know, start the day.
[37:15]
And it has beautiful power.
[37:16]
And I think we can all feel it.
[37:18]
It just gives a kick.
[37:20]
And that boost is positive.
[37:21]
However, in the West, we also say it's a diuretic.
[37:26]
In the East, you would say because it increases yang, it decreases yin.
[37:31]
So it's going to also decrease my yin.
[37:35]
Now, let me put myself in the shoes of someone who suffers from migraine for a minute.
[37:40]
Because sometimes adding caffeine will help with a migraine.
[37:44]
And some medication will add caffeine to them.
[37:48]
And so it does have positive effects because it's going to stimulate my blood flow to go
[37:55]
And if I lack a bit of blood volume, for example, I might feel a certain form of relief when
[38:00]
And so caffeine is interesting and has properties.
[38:03]
Now, if I add milk to it, I've changed it.
[38:07]
So the West is going to look at what's inside coffee, what's inside of milk, and look at
[38:12]
the macro and micronutrients in absence of how is that going to be absorbed as a whole.
[38:18]
Once I start to put milk with my coffee, my body barely recognizes what this is.
[38:24]
And it's going to increase my dampness.
[38:26]
So it's going to increase anything related to brain fog.
[38:30]
And it's going to increase my weight gain along my midsection a little bit.
[38:34]
And if I have a tendency to have urinary tract infection, eczema, or a bit of acne, it can
[38:43]
It's a slow trigger.
[38:44]
You see, in the migraine heroes app, we distinguish what's a fast trigger, what's a slow trigger.
[38:48]
It's a slow trigger because it's not going to trigger you in the moment, not necessarily.
[38:51]
However, it's going to build up an imbalance.
[38:54]
And if you have that imbalance already, which is not necessarily the case initially, then
[38:58]
it's going to accentuate it.
[39:00]
And so you want to be mindful.
[39:02]
Then you add the colds to it.
[39:04]
And then, yeah, then it damages your gastric juices also.
[39:08]
So you have just a double whammy.
[39:10]
It adds a bit of dampness, damages my gastric juices.
[39:12]
That's going to accentuate my forehead migraines and accentuate my fogginess in large portion.
[39:17]
So for something to be harmful, it needs to come in a certain quantity.
[39:22]
It's the quantity that makes the poison.
[39:25]
The same way I could argue one apple a day keeps the doctor away, as we see in the West.
[39:30]
Five apples a day.
[39:32]
If you just imagine you had five apples every day, it's a good thing.
[39:34]
Oh, my stomach is going to start to be really grumpy.
[39:38]
So it's really the quantity.
[39:39]
It's just living in balance and harmony, not being too extreme.
[39:44]
And really, while you do these things, listening to your sensations.
[39:48]
I think if you suffer from migraine disease, and I'm really, first of all, I really, I'm
[39:54]
sorry for all of that.
[39:55]
There's no words that will remove the pain of the decades of pain and the relationships
[40:01]
broken and only know you know what you've lost.
[40:05]
But try to change one thing at a time so that you can listen more.
[40:10]
And listening is incredibly important when it comes to migraine disease, like really
[40:13]
following your gut, your intuition.
[40:16]
And your body is the best.
[40:18]
Your brain is right.
[40:19]
And it's always right.
[40:21]
It doesn't have defects like that.
[40:23]
Oh, today we're in pain.
[40:24]
Yeah, just because we decided to laze around.
[40:26]
And yeah, we're just going to send you a signal.
[40:28]
But it's a wrong signal.
[40:31]
No, that doesn't happen the same way.
[40:34]
If your knee hurts, it's because there's a knee problem.
[40:36]
And if it doesn't hurt, there is no problem.
[40:38]
The brain is just the same.
[40:40]
I have a question that is a little off topic, but it relates when you after you had your
[40:46]
accident and then you moved to China and you started learning about all of this.
[40:50]
You had such a breakthrough in your health and you in so many different ways.
[40:56]
I mean, you even mentioned your weight.
[40:58]
Now, was that because your systems were balanced and it was like things were flowing?
[41:04]
Was there certain things that you took away?
[41:06]
Because that's another thing that we talk about on the show that a lot of women, especially
[41:10]
in midlife are dealing with is like this.
[41:12]
Okay, now I have this weight gain and it's like nothing I can do can get rid of it.
[41:17]
And I've done nothing different.
[41:19]
Also, you're from Europe, which has a lot cleaner food than we do in the U.S.
[41:25]
I have people all over the world who listen to my podcast, but mostly United States.
[41:30]
We don't get the quality of food that is available in other countries, especially
[41:37]
Europe is so strict with what they take.
[41:39]
And when I was in Europe, I was in your home country this summer, and I just couldn't
[41:46]
believe how good I felt from the food.
[41:50]
And I know that I've been seeing a lot of things, right?
[41:53]
Especially, it's funny, right before this week, I've been seeing on social media a lot
[41:59]
of like Japanese breakfast is trending and like eating miso soup for breakfast.
[42:04]
And I'm like, well, that is such a good idea.
[42:07]
Like, so I'm throwing a lot at you, but like I see other cultures other than here,
[42:12]
we do think different.
[42:13]
And how do you blend your European diet versus?
[42:18]
And before anything, I will acknowledge that I lived in Boston for three years when I was
[42:27]
So after my accident, I was still not on my feet and I was due to be engaged or to be
[42:32]
in a wedding dress that I needed to fit in.
[42:35]
And I remember, you know, trying to to be outside of the U.S.
[42:39]
for work to be able to eat, you know, properly because it was just so difficult.
[42:44]
I found it excruciatingly difficult.
[42:47]
I had a lot of inflammation from corn syrup while being there and I knew nothing.
[42:53]
And the stupid thing, you know, I just, I was counting my calories and I was more on
[42:57]
a weight watcher mindset.
[42:58]
It was like trying to eat less.
[42:59]
I eat probably two to three times as much as I used to eat there.
[43:03]
And we, you know, five kilos or 10 pounds less.
[43:05]
So I was trapped in that idea of calories in equal calories out.
[43:11]
This is, as we now know, completely, completely off.
[43:16]
It depends how your calories are being processed.
[43:18]
So how is your body processing your food?
[43:22]
And so I would say back in the time I was making so many sacrifices to keep sort of
[43:27]
a weight, which is fine, but but therefore would consume my energy because then it's
[43:32]
all you think about.
[43:33]
Now, a couple of things, especially about perimenopause.
[43:37]
In perimenopause, sometimes women think they're gaining weight because they have had something
[43:42]
too much and something is because they have something too little.
[43:46]
And so they're going to go into a lot of fasting and sometimes aggravating what they're
[43:51]
missing to this love.
[43:53]
And that's a really it's a it's a big topic.
[43:58]
So essentially, you have when you're when you're a child, you have 10,000 taste buds
[44:03]
on your tongue and you lose them.
[44:06]
You are at 7,000, 5,000 as you age.
[44:08]
So you lose almost half of them in a lifetime.
[44:11]
And your gas reduces are quite similar.
[44:13]
Initially, they're extremely potent so they can kill any parasites.
[44:17]
They can break down any food.
[44:19]
They can take the gluten, the ice cream, the sugar, and it's all fine.
[44:23]
And the child still grows up largely fine.
[44:27]
Like don't poison your kids, but they can get away with it.
[44:32]
Now, as we grew up, the body becomes less forgiving.
[44:35]
And so over time, we have less of these gastric and digestive juices and enzymes.
[44:41]
It's about how do you cultivate them so they continue to break down the food for you.
[44:46]
So in perimenopause, oftentimes women get tricked because they have sort of this bloating
[44:50]
effect in this belly coming out.
[44:52]
And so they think they have had something too much when in fact they have had something
[45:00]
the digestive enzymes and the taste bud decrease,
[45:04]
they just need more gastric juices.
[45:05]
By fasting and intermittent fasting in the morning,
[45:09]
they can sometimes make that worse.
[45:12]
And so they're gonna deprive themselves of breakfast
[45:15]
and they will feel their belly still flat.
[45:17]
And the moment they will put something in their mouth,
[45:20]
they're gonna have that bloating effect.
[45:22]
And it's in fact, because they're lacking something.
[45:24]
Now, these liquids are very close to the liquids
[45:27]
that would be manifesting as dizziness, fatigue, et cetera.
[45:30]
And so that ensemble needs to be tackled
[45:33]
and that ensemble needs to be treated at the root cause.
[45:37]
And so if you want to do intermittent fasting, phenomenal.
[45:40]
It's the fast in the evening.
[45:42]
It's a lot harder from a family perspective
[45:44]
and it's hard with teenagers, et cetera, and food, et cetera.
[45:47]
But from your body perspective, this is a better option.
[45:52]
I feel like we could talk all day
[45:53]
because there's so much to it.
[45:55]
So for everybody who has ever suffered with this,
[45:59]
who is not getting the answers that they need,
[46:02]
please share more about what you do,
[46:04]
how people can get ahold of you and get this started
[46:07]
because you're offering a lot of hope here
[46:09]
for people who don't have any when it comes to this.
[46:12]
Yes, so you can find us on migraineheroes.com.
[46:16]
You can find the Migraine Heroes podcast
[46:18]
and the Migraine Heroes app.
[46:19]
We're fundamentally here to help.
[46:22]
This is a structure that is put together
[46:24]
solely with the intent of getting your life back,
[46:28]
having you take control, having you understand
[46:31]
and having you just live the life
[46:32]
you're supposed to live all the way.
[46:34]
Aw, okay, well, I'll make sure to link
[46:36]
all of that in the show notes.
[46:36]
So just go to the show notes and find Diane.
[46:38]
You are so incredible.
[46:41]
Thank you for teaching us everything that you taught us
[46:43]
and you have to come back.
[46:45]
Why don't you come back and do another episode?
[46:48]
I didn't get to so many questions.
[46:51]
Thank you so much, Jess, for having me.
[46:53]
Thank you for lighting and taking your time
[46:57]
for a problem that is so grand and so big and so too much.
[47:02]
We went to the moon in 1969.
[47:04]
Can we help these women?
[47:07]
Because we choose to.
[47:08]
And I think we have to, as a society, make that choice,
[47:11]
make that priority.
[47:14]
It's our mothers, our grandmothers,
[47:16]
our wisdom female role models that are suffering.
[47:20]
And this is completely unfair.
[47:22]
And not, you know, like, will we go to Mars?
[47:26]
Can we get, you know, women to have their brain too,
[47:28]
like 50% of them when they're in perinatal?
[47:30]
Yeah, I think we should.
[47:31]
I think we should.
[47:32]
That should be prioritized.
[47:35]
Oh my gosh, I love it.
[47:36]
Well, thanks again, Diane.
[47:37]
It was so good to have you.
[47:42]
Thank you for listening to this week's episode.
[47:45]
Please subscribe and review so we can reach more people
[47:47]
who want to learn to glow alongside us.
[47:50]
See you next time.
