[00:00]
It's incredibly hard to put in place.
[00:02]
If you're a doctor, you don't receive really training.
[00:06]
As a neurologist, you receive an hour on migraine
[00:09]
in your curriculum.
[00:10]
As a doctor, GP, I don't think you receive much.
[00:13]
And so this is not something that we really teach
[00:17]
or that we're really familiar to do clinically.
[00:22]
I'm Anne-Marie McQueen, journalist and proud 50-ish woman.
[00:25]
And we are here looking for the true truth
[00:27]
in perimenopause, menopause, midlife, and beyond.
[00:31]
Opening our minds to other possibilities
[00:34]
is not always easy.
[00:37]
You're all a woman to me.
[00:38]
All right, Anne-Marie.
[00:42]
My mom used to drop, pass out from migraines.
[00:46]
She'd pass out on the spot.
[00:47]
I don't know if that happens to very many people,
[00:49]
but we'd be watching TV
[00:50]
and we'd hear my mom just pass out.
[00:54]
Yeah, it must be, how did you feel as a child?
[00:57]
I think I've probably walled off how I feel about it,
[01:01]
but it's terrifying to see your mom collapse.
[01:03]
And then when she had migraines,
[01:05]
it could just be a really long time in my memory
[01:08]
and just seeing her in so much pain,
[01:10]
but you can't feel someone else's pain either.
[01:12]
So it's a very difficult thing.
[01:15]
That is very true.
[01:16]
And I really wanna stay on your mom just for a minute
[01:18]
because I think it's gonna speak so much to your audience.
[01:21]
And then what would happen to your mom?
[01:22]
Would she go to bed or how would you as a family
[01:26]
handle the situation?
[01:28]
She would be in bed.
[01:28]
And they think this was in my life for a very long time
[01:32]
because, yeah, I think she had them for a very long time,
[01:35]
but yeah, she would go to bed.
[01:37]
She would go to bed for a long time during the day
[01:39]
and it would be a while.
[01:40]
It's very hard for me to remember, but it would be a while.
[01:43]
And I just remember these passing out moments.
[01:47]
Yeah, it was crazy.
[01:48]
She was in so much pain.
[01:51]
She took serious painkillers too.
[01:53]
Like in that time, in those days, they prescribed you.
[01:58]
And those times haven't changed that much.
[02:00]
People will get prescribed stronger and stronger medication
[02:04]
and also be recommended to use medication cocktails.
[02:07]
So a combination of medication in the hope
[02:09]
that something's gonna work.
[02:11]
So how did you, first of all, how did you get involved
[02:14]
I'm assuming you had them, you have them yourself.
[02:18]
That's a great assumption.
[02:19]
It's actually my sister who was having them.
[02:21]
My sister was having migraines and it's at the time
[02:24]
when my uncle got diagnosed with glioblastoma,
[02:28]
which is an extremely violent form of brain tumor
[02:32]
And my uncle had a tumor that grew from the size
[02:35]
of a pebble to the size of an orange
[02:37]
within a couple of weeks.
[02:39]
And he got operated once and ended up dying.
[02:42]
It was very violent, very short.
[02:45]
And he had four children.
[02:46]
It was completely traumatizing in the family.
[02:50]
And at that time, so 10 years ago, at that time,
[02:52]
my sister took me apart and said,
[02:54]
oh, I think I'm gonna have the same.
[02:57]
And I'm like, why do you think that?
[02:57]
It's because I've had migraines for the last three years
[03:00]
and I keep on going to the radiologist
[03:01]
and I do these MRI and CT scan
[03:04]
and they tell me they don't see anything.
[03:05]
This is really hard so much.
[03:07]
I really don't know what to do.
[03:09]
And I told her, I think I know someone who can help.
[03:12]
I don't think you have necessarily that,
[03:14]
but there's clearly something going on with your body.
[03:18]
Let's try to find out.
[03:19]
And so together we wrote three pages documents
[03:23]
to Dr. Zhang that I sent her by email.
[03:25]
I had known Dr. Zhang because I had lived in China
[03:28]
and we spoke with her for an hour.
[03:31]
Dr. Zhang explains the underlying imbalances
[03:34]
that my sister was having,
[03:35]
recommended a couple of foods
[03:37]
and four months later, my sister no longer had migraines.
[03:40]
And I never thought of anything
[03:41]
because I had never really paid attention.
[03:45]
I was like one of these humans that you tell them
[03:48]
you have a migraine and I was like the evil
[03:51]
that thinks you said you had a headache
[03:53]
because that's the only thing I can relate to.
[03:54]
Now I'm someone who's super empathetic.
[03:56]
You just don't imagine what people actually mean
[03:59]
when they tell you that.
[04:00]
And so I didn't think much of it until my neighbor,
[04:03]
fast forward, I was living in New Zealand.
[04:05]
My neighbor tells me,
[04:06]
oh, Diane, I've had a really difficult conversation
[04:10]
I'm like, oh, what is it about?
[04:10]
I can see you're completely off.
[04:12]
And she says, I've had migraine for the last seven years.
[04:15]
I'm like, oh, I'm sorry.
[04:16]
I never knew this about you.
[04:18]
And she says, oh, I usually don't mention
[04:20]
because what can you do?
[04:21]
And she says, my father tells me now
[04:22]
that I need to get medicated for life,
[04:24]
including having injections.
[04:26]
And I don't think I want to have injections.
[04:28]
And I'm like, injections where?
[04:29]
She tells me injections in the leg
[04:31]
or injections in the brain.
[04:33]
I'm like, oh, come on.
[04:34]
That sounds so much and so crazy.
[04:36]
Of course, don't do that.
[04:38]
That sounds almost dangerous.
[04:40]
Can I interrupt you and just say of what?
[04:42]
What are the injections?
[04:43]
In 2019, in December, 2019,
[04:46]
the FDA approved a new class of medication,
[04:49]
which is the first class of medication
[04:51]
that was approved and done for migraine disease.
[04:54]
Before that, all the medication
[04:55]
that your mom must have taken
[04:57]
were medication that had been invented
[04:59]
for other problems such as cardiovascular diseases,
[05:02]
seizure, or cardiovascular issues
[05:04]
that turned out to also somewhat work
[05:07]
at some level for some time for some people.
[05:11]
And here was just a new class of medication
[05:13]
that her father was recommending that she has.
[05:16]
But I didn't know that.
[05:17]
And I told her, look, I know someone.
[05:20]
A long time ago, I had my sister through a doctor in China.
[05:24]
You've lived in Beijing, right?
[05:25]
Why don't I WhatsApp you a little
[05:28]
and WeChat her a little, ask you a couple of questions,
[05:30]
and I'm pretty sure we can try something different.
[05:33]
And then if in six months it doesn't work,
[05:35]
then you have still 49.5 years
[05:37]
to do your injections, whatever they are.
[05:39]
And four months later, she no longer had migraines.
[05:42]
And I asked her, why did your father tell you that?
[05:44]
And she says, my father is a neurologist.
[05:46]
And I thought, oh, that doesn't make any sense.
[05:49]
Wow, like I was so out of my league
[05:51]
to even stand in the way of that.
[05:53]
And then I really thought, wow,
[05:54]
clearly if you come from New York
[05:56]
and your father's a neurologist,
[05:57]
clearly the guy's super smart.
[05:59]
And clearly he loves you, he cares, he's listening.
[06:01]
So I must be very close
[06:03]
in what I've recommended as foods to medication.
[06:06]
And so this is where I opened my laptop
[06:09]
and for the first time I started to search migraine
[06:14]
and I discovered a world that just,
[06:17]
I had no idea of its existence.
[06:19]
It was just incredible.
[06:21]
It was like all of your mom's times,
[06:24]
millions of people on the walls
[06:26]
complaining about the pain
[06:28]
and about the pain for years and years.
[06:30]
And I really thought that didn't make sense.
[06:31]
And I started to search scientific papers
[06:33]
and the scientific papers were saying it was genetic.
[06:35]
It was 18% of women.
[06:36]
I thought 18% of women, oh my God,
[06:38]
how a bad friend must I have been for so many years
[06:40]
not listening properly to my friends.
[06:42]
And I started to go into the scientific papers
[06:45]
and what really struck my mind is that the medication,
[06:48]
they were painkillers.
[06:49]
They were aiming to silence the pain.
[06:51]
Whereas what I had tried to do was listen to it
[06:56]
And I really thought, oh, something's really off here.
[07:01]
That's how I started.
[07:03]
Okay, I don't even know what to get into,
[07:05]
but what does mainstream medicine get wrong?
[07:08]
So let me give you an analogy.
[07:10]
If you take, for example, a child
[07:11]
and you say, oh, my three-year-old is independent
[07:13]
and for the first time is taking,
[07:15]
let's take my girl and she's taking her shower
[07:18]
for the first time alone.
[07:19]
And she, on the way out of the shower,
[07:21]
she jams her finger in the door and she starts crying.
[07:24]
You go to the doctor, you say, my daughter cries.
[07:26]
And he says, oh, I'm sorry for that.
[07:28]
Let me give you some earplugs.
[07:29]
You put one to the left, one to the right.
[07:31]
You go back home and you should be able to function.
[07:33]
So you do that and you go back home and you're like,
[07:35]
oh yeah, that makes less noise.
[07:36]
I'm able to do my laundry and my cooking, et cetera.
[07:39]
What is your daughter gonna do?
[07:40]
She's gonna cry louder.
[07:41]
So you go back to the doctor and you say, oh, I'm sorry.
[07:44]
She cries louder now.
[07:46]
He says, oh, that can happen.
[07:48]
Let me give you a Bose headset with noise canceling.
[07:50]
That should be a lot better.
[07:51]
You go back home and initially it works,
[07:54]
but then what is she gonna do?
[07:55]
She's gonna start to slam on the door
[07:58]
or shut in the door with her foot.
[08:00]
And you're thinking, wow, and now my house is trembling.
[08:03]
When what you need to do is to go towards her,
[08:07]
put a knee on the ground, look at her and say,
[08:10]
I'm sorry, darling, what's happening?
[08:11]
And then she's just gonna show you her finger.
[08:13]
Oh, I can see you locked her finger, your finger.
[08:16]
Just show it to mommy.
[08:17]
Okay, let me open the door.
[08:18]
Let me put a bandaid, then give you a hug and then feed you.
[08:21]
And when your knee hurts, you go to the doctor.
[08:25]
Let's imagine you broke it.
[08:26]
You go to the doctor.
[08:27]
You hope for something as in painkillers, right?
[08:30]
Maybe some for the moment, right?
[08:33]
And I respect highly the profession of doctor
[08:35]
and they are really important and you need to be diagnosed.
[08:38]
However, if your doctor for your knee broken,
[08:41]
all that he gives you is painkiller,
[08:43]
your knee is gonna be dysfunctioning
[08:45]
for the rest of your life.
[08:46]
It's quite similar with the brain.
[08:48]
You need to know what is the brain saying?
[08:50]
And because it's more complex, it's a bit harder to read,
[08:53]
yet it's as logical as your knee.
[08:56]
So is this another situation of the body whispers to you
[09:02]
or it talks to you?
[09:05]
And is it a suggestion of a physical problem
[09:08]
or is it a suggestion of an emotional problem or both?
[09:13]
Sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes both.
[09:18]
You can have, for example, let's start with the emotions.
[09:21]
You can have a situation in which you have a child
[09:23]
who's been abused physically, mentally
[09:26]
or neglected by parents, not loved
[09:30]
and starts to have the vagus nerve,
[09:32]
starts to go in fight, flight or fights a lot
[09:35]
and doesn't rest and digest.
[09:38]
All of that gut-brain axis.
[09:39]
And so if you imagine the vagus nerve as a gigantic tree
[09:43]
that plants its roots around your heart,
[09:44]
around your stomach, around your liver, around your kidney
[09:48]
and then forms a trunk in your neck
[09:50]
and plugs in a bit like an electric car,
[09:52]
an electric plug in your brain.
[09:54]
And we lose a bit because of the density of the brain.
[09:56]
We lose a bit the link between those wires
[10:00]
and the organs in the brain.
[10:01]
Let's imagine this big vagus nerve
[10:03]
is gonna be quite damaged.
[10:04]
And so now in the Western science,
[10:06]
we've been able to prove that
[10:07]
when children go through trauma,
[10:10]
there will be alteration of their vagus nerve.
[10:12]
And then from there are gonna start a domino effect
[10:15]
of migraine that are gonna initially be purely emotional
[10:20]
but very quickly will become physiological.
[10:23]
If it's in your head, it's in your body.
[10:26]
Now, sometimes things can start the other way around
[10:28]
where for example, you lost a lot of blood.
[10:32]
For example, you donated blood
[10:33]
or you lost a lot of blood in birth
[10:35]
or you've put a copper IUD and you lost a lot.
[10:39]
In her lifetime, a woman is gonna lose
[10:41]
23 to 28 liters of menstruation.
[10:43]
That's just the average woman.
[10:45]
Let me repeat, it's 23 to 28 liters.
[10:48]
If she doesn't make her blood as fast
[10:51]
or her menstruation matter as fast as she loses it,
[10:55]
then her brain becomes in competition
[10:57]
with her digestive system and her limbs for blood.
[11:01]
And because the brain sucks up 20% of energy
[11:05]
and is only two to 6% of weight,
[11:08]
when you don't have enough physical blood volume,
[11:09]
then your body starts to arbitrage.
[11:11]
So then you can take a tryptophan for example,
[11:13]
contract your blood vessels
[11:14]
and the blood goes back to your brain
[11:16]
but you don't feel completely yourself.
[11:19]
So it can come physiologically or physically.
[11:23]
Is there research on this
[11:25]
in the sort of mainstream scientific community
[11:28]
or who's putting this all together?
[11:31]
A great question, fantastic question.
[11:33]
Actually in the scientific community, it does exist.
[11:36]
If you search on some of the most important
[11:40]
and prevailing journals,
[11:41]
you search for the link between the gut brain axis
[11:44]
and migraine on migraine and the microbiota.
[11:47]
You look for evidence between magnesium,
[11:50]
CoQ10, omega-3s and migraine.
[11:53]
You'll find plenty, a plethora
[11:55]
of really solid scientific article
[11:58]
dating back all the way sometimes to 1985.
[12:01]
Now, because it's complex,
[12:04]
it's not because it's been tested
[12:06]
or proven scientifically or written about
[12:09]
that it's practiced.
[12:11]
I think in practice, it's incredibly hard to put in place.
[12:14]
If you're a doctor, you don't receive really training.
[12:18]
As a neurologist, you receive an hour
[12:20]
on migraine in your curriculum.
[12:22]
As a doctor, GP, I don't think you receive much.
[12:25]
And so this is not something that we really teach
[12:29]
or that we're really familiar to do clinically.
[12:33]
It's something that we've analyzed
[12:35]
and intellectually discussed.
[12:36]
And intellectually, we discuss more and more,
[12:39]
but not necessarily that we implement, if that makes sense.
[12:43]
It all makes sense.
[12:44]
And it's reminding me of IBS and other conditions
[12:47]
where they're just like labeled,
[12:50]
but they're coming from trauma
[12:53]
and things that need to be addressed inside you.
[12:55]
When you're speaking, I'm thinking about my mom a lot
[12:58]
because she had a lot of physical problems her whole life.
[13:02]
And they were, like, I always think what happened
[13:06]
when she was a kid.
[13:07]
I've said only in the last couple of years
[13:08]
as I've put the trauma piece together,
[13:09]
have I become like more convinced
[13:12]
that something happened when she was a child?
[13:14]
Because she died early at 53,
[13:15]
but it was just a parade of things.
[13:17]
And I never even thought about the migraine piece.
[13:19]
But when you mentioned that, you're crying out for help.
[13:22]
But I know that someone listening to this who's,
[13:26]
there's such a divide.
[13:27]
Like the all in your head thing
[13:28]
is still very much rooted, right?
[13:31]
So I can feel that people who have this pain
[13:35]
would be very resistant to the notion.
[13:39]
And so can you just speak a bit, so this is physical pain,
[13:42]
but it could be coming from an emotional place.
[13:47]
You've just, the vagueness-
[13:48]
How does that reconcile?
[13:49]
We've only just figured out about the vagus nerve
[13:51]
and seen how, been able to see in our body
[13:54]
how that could be happening.
[13:55]
But where's the switch for a migraine?
[14:01]
In the East, emotions have always been a part of medicine.
[14:04]
And in fact, when you wanted to qualify
[14:06]
as a doctor in Asian China, you would need two qualities.
[14:09]
One was intellect, in particular literacy.
[14:12]
You need to be able to read old articles.
[14:15]
The second one you need was empathy
[14:17]
because you needed to also dig up
[14:20]
for those pieces of the puzzle.
[14:22]
Sometimes the puzzle would be purely biological
[14:25]
and sometimes the piece of the puzzle would be emotional.
[14:29]
And your role as an investigator was to find
[14:31]
where is the problem being caused.
[14:34]
Sometimes the root cause of a migraine
[14:37]
can be an individual external to your body.
[14:40]
It can be a very toxic boss.
[14:42]
It can be a toxic friend.
[14:44]
It can be a very difficult uncoupling, yeah?
[14:48]
And so emotions will relate to different systems.
[14:53]
And so I speak seven languages
[14:55]
and it's a bit like I only speak two.
[14:57]
I speak West and I speak Mandarin.
[14:59]
And West, when you say liver system,
[15:01]
liver, you designate the piece of flesh
[15:03]
that is at the bottom of your rib cage,
[15:05]
always, regardless in Italian, in Spanish, in German,
[15:10]
When you say liver in Mandarin, which is gan,
[15:13]
when you say gan, you don't mean that.
[15:16]
You mean liver and gallbladder
[15:18]
and all of your female hormones
[15:20]
and all of your mood hormones
[15:22]
and all of the liquids that irrigate your tendons
[15:25]
and your breast and your uterus and your ability to detox
[15:29]
and your emotion of anger
[15:33]
and absence of patience, resentment, frustration, okay?
[15:38]
And so the more the person is gonna have a situation
[15:42]
that makes them angry,
[15:44]
the more their liver is gonna be intoxicated.
[15:48]
The more if they have migraine disease
[15:50]
or migraine genetic profile,
[15:53]
their genetic profile is gonna indicate in their brain
[15:57]
through the vagus nerve that the liver has inflammation.
[16:00]
The more you have that, the more you medicate.
[16:03]
The more you medicate,
[16:04]
the more you have toxicity in your liver.
[16:06]
The more you have toxicity in your liver,
[16:08]
the more you feel angry.
[16:10]
And so there's a chicken and egg
[16:13]
between the emotions and the organs.
[16:15]
In the West, we've discovered the gut-brain axis
[16:18]
and the bidirectionality,
[16:19]
meaning my brain communicates with my gut
[16:21]
and my gut communicates with my brain.
[16:23]
But in fact, there's an emotion to gut
[16:27]
or an emotion to organ axis as well
[16:30]
that was yet to completely admit,
[16:33]
I think in the West, yeah.
[16:36]
We're marching, but marching very slowly.
[16:39]
So what's the hormonal link?
[16:43]
Because a lot of women find this torques up
[16:47]
But I'm wondering also if it's just that
[16:49]
hormones receding, the hormones that protect you
[16:53]
that bring everything to the surface,
[16:55]
including the inner child experience
[16:59]
that you're not addressing.
[17:03]
So many places, let's dive in.
[17:06]
So with hormones, women will notice
[17:09]
that they can have a migraine
[17:12]
that will follow their hormones.
[17:13]
So some of them will say,
[17:15]
I always have my migraines before my menstruation.
[17:19]
It's really the time when it hits me.
[17:20]
I have maybe sore breast.
[17:22]
I also have anger and resentment.
[17:25]
I also maybe have a bit more acid reflux
[17:27]
or something like that,
[17:28]
or trembling sensations or numbness in my arms and legs.
[17:31]
And at that time, I'm gonna have more migraines.
[17:34]
Some of them will say,
[17:36]
oh, for me, it always hits after my menstruation.
[17:39]
Some of them will say it's during ovulation,
[17:41]
so mid of the cycle.
[17:42]
And some of them will say,
[17:44]
oh, actually for me, it's really hard during my menstruation.
[17:47]
And some will say all of the above
[17:50]
it starts a few days before my menstruation,
[17:53]
but it leads all the way to a few days after.
[17:56]
And here, it's not one block,
[17:57]
it's actually multiple different migraine.
[17:59]
And so indeed, the hormones will play
[18:02]
a very significant role
[18:04]
in those different types of migraine.
[18:06]
As the woman goes through perimenopause,
[18:09]
we're adding a layer of complexity
[18:11]
because her liver is gonna lose up to 44% of its volume,
[18:16]
according to Western science.
[18:17]
So now if you think back of my liver,
[18:19]
it does my detox, my emotions,
[18:22]
all of my female hormones, my mood hormones,
[18:23]
my tendons, my breast, my uterus,
[18:25]
all of that loses a bit of its magic power.
[18:28]
And so we're gonna have a liver that produces less hormone,
[18:33]
and we're gonna have less of these very brilliant liquids
[18:36]
that transport these hormones
[18:38]
and that also hydrate my brain
[18:40]
that can make my brain is more and more dizzy
[18:43]
and give me something called Meniere's disease.
[18:46]
So because of some women,
[18:49]
they're gonna have less migraines after menopause.
[18:52]
And so some women will actually impose themselves
[18:55]
a hysterectomy in the hope to get rid of the migraine
[18:57]
because this is so awful.
[18:59]
Let's just accelerate the process,
[19:00]
get rid of that uterus, and hopefully it stops.
[19:04]
But in a lot of cases,
[19:06]
they will actually accelerate after menopause.
[19:09]
And so they realize once the operation has been done,
[19:12]
then it still doesn't help.
[19:17]
What about progesterone?
[19:19]
Because I have heard a lot about progesterone
[19:22]
and migraine and PMS.
[19:25]
Yes, so progesterone links specifically
[19:27]
in traditional times may seem
[19:29]
to what is called the kidney yang.
[19:31]
And so this is something,
[19:32]
the progesterone is gonna together with the estrogen
[19:36]
is gonna start to decrease.
[19:38]
we think of perimenopause as a second spring.
[19:41]
And we say second spring
[19:42]
because it's an opportunity to reinvent yourself,
[19:46]
completely reinvent yourself.
[19:47]
And it's really a moment
[19:48]
where there's a window of menstruation closing
[19:51]
where the body is gonna try to deal
[19:53]
with all past trauma and emotions.
[19:56]
And it's really important to talk about
[19:58]
because one of the things I've realized,
[20:00]
and I'm gonna answer your question in a minute.
[20:02]
One of the things I've realized
[20:03]
is that sometimes in trauma,
[20:04]
women can hold their emotion in form of tissues.
[20:10]
So they've had so many emotional blockages
[20:13]
that those created tissues that can be a form of fibroid,
[20:17]
cyst, unwanted tissues and blood clots in the uterus
[20:21]
that they will need to expel.
[20:23]
And when they menstruate,
[20:25]
they're in pain, massive pain.
[20:27]
They have migraine pain
[20:28]
because the vagus nerve is picking up
[20:30]
that while it's contracting the uterus,
[20:31]
that's a hypothesis,
[20:32]
the migraine is expressing itself.
[20:35]
And so the way out of this
[20:36]
is to expel the unwanted tissues.
[20:40]
Now, through the perimenopause,
[20:42]
the woman has a window of opportunity
[20:44]
in order to deal with past stuff.
[20:47]
And this is why the East calls it also second spring.
[20:51]
It's a moment to reinvent yourself,
[20:52]
a moment to reevaluate,
[20:55]
a moment to shed your skin
[20:57]
and become your true you.
[21:00]
I was doing a podcast just before
[21:02]
with a woman who was 61.
[21:05]
for the first time after 55 years,
[21:06]
I no longer have migraines.
[21:08]
I've had to do a lot of work on my past trauma
[21:11]
and my life and my body,
[21:12]
but I've never been happier.
[21:15]
And so she doesn't have to be 60.
[21:16]
She gets to be 60.
[21:18]
And so that's a beautiful image
[21:20]
that in the East and there's an aspiration
[21:22]
of you don't have to go through perimenopause.
[21:24]
You get to shed those tears,
[21:28]
shed this skin, those problems.
[21:30]
And so as the window of menstruation closes,
[21:33]
the body feels an urgency to clear everything.
[21:37]
Now, in the process,
[21:38]
the body is going to have
[21:39]
its both estrogen and progesterone slow down.
[21:43]
The whole goal here is to keep the balance
[21:46]
in between these different organs and systems
[21:49]
to allow them to land very peacefully,
[21:52]
because then we can have an absence
[21:55]
of massive symptoms and hot flashes, et cetera.
[21:58]
And here, the progesterone is going to be a result
[22:01]
of the kidney system slowing down in its intervention
[22:06]
and therefore decreasing the progesterone.
[22:08]
Now, we need to have the estrogen decrease
[22:10]
in parallel at the same time.
[22:12]
And that's what's going to allow
[22:14]
for not having too much anxiety.
[22:16]
As the progesterone slows down,
[22:18]
we can have more kidney deficiency.
[22:20]
Kidney deficiency is translated by more anxiety,
[22:24]
more stress, a bit more difficulty to make decisions,
[22:28]
the hair getting thinner, more gray, more lost,
[22:32]
a bit more fatigue, and the fluids in my body
[22:35]
not as strong as they used to be.
[22:38]
And therefore, my libido also decreasing a little bit.
[22:42]
And so it's just that soft landing.
[22:44]
So the body is trying to have a soft landing
[22:47]
and it's not, you lose a superpower,
[22:50]
but you gain a new one too.
[22:52]
On the other end, when you have gone through full menopause,
[22:56]
you are back to where you were as a child with daily cycle.
[22:59]
And that also brings comfort.
[23:01]
And if you've been able to clean the entire orchestra
[23:05]
of your life and of the events of your life,
[23:07]
then you are like my friend, Pat.
[23:09]
You are happier, even though you are wiser or older,
[23:13]
or you have just more years under your belt
[23:16]
and you got ready and the teacher came
[23:18]
and life became suddenly way easier and way happier.
[23:21]
It's something to look forward to.
[23:23]
Yeah, I'm on the other side of it.
[23:24]
I'm 54, almost 55.
[23:26]
And I get really upset when people talk about it
[23:28]
and the way that they talk about it,
[23:29]
because I did all that painful stuff.
[23:31]
It's incredibly painful.
[23:32]
You're forced to, like,
[23:34]
it's like you're on the floor like writhing
[23:37]
and then you just, I don't know, come out of it.
[23:39]
It takes a couple of years.
[23:41]
So it's really tough.
[23:43]
In there, you mentioned estrogen
[23:44]
and then you said hopefully estrogen
[23:45]
is falling at the same time,
[23:47]
but I think we know that estrogen is rising and falling
[23:50]
and can be quite high.
[23:51]
And so I don't know how that plays into
[23:56]
the migraine equation and the imbalance.
[23:59]
Yeah, yeah, a lot, a lot, actually.
[24:03]
The estrogen is gonna be,
[24:06]
they're both gonna circulate in something called the yin.
[24:09]
So in the West, we obsess about the hormones.
[24:12]
In the East, it is said that the hormones are a consequence.
[24:16]
So they're not the root cause.
[24:18]
There's something deeper to the layer
[24:20]
than the progesterone and the estrogen.
[24:23]
And so they surf on a type of liquid called yin.
[24:27]
So in the West, we say that the body is 60% water,
[24:31]
that the brain is 74% water,
[24:34]
that the lungs, I think, is 83 and the kidney, 69.
[24:37]
We actually computed that in labs.
[24:39]
It's very scientific, very serious.
[24:41]
In the East, they're gonna call it yin
[24:43]
and think of yin and these liquids
[24:45]
more as brain, bone marrow, lymphatic system,
[24:48]
and intra-organ liquids,
[24:51]
which we have recently discovered.
[24:54]
There's a beautiful article written in the journal Nature
[24:57]
on this new body part that we've recently discovered
[25:01]
in the West, dates back a couple of years,
[25:03]
called the interstitium,
[25:05]
which are liquids that circulate in between my organs.
[25:09]
And that explained a lot of perimenopause
[25:11]
issues. It's fascinating.
[25:12]
We just discovered it in the West
[25:14]
and it's been existing all along in the East.
[25:17]
And in the West, we've accused the East
[25:19]
that it didn't exist.
[25:20]
It's a really interesting dynamic.
[25:21]
That's why we didn't, when we made that finding,
[25:25]
we didn't start it from the root of the top, not yet.
[25:28]
I think we'll be able in the future,
[25:29]
that's my prediction, that we'll be able in the future
[25:31]
to use this to stop cancer from spreading.
[25:34]
And this is the moment when this knowledge
[25:36]
will become very mainstream.
[25:37]
Now, if you Google it, you will find a lot of articles
[25:40]
on it, a lot of podcasts on it.
[25:41]
It's called the interstitium.
[25:42]
And so in this interstitium,
[25:46]
which is essentially, imagine a massive spaghetti
[25:49]
that circulates around your organs
[25:51]
and allow for the hormones and the fluids to circulate,
[25:55]
you have a lot of yin,
[25:57]
and in that yin circulates the estrogen
[26:00]
and the progesterone.
[26:01]
But that liquid is very precious
[26:03]
and is decreasing with time,
[26:04]
which causes all of these imbalances.
[26:08]
Yeah, wow, my jaw is open,
[26:10]
because you said in the West, we obsess about hormones,
[26:14]
and it's so true, right?
[26:15]
It's just like hormones,
[26:16]
this is a complete hormone discussion.
[26:19]
You have estrogen, you see it all the time,
[26:21]
estrogen receptors, and then they're just sitting there
[26:24]
empty, like being gasping for estrogen.
[26:27]
And now you're saying there's a whole different thing
[26:31]
that's been discovered.
[26:32]
And so if you have your hormones tested,
[26:35]
the hormones in there aren't gonna show up,
[26:37]
you're having your blood tested.
[26:39]
That's when we talk about hormones in different parts,
[26:41]
tissues of the body,
[26:42]
there's still hormones in those parts of the body, right?
[26:46]
There is an interstitium,
[26:48]
and you're not able to test what's in there
[26:52]
Yeah, we just discovered it.
[26:54]
Like, honestly, in the West, you're like,
[26:56]
oh my God, what is this?
[26:57]
So there was a German dermatologist who was wondering,
[27:01]
how come some of my patients have the melanoma go through
[27:06]
and generalize in the body
[27:08]
versus some it just stays on the skin?
[27:11]
What is the difference between those two types of individual?
[27:14]
And he didn't believe in the way that the cancer cells
[27:17]
would butcher their way through into the other organs.
[27:22]
He didn't think it was, the theory at the time had legs.
[27:26]
He thought there must be some other ways,
[27:27]
it's too complicated for a cell to do that.
[27:29]
And so he tested on rats and gave a number of rats melanoma.
[27:33]
And he could observe that in some rats,
[27:36]
the liquid, the melanoma would vary in the space of
[27:40]
little, very little time,
[27:41]
would spread throughout the body very smoothly.
[27:45]
And it was following a network he had never seen before.
[27:49]
That's how it came discovered.
[27:50]
And then at the same time in the US,
[27:53]
there was another doctor
[27:53]
just observing bile duct under the microscope.
[27:56]
And he saw the same thing.
[27:58]
He was finding there were small hexagons around the bile duct
[28:01]
and he was just trying to observe where does that go
[28:05]
and saw some fluids.
[28:07]
And again, following a network he had never seen.
[28:10]
That's how, even in the journal Nature,
[28:12]
they discuss about what is this unrecognized body parts
[28:17]
that we suddenly discover that manages 20 to 25%
[28:20]
of the body fluids.
[28:23]
That's a lot, 20 to 25.
[28:25]
And in there, they said it looks very viscous.
[28:28]
There's a lot of collagen,
[28:29]
a lot of hyaluronic acid and hormones.
[28:32]
And I think that in the West, we understand the male body.
[28:37]
The female body is not a proxy of a male body.
[28:41]
And so if you don't understand the anesthesium,
[28:44]
you can't fully, in my personal humble opinion,
[28:47]
completely understand the rest of the equation
[28:51]
and fully with a Western mind,
[28:53]
very detailed, orientated, understand hormones
[28:56]
with a really high level of granularity.
[28:59]
Sounds like you can't really understand
[29:00]
perimenopause or menopause either.
[29:02]
I find that the more I go West, the more I turn back East
[29:05]
because we can't, but yes, we can.
[29:08]
Because a lot of people have been doing this.
[29:09]
So why we're discovering it just now
[29:12]
and not really sharing that we've discovered it
[29:14]
because we're not sure.
[29:16]
It's been discovered and talked about over and over
[29:20]
in the East for thousands of years.
[29:22]
It's always been there.
[29:24]
In the West, we thought this is a made-up organ.
[29:25]
We opened and butchered a body.
[29:27]
There is no such thing inside.
[29:28]
Now, how does that relate to migraine?
[29:30]
Because when you are going to perimenopause and menopause,
[29:37]
then it is possible that these liquids will start to dry,
[29:41]
which is something that the East
[29:42]
is gonna always fight that dryness
[29:45]
that makes us stop bleeding and start to wrinkle
[29:48]
and start to have a dryness.
[29:49]
So if you think of a tree and a woman,
[29:52]
and you compare the vagus nerve and the woman as a tree,
[29:54]
you see in childhood, it's springtime
[29:56]
and the tree is growing and beautiful.
[29:59]
In summertime, it gives fruits and we're pregnant
[30:01]
and we have milk and we have two heartbeats
[30:04]
and two brain, et cetera.
[30:06]
And then through perimenopause, we go through autumn.
[30:10]
We dry on our skin, on our face.
[30:13]
We dry in our menstruation.
[30:14]
We dry, we have vaginal dryness.
[30:17]
And therefore, we have hot flushes
[30:19]
because we're not able to regulate
[30:21]
our internal temperature anymore.
[30:24]
So it doesn't look at it like an excess,
[30:26]
but as a deficiency.
[30:27]
And the way you fight it is by rebalancing that.
[30:30]
Now, if you have a migraine genetic predisposition,
[30:33]
then you will suffer from a lot of dizziness,
[30:36]
a lot of fogginess of mind
[30:39]
that is less and less clear by the day.
[30:41]
And then you add medication on top of it,
[30:43]
some of which end up there.
[30:44]
That makes the whole system very complicated
[30:47]
and the brain very angry.
[30:49]
Okay, so when that doctor helped your sister,
[30:53]
what were some of the things that she did?
[30:58]
It was understanding where is,
[31:00]
my sister at that time was young.
[31:02]
She was a young mom of three children
[31:06]
and she was just out of balance.
[31:08]
When you give birth to, let's face it,
[31:11]
three brains, three sets of eyes,
[31:13]
three hearts, three sets of bones,
[31:15]
three sets of hair, three sets of nails.
[31:17]
And you receive from your husband three cells.
[31:19]
Of course, you're exhausted and your body is depleted.
[31:24]
I think in the West,
[31:25]
when a woman goes through pregnancy,
[31:28]
on the back of pregnancy,
[31:29]
what do we expect from you?
[31:30]
We expect you to lose your weight,
[31:32]
to welcome your in-laws,
[31:33]
to write your announcement cards
[31:35]
and to take care of the baby
[31:36]
and to still be a good wife.
[31:38]
In the East, we expect you to lay in bed for a month
[31:42]
and to be served by others,
[31:44]
to just feed your child and receive good food,
[31:47]
to let your organs go back in their shape and their place,
[31:50]
to avoid incontinence much later in life.
[31:53]
And so it's a very different attitude.
[31:56]
And so, of course, if you're a mom of three
[31:58]
and you're exhausted,
[31:59]
then your body is just simply depleted.
[32:02]
And sometimes it's as simple as that.
[32:04]
In the case of my neighbor,
[32:06]
it was more, if you have headaches for a really long time
[32:09]
and they transform into migraine,
[32:10]
you're going to slowly upgrade in terms of medication,
[32:13]
you're going to have more and more toxicity.
[32:15]
The more you have migraine,
[32:16]
the more you take medication,
[32:18]
the more you take medication,
[32:19]
the more you have toxicity,
[32:19]
the more you have toxicity,
[32:21]
the more you have migraine.
[32:23]
Because the migraine start in many parts
[32:25]
from just initially toxins.
[32:28]
Now there's of course a domino effect
[32:29]
because the systems are very interdependent.
[32:34]
And so this is how we transform migraine sufferers
[32:37]
who will suffer for five, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years
[32:42]
into migraine heroes who master their emotions,
[32:45]
their genetics, their body
[32:48]
to live a really happy, grounded life
[32:51]
where they don't fear their genetics,
[32:53]
they embrace it as more of a radar
[32:56]
and a tool for longevity than a curse.
[33:00]
And a lot of them will be very scared
[33:01]
of having even children to pass on those genes
[33:04]
because it's such a hard life to live.
[33:07]
So you have tools.
[33:09]
If someone's listening to this
[33:11]
and they're thinking, yeah, this resonates,
[33:13]
I've got to do something.
[33:15]
Like this sounds like something I can do.
[33:17]
What are they going to find?
[33:18]
So you go on the App Store or on Google Play,
[33:21]
you can download an app called Migraine Heroes.
[33:24]
And you can basically meet with me.
[33:26]
I'm going to ask you about a hundred questions
[33:28]
and then we meet for 90 minutes
[33:30]
to first understand why is your brain in pain
[33:34]
from the first onset of migraine all the way to now.
[33:38]
What domino effects took place
[33:40]
that are both physiological and emotional elements
[33:44]
in your life that led to that massive pain
[33:47]
that you experienced?
[33:48]
So if I think and compare it to your mom,
[33:50]
it would be sitting with your mom and saying,
[33:52]
hey, can you tell me the digestion issues?
[33:54]
Can we talk about it?
[33:55]
You did have IBS, you had leaky gut,
[33:57]
you have acid reflux.
[33:58]
Okay, all of that.
[33:59]
It matters because your vagus nerve is grumpy about it.
[34:01]
And so we're going to need to repair things one by one.
[34:04]
And so the way I work is I don't remove food,
[34:08]
And by adding food, you can rebalance.
[34:10]
And as the body rebalances,
[34:12]
not only do the migraine go in intensity and frequency,
[34:15]
they decrease and you'll see plenty of testimonials
[34:18]
because people are just overjoyed,
[34:20]
not because they're...
[34:21]
And so your symptoms also decrease,
[34:24]
the digestion issues, they come back in order,
[34:26]
the anxiety goes, et cetera.
[34:27]
And back to your first questions on emotion,
[34:30]
sometimes we use judgment and say,
[34:32]
okay, this person also needs a bit of help.
[34:35]
So you go on the app, it's called Migraine Heroes.
[34:37]
The website's going to be called very quickly,
[34:40]
Migraine Heroes, that come as well.
[34:42]
You can do your thorough due diligence
[34:44]
and you'll see just a lot of work is love made visible.
[34:47]
Just a lot of love from all angles.
[34:51]
Did you study this after you found out about this
[34:54]
or were you already studying it?
[34:56]
Because I know you've studied traditional Chinese medicine
[34:59]
in addition to the other things, yeah.
[35:02]
Yeah, so I started a completely classic career.
[35:05]
I actually am an engineer by background
[35:07]
and I studied at Harvard and I studied business at Harvard.
[35:12]
But I had a skiing accident myself,
[35:14]
I lost half of my blood, I shrunk a kidney
[35:16]
and I never was transfused.
[35:17]
And so even though I did not have migraines,
[35:20]
I had a lot of physical complications
[35:22]
that really resemble a lot of what my,
[35:24]
the people I work with go through.
[35:25]
And that doctor, she changed my life
[35:27]
in three weeks and 14 foods.
[35:29]
And I was like, what?
[35:31]
How can you do that after 12 years of me limping?
[35:34]
And I was in shock.
[35:36]
I was like, how did she do that?
[35:37]
I went back to work.
[35:38]
All of my male colleagues told me,
[35:39]
Diane, it's placebo.
[35:41]
And I thought, oh my God, guys, if you knew,
[35:42]
like my cycles are back to where they were when I was 17.
[35:46]
I can't placebo, that doesn't exist.
[35:48]
Anyway, I was really intrigued.
[35:50]
So I had started to study with her actually before
[35:53]
and I studied more and more
[35:54]
and she's helped me to develop all of that.
[35:56]
She's 72, Dr. Yifang Zhang.
[35:59]
She comes from a descent
[36:00]
of traditional Chinese medicine doctors.
[36:02]
We've developed everything together.
[36:03]
And so whenever I was having difficult cases
[36:06]
and still once a month I have, I'm like,
[36:08]
oh, I have a few, three really unusual situations.
[36:10]
Can you help me clarify?
[36:12]
It goes usually way beyond migraine.
[36:14]
We exchange and it's an amazing knowledge
[36:16]
that is passed on from her family
[36:18]
that we've assembled as an AI with the Western science
[36:23]
because we need to know which medication you take.
[36:25]
Everything we do is medication compatible.
[36:27]
You want to respect your medication
[36:29]
and let it act where it acts.
[36:31]
You manage your pain.
[36:32]
We have, our job is that you have no more pain.
[36:35]
And as you don't have pain anymore,
[36:37]
then you can revise with your doctor,
[36:39]
your medication regime.
[36:40]
And most people decrease it.
[36:42]
Usually doctors will spontaneously say,
[36:44]
oh, your thyroid's better.
[36:45]
Let's just cut it in half.
[36:47]
Your mood seems better.
[36:48]
I think we can cut the antidepressants by half.
[36:51]
Let's see if we can cut them all together.
[36:53]
And as that happens and people feel a lot more in control
[36:56]
and again, go from being migraine sufferers
[36:58]
to migraine heroes.
[37:00]
It reminds me a lot of my experiences with IBS,
[37:03]
just trying to get help.
[37:04]
And then finally finding a doctor
[37:06]
who spent an hour and a half talking to me
[37:08]
about my entire life and every part of me.
[37:10]
So many women just bounce around
[37:12]
being treated like body parts.
[37:14]
You must hear these stories all the time.
[37:18]
What like having body parts issue
[37:20]
and being bounced around for one doctor,
[37:23]
one body parts, just constant.
[37:25]
And it's a really long quest for them, really long.
[37:28]
So I always tell people, I'm like, I hope,
[37:30]
but I think I'm your last person
[37:33]
and we do everything in our power.
[37:35]
This is where it's very different.
[37:37]
I think our goal first and foremost is to solve the issue.
[37:41]
And so we've gone over mountains now, even inside the app.
[37:44]
So there's an app, right?
[37:45]
There's a chat with real humans.
[37:46]
You don't have an app like that.
[37:48]
It's a really bad idea if you want to try to make money.
[37:52]
If you try to solve people's issues,
[37:53]
then it's a really good idea.
[37:55]
We even have an AI chat whose job
[37:57]
is just to service people.
[37:59]
If it's 2 a.m. and you have a massive migraine attack,
[38:01]
we have a Migraine Now button
[38:02]
that is going to guide you through,
[38:04]
okay, what to do now it's 2 a.m.
[38:06]
What is this migraine about?
[38:08]
It's going to ask you questions
[38:10]
and then help you navigate to what is causing this migraine
[38:13]
in this very specific moment
[38:15]
and what can you do to abort it and stop it in flight
[38:19]
so that it doesn't develop and last for three days
[38:21]
so that you can go back to your children
[38:24]
and take care of them and just be a mom
[38:27]
and do the small and really large things
[38:29]
that you want to achieve in life.
[38:31]
Well, it's a part of personalized medicine
[38:32]
because this is walking you through all the different things.
[38:35]
Thank you so much.
[38:36]
Thank you so much for having me.
[38:38]
I really appreciate it too.
[38:40]
Hot Flash Inc. was created and is hosted by Anne-Marie McQueen
[38:43]
produced and edited by Sonia Mack.
[38:45]
The information contained in this podcast
[38:47]
is intended for informational purposes only
[38:49]
and is not intended for the purpose of diagnosing,
[38:51]
treating, curing or preventing any disease.
[38:54]
Before using any products referenced on the podcast,
[38:56]
consult with your healthcare provider,
[38:58]
read all labels and heed all directions
[38:59]
and cautions that accompany the products.
[39:01]
Information received through the podcast
[39:03]
should not be used in place of a consultation
[39:05]
or advice from a healthcare provider.
[39:06]
If you suspect you have a medical problem,
[39:08]
i.e. menopause or anything else,
[39:10]
or any healthcare questions,
[39:11]
please promptly see your healthcare provider.
[39:13]
This podcast, including Anne-Marie McQueen
[39:15]
and any producers or editors,
[39:17]
disclaim any responsibility from any possible adverse effects
[39:19]
on the use of any information contained herein.
[39:22]
Opinions of guests on this podcast are their own
[39:25]
and the podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility
[39:27]
for statements made by guests.
[39:29]
This podcast does not make any representations
[39:31]
or warranties about a guest's qualifications or credibility.
[39:34]
This podcast may contain paid endorsements
[39:36]
and advertisements for products or services.
[39:38]
Individuals on this podcast may have direct
[39:40]
or indirect financial interest
[39:41]
in products or services referred to herein.
[39:44]
This podcast is owned by Hot Flash Inc. Media.
