Migraine Heroes
212- Traditional Chinese Medicine for Migraine Care [Podcast with Diane Ducarme]
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212- Traditional Chinese Medicine for Migraine Care [Podcast with Diane Ducarme]

32 min

00:00
-32:00

Diane Ducarme is the Founder & CEO of Migraine Heroes, is a leading figure in migraine investigation, blending the wisdom of Eastern Medicine with Western science and advanced technology to uncover the true roots of migraine disease. Diane’s approach uniquely emphasizes adding functional foods instead of eliminating them, shifting away from restrictive practices to focus on nourishing the body. Diane’s dedication continues to transform lives, offering a holistic path to relief, resilience, and wellness for those navigating migraine disease. Dr. Vinu and Diane discuss how 1 in 5 women have migraines and how migraines triple to quadruples for women once they reach puberty. Diane explains how the migraine attacks possibly are started in the digestive and hormonal systems. They also discuss how your gut has such a profound impact on the health of your brain. A healthy, balanced gut means no more error messages. No more error messages means no more migraines. Tune in as they discuss: How migraines are genetic The importance of a balanced gut for migraines Diet modifications for migraines Why the birth control pill is over prescribed for migraines How to get rid of a migraine naturally

Transcript

[00:00]

I am Dr. Vinu Jyothi, a Preventive Medicine Specialist and proud member of the PCOS DIVA

[00:12]

team.

[00:13]

I have with me today, Diane Dupont.

[00:17]

She is the Founder and Seed Brain Heroes.

[00:20]

She is a leading person in migraine investigation.

[00:24]

She influences the wisdom of Eastern medicine with Western science and advanced technology

[00:31]

to uncover the true roots of migraine disease.

[00:34]

She has an MD background in science and engineering and fluency in seven languages including Mandarin.

[00:43]

Diane brings a rich perspective to the complex world of migraine care.

[00:49]

Her journey has taken her from engineering to traditional Chinese medicine studies in

[00:54]

China and more recently neuroscience research at Harvard.

[00:59]

She has a unique approach that emphasizes adding functional foods instead of eliminating

[01:05]

them, shifting away from restrictive practices to nourish the body.

[01:10]

I am really excited to speak to Diane today from Migraine Heroes.

[01:14]

Hey Diane, welcome to our podcast.

[01:18]

Thank you so much for having me Vinu.

[01:20]

Oh yes, so why migraines?

[01:23]

How did you chance upon migraine or migraine research and migraine care?

[01:29]

That's a wonderful question and it's been a really long journey.

[01:33]

I think 10 years journey from the first time my sister said, Diane, I have a lot of migraine

[01:39]

and I'm going to see doctors to do MRI all the way to now where we have a beautiful app

[01:46]

with an AI in the app store called Migraine Heroes.

[01:49]

It's been a really, really long and unexpected, completely unexpected journey.

[01:54]

So my sister whispered, you know, Diane, I really feel unwell.

[01:58]

I have migraine and I don't dare say to mom.

[02:01]

And the reason why she says I don't dare say to mom is because my mom just lost her little

[02:06]

brother of a very violent form of brain cancer called a glioblastoma and he was in stage

[02:13]

four.

[02:14]

And so the tumor had grown from a pebble all the way to the size of an orange in the

[02:19]

space of a few weeks.

[02:21]

He had gotten operated once really well and the tumor regrew and he died and left four

[02:26]

children behind.

[02:27]

And so my sister was rightfully so and like a lot of people who suffer from migraine disease,

[02:34]

extremely anxious.

[02:36]

And I'm not a saint because a lot of people, when you tell them you have migraine, they

[02:41]

will hear you have a headache.

[02:42]

And in the past, that is the person I had been for many, many years.

[02:47]

I have to confess that I would not hear it fully, but that's the given the circumstances

[02:52]

and the fact that my sister had three children herself, I said, hey, you know what?

[02:57]

I think I know someone who can help.

[02:59]

And I said to her, we need to first write all of your symptoms, not just your migraine,

[03:04]

all of your symptoms.

[03:05]

So we went and wrote three pages on her health from birth to now and how the migraine has

[03:10]

started.

[03:11]

And then we went on a call with Dr. Yifang Zhang and I had known Dr. Yifang Zhang for

[03:16]

a couple of years then.

[03:18]

And she had helped me with getting over my own, you know, physical injuries.

[03:24]

And we went on a call with her and she informed my sister what to eat.

[03:29]

And three to four months later, my sister no longer had migraine and she was really

[03:32]

happy and I didn't think much of it at that time.

[03:36]

But later on, so this was 2015, later on in 2019, my neighbor here in New Zealand said,

[03:42]

also Alexandra, I have had a really confrontational conversation with my dad and like, what is

[03:49]

this about?

[03:50]

And she says, well, I've had migraine for seven years.

[03:52]

And I said to her, oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know my sister used to have them.

[03:56]

I think they can be very debilitating.

[03:57]

And she said, yes, and now he's telling me that I need to get medicated for life, including

[04:02]

having injections.

[04:03]

And I told her, come on, that's a weird idea.

[04:06]

Surely no one does that.

[04:07]

Again, please, to your audience, forgive my ignorance.

[04:10]

I was just a normal person.

[04:12]

And I tell her, hey, you know what?

[04:15]

I know someone, I think she can help.

[04:18]

I'll just WhatsApp you a few questions and I'll WeChat her and then I'll tell you what

[04:23]

to eat.

[04:24]

And I think we can sort something out.

[04:25]

And if it doesn't work, then you have still 49.5 years to get medicated with whatever

[04:31]

injections you were referring to.

[04:33]

Just give me six months.

[04:34]

OK.

[04:35]

And after four months, again, she no longer had migraine.

[04:38]

So I asked her, why did your father recommend you that?

[04:42]

And she said to me, the most bizarre thing.

[04:44]

She said, my father is a neurologist in New York.

[04:47]

And I really thought, what?

[04:49]

Now, that does not make any sense.

[04:51]

Her father, clearly, if he's a neurologist based in New York, the guy is smart.

[04:55]

Like there's no other way around it.

[04:56]

Second, if he listens to his daughter, he's also caring.

[04:59]

Plus, it's his daughter.

[05:00]

He's loving her.

[05:01]

Right.

[05:02]

And so I thought, I must be missing something or maybe some of the foods I gave her were

[05:06]

close to medication.

[05:07]

And so I started to dig online and I realized it was 18 percent of women having migraine

[05:12]

disease, like one in five women.

[05:14]

And I realized they were genetic.

[05:17]

And I realized that, indeed, what you do is you lead a life of medication.

[05:23]

And I started to realize and remember so many of the conversations I had had with my friends

[05:28]

where they would say, Diane, I'm going to go home.

[05:31]

I have a migraine.

[05:33]

And I really thought something's off.

[05:35]

And when seeing all of these walls of pain on Facebook, it really, really made my heart

[05:40]

completely melt.

[05:41]

And I felt in compassionate love with these women in particular, but also men and children

[05:46]

who were suffering in silence and that society wouldn't listen to.

[05:51]

Yes.

[05:52]

No.

[05:53]

Yeah.

[05:54]

I understand.

[05:55]

Right.

[05:56]

That that is really moving.

[05:57]

I'm glad you're able to help so many people with migraines, you know.

[06:01]

And so your background, right, incredibly diverse, you know, engineering and then science

[06:07]

and then Eastern medicine.

[06:10]

So do you want to tell us how that came about?

[06:13]

Yes.

[06:14]

I think when I was a kid, I wanted to become a doctor and then I went to move to London

[06:18]

with my family and I thought, no, I want to become a businesswoman and travel around the

[06:21]

world.

[06:22]

And I studied engineering.

[06:24]

I had lots of chemistry, physics and coding, et cetera, at university.

[06:29]

And then.

[06:30]

So that was a bachelor of science followed by a master in finance.

[06:35]

Then I went to Harvard Business School.

[06:36]

But you can't change your nature.

[06:39]

I also had a skiing accident when I was 17, I broke my femur, I lost half of my blood

[06:43]

and I shrunk a kidney.

[06:45]

And that made me very, very, very weak with a lot of problems in my body.

[06:49]

I didn't have PCOS or migraines, but gosh, I was bloated, gosh, I was fatigued.

[06:53]

I would nap from 2 p.m. to 8 a.m. the next day.

[06:56]

I was a physical mess on the weekend.

[06:59]

You wouldn't see that.

[07:00]

It's a bit like a migraine.

[07:01]

You don't see that.

[07:02]

But I was so, so, so tired.

[07:04]

And I tried lots of diets to lose the weight and lose the bloating, a pill to regulate

[07:10]

my menstruation, which stopped coming for seven months after I stopped the pill.

[07:15]

And I was like, I was crying, oh, my God, what's happening to me?

[07:19]

Until I met Dr. Zhang and she fixed it all in three weeks, just with foods.

[07:23]

And I went back to work and my colleagues told me, Diane, it's placebo.

[07:27]

And I thought, oh, wow, that's what they think.

[07:30]

I don't think I can just control my menstruation with my mind.

[07:34]

I don't think this is it.

[07:35]

I think this woman is genius.

[07:37]

And this way of thinking is different, is very different to my Western mind.

[07:42]

And by speaking Mandarin, and I had learned six languages before then, I felt Mandarin

[07:48]

was so different to the other languages, so different.

[07:51]

And the medicine was so different to the way we would see things.

[07:55]

We would see things as a cause and effect, and they would see things differently.

[07:58]

And so I started to be fascinated to bring both.

[08:01]

It's not that one is better than the other one.

[08:03]

It's just that they're so complementary.

[08:05]

And for migraine disease, it's with that complementarity that you can become a migraine

[08:10]

hero by really understanding much beyond your brain pain, what else is going on in your

[08:15]

body, maybe PCOS.

[08:17]

Right.

[08:17]

Yeah.

[08:19]

And that's interesting.

[08:20]

Right.

[08:20]

That's exactly what I was going to ask you, because you're right.

[08:23]

A lot of women do suffer with migraines.

[08:25]

And do you know of underlying reasons for those migraines?

[08:31]

Because, you know, I know hormonal imbalances and gut biome have been linked to it.

[08:37]

Right. And along with insulin resistance and all of these are things women with PCOS also

[08:45]

experience, you know.

[08:47]

So so can you talk to us a little more about that?

[08:50]

Absolutely.

[08:51]

So migraine, to have migraine, you need a genetic predisposition.

[08:56]

This is why some people understand what it is and some people just don't because empathy

[09:00]

is the ability to relate to what you what is closest to what the other person relates

[09:05]

to. So there's one to one hundred and twenty eight genes, Lockheed, that have been

[09:09]

identified that cause migraine disease.

[09:11]

So they run in families and that's proven scientifically.

[09:15]

Now, what is really, really fascinating is that because it's genetic, it's five percent

[09:19]

of boys and girls, right?

[09:21]

Because mother nature 50 50, right?

[09:23]

We're going to be fair.

[09:24]

However, there's a big however, the incidence is going to triple to quadruple for women

[09:29]

at puberty. And so the moment the hormones kick in, not just a hormone, the full the

[09:36]

moment the woman becomes different to the man in the way that she can produce life.

[09:43]

Not sometimes we we we constrain women to hormones, but think of it like the fundamental

[09:50]

difference between the man and woman.

[09:51]

A woman can produce a brain and a heart and bones and flesh and blood and a liver and

[09:58]

eyes and hair and nails.

[10:00]

That's what we do.

[10:01]

Men produce cells and they give us similar cells that that enable us to produce that

[10:07]

child. But fundamentally, if you were to compare a female factory to a man factory, you

[10:12]

know, one maybe produces envelope and the factory of a woman produces cars.

[10:16]

It's a very different factory.

[10:18]

And so like in the PCOS world, where many of the signals of the machine can go wrong

[10:25]

when they go wrong.

[10:27]

A woman with migraine disease has a dashboard that signals pain.

[10:33]

And so in the latest science, they really confirm what we see in migraine heroes.

[10:37]

They confirm, they say, we think that migraine is like a fire alarm.

[10:42]

It's a fire alarm that alerts of a problem.

[10:45]

So if you have PCOS and a genetic predisposition for migraine, then for sure you have

[10:51]

both. And maybe your mind goes first to PCOS.

[10:54]

Maybe your mind goes first to migraine.

[10:56]

However, it's the combination of the two that makes the pain.

[11:01]

If you remove one, you're able to remove another.

[11:03]

However, if you make one worse and you say, I'm going to focus on my migraine, let go

[11:09]

of my PCOS and medicate heavily, then you are likely going to not be a migraine hero,

[11:16]

but be a migraine sufferer for a really long time because you will make your PCOS worse

[11:20]

and therefore your migraine worse in the process.

[11:22]

Yes.

[11:24]

No, that was that was very well put, you know, so they kind of go hand in hand.

[11:29]

And, you know, if you want to talk about a lot of women with PCOS do have issues with

[11:36]

losing weight, right?

[11:37]

Losing weight, the hormonal imbalance part of it.

[11:41]

And for being, you know, to become a migraine hero, you talk about diet, right?

[11:48]

Which becomes a major factor as well for women with PCOS.

[11:54]

So, you know, what kind of diet modifications have you seen to help?

[11:59]

And because, like you said, they kind of go hand in hand and doing those is going to help

[12:04]

both of the aspects of your life, you know?

[12:08]

Absolutely.

[12:09]

And you know what?

[12:10]

Oftentimes when I meet women, we have this first, you know, diagnostic call and it's

[12:14]

a 90 minute conversation and we go over all of the symptoms that the woman experienced,

[12:19]

like you mentioned exactly the weight, the bloating, you know, the fatigue, the menstruation

[12:25]

disturbances, we talk all about that.

[12:28]

And oftentimes I tell them weight is a symptom.

[12:30]

It's not.

[12:31]

I used to think because when I was at Harvard, I was living in the U.S.

[12:35]

and I was trying to not eat sugar.

[12:38]

It was impossible for me.

[12:39]

It was so hard, so hard.

[12:41]

My mind, I would be in class and I'm like, I'm so hungry right now.

[12:44]

I'm so, so hungry.

[12:45]

I would have to do like Weight Watchers and compute everything I was eating and doing

[12:48]

calorie counting, et cetera, and still my weight from the accident, it was higher than

[12:54]

what I wanted.

[12:54]

And I was getting married.

[12:55]

I had to fit in the white dress, you know, all of that pressure.

[12:59]

And now when I meet women, I tell them the weight is a symptom.

[13:04]

And so when you talk about diet, actually, I don't restrain people.

[13:08]

I add food.

[13:10]

That's a really bizarre thing.

[13:12]

And women will say, I'm adding food and I'm actually losing weight.

[13:15]

And some people might say something.

[13:17]

I remember a woman saying, I got lots of compliments at work.

[13:20]

They said I lost weight.

[13:22]

Initially, it was actually not true.

[13:24]

I had lost gas, meaning my belly was no longer bloated.

[13:29]

So I wasn't having so much gas that my husband and I had to laugh about because, you know,

[13:35]

that's what you have to do if it's so often and so frequent and you have to, you know,

[13:39]

turn that into humor.

[13:41]

And then I also lost weight.

[13:44]

But it was interesting how people noticed from the moment I debloated.

[13:49]

And so what sort of diet?

[13:50]

Yeah, it's really interesting.

[13:51]

Like, I'm adding foods to repair things.

[13:54]

And basically, the answer, which I hated from my teacher of traditional Chinese medicine,

[14:00]

was it depends.

[14:01]

And I hated that answer.

[14:03]

But the reality is it depends.

[14:05]

For example, do you have too much weight because you lack blood volume?

[14:11]

Or do you have too much weight because your liver is intoxicated?

[14:15]

So let's break those down a little bit.

[14:18]

You could have a migraine sufferer, PCOS sufferer, who lacks blood volume.

[14:22]

So for historical reasons, you know, it could be a copper IUD.

[14:29]

She bled a lot, too much.

[14:31]

Or it could be blood donation.

[14:32]

She's just very generous.

[14:34]

She's very kind.

[14:34]

She gives her blood.

[14:36]

Or it can be heavy menstruation, very heavy menstruation because of the cysts and maybe

[14:42]

blood clots or fibroids stuck in her uterus.

[14:44]

We might talk about that later.

[14:47]

Because of all of that, she loses a lot of blood.

[14:49]

Now, a woman in her fertility years is going to lose 23 to 28 liters of menstruation.

[14:54]

That's massive, right?

[14:55]

If you compare her to a man, again, the man doesn't have that.

[14:58]

So we have to refabricate all of the 23 to 28 liters.

[15:02]

And that's just for the average woman.

[15:04]

The woman who has heavy menstruation probably loses twice as much.

[15:07]

If she's not replenishing that, then her body is going to have to prioritize where the blood goes.

[15:16]

And most of the time, it wants to protect the organs in the thorax, meaning her limbs are empty and lethargic.

[15:23]

That can cause migraine.

[15:25]

For example, you know, she's going to say, I have trembling sensations.

[15:28]

I have numbness in my arms, numbness in my legs, bloating.

[15:31]

All of that could be a sign that she has a blood volume deficiency.

[15:35]

And so her brain is going to be in competition with her digestion.

[15:38]

If she eats one cheese chocolate, then the blood goes in the liver and her brain has pain.

[15:45]

If she takes a tryptophan, the tryptophan is going to conflict the blood vessels, sends the blood to the brain.

[15:49]

She's going to momentarily feel better.

[15:51]

However, she's blood volume deficient.

[15:54]

Now, the trick for her is sugar.

[15:56]

If she eats sugar, then the blood is going to go to extremities, just chemically so.

[16:02]

That's according to the East.

[16:03]

And when she takes the blood, her arms and her legs are going to go into movement.

[16:10]

And so it's a bit of a Cinderella charm that is going to expire two hours later, she knows.

[16:15]

So now she needs to do the lunchbox and the laundry and the cooking and the grocery shopping.

[16:19]

And if she eats the sugar, she has that moment, that window of two hours where she has solid energy.

[16:24]

Afterwards, she completely collapses because all of her metabolism needs to metabolize that sugar,

[16:30]

which, by the way, added more poison and more imbalances to her PCOS.

[16:35]

And so in this instance, what you might want to do is help her with blood tonics.

[16:42]

Now, it's complicated because if you do that, you suppose her blood is clean and sometimes it's not.

[16:48]

So you might have migraine if you do that in the first place.

[16:50]

And this is where it's going to depend case by case.

[16:53]

And how you become a migraine hero is by reading your symptoms, but taking them like an onion.

[17:00]

You're unpeeling the layer one at a time.

[17:02]

I also want to talk about a little bit the cysts because the cysts in the uterus themselves, through your vagus nerve,

[17:09]

they can create immense migraine.

[17:11]

And so the woman's going to go through her menstruation and she may have migraine before her menstruation

[17:17]

and very strong premenstrual symptoms.

[17:20]

She also may have massive migraine during her menstruation that are just a sign that the body is anxious

[17:27]

and it's trying, when it's contracting the uterus, it's picking up a signal,

[17:31]

picking up that the contraction is not normal and that the cyst needs to be evacuated.

[17:36]

And so that's something that we do.

[17:39]

And there again, it's not a diet, it's just adding certain foods that will help to do that job,

[17:45]

which is an incredibly important job because when a woman wants to keep her beauty and a beautiful face in the east,

[17:51]

she needs to keep at all times a beautiful uterus.

[17:54]

So it's looking at weight as a symptom, complete symptom, but that can come from many different avenues.

[18:01]

And adding food in order to remove these symptoms, remove these imbalances until her body takes over.

[18:09]

And this is when she becomes a migraine hero.

[18:11]

And this is where, you know, with your protocol, she starts to master her PCOS and feel that diva inside.

[18:18]

Now, that's that's a very real interesting way to put it, because whenever you're talking about nutrition,

[18:24]

you're always talking about eliminating foods and, you know, food groups or, you know, different kinds of foods.

[18:30]

You know, I know there are different diets and, you know, lifestyle changes and everything.

[18:35]

But whenever we're speaking, it's all very restrictive, you know, in a sense.

[18:40]

But what you're bringing up now, it seems to be, you know, adding on different kinds of food.

[18:46]

It's just transitioning the mindset from a restrictive to a more nutritious mindset, you know, which is a very interesting way to look at it.

[18:56]

Yeah. And it reminds me of a story.

[18:58]

It was a woman in Arizona and she had lost weight and her sisters are like, what did you do?

[19:03]

What diet are you on? She's like, I'm not on a diet.

[19:05]

I'm adding food. They're like, oh, liar.

[19:07]

Just tell us what are you doing?

[19:09]

Because you're sick.

[19:10]

This kid also looks really good.

[19:11]

And now you're not in bed anymore.

[19:13]

So what is it?

[19:14]

And she says, you know, and they're like, OK, show the app, show the app.

[19:17]

It can't be that you're adding food.

[19:19]

She's like, no, I promise I'm adding food.

[19:21]

And therefore, I feel my energy is very stable and I don't need to rely as much on bad things.

[19:28]

Yeah. And I really want to acknowledge, like, you know, what you said about elimination diet, because it's very true.

[19:35]

And what is likely going to happen is you're going to have someone who suffers from migraine disease for five, ten, twenty, thirty years.

[19:42]

They're initially going to see doctors, lots of doctors, more specialists, take medication, more medication, medication cocktails, adding, trying new things.

[19:51]

And then also trying elimination diet.

[19:54]

And sometimes, oftentimes, they're going to have hope and something's going to work and start to work for them.

[20:00]

They're like, oh, I found it.

[20:02]

And, you know, indeed, eliminating gluten or dairy or even sometimes red meat or wine or cheese is the solution.

[20:11]

And then the migraine come back.

[20:13]

And this is where they suffer and they become warriors and they are in the trenches again with that same problem that stands in the way of their relationship, stands in the way of their job.

[20:22]

They sometimes might even get fired because of their migraine.

[20:25]

They live a really hard life, especially if it's invisible.

[20:30]

And so they might really feel misunderstood.

[20:34]

Yeah.

[20:35]

Yes.

[20:36]

Yeah.

[20:37]

So the other thing I was going to talk about was, you know, now that we know a lot more women suffer from migraine.

[20:43]

Right.

[20:44]

And PCOS, you know, all of it kind of goes hand in hand.

[20:47]

And the other thing that goes hand in hand is women and stress with us now juggling, you know, work and life and balancing and kids and families.

[20:57]

And, you know, so is stress also one of the precursors?

[21:03]

Absolutely.

[21:05]

Yes, yes, yes.

[21:06]

And yes.

[21:07]

And what is fascinating is, again, if you again take my loving traditional Chinese medicine doctor, Dr.

[21:15]

Zhang, with whom I work, she would say it depends.

[21:18]

And where it depends is for some women, you notice that the migraine attack comes in the phase of stress.

[21:25]

So it could be let's imagine you have a deadline for work combined with a lot of children activities and you're in that phase of racing and your body sort of collapses and goes in a migraine attack.

[21:37]

And you try and you'd probably push through because you've learned over the years to really just I had a woman she was seeing soldiers through like your army style, not listening to your body.

[21:47]

Just you have no choice.

[21:48]

You try to survive while some others will go through all of that phase.

[21:52]

And now it's Friday evening.

[21:54]

They can finally rest and then they have the migraine, the migraine attack.

[21:58]

And so that can happen on on Friday night, on Saturday, Sunday, or each time they go on a holiday, they have migraine.

[22:06]

And that's a different it's a different way to look at it.

[22:09]

Those are two imbalances that are stress, you know, causing the migraine.

[22:14]

And there's a trigger, but in a different way, corrected in different ways as well.

[22:21]

And both related to PCOS.

[22:23]

Yeah.

[22:24]

Yeah.

[22:25]

Yeah.

[22:26]

Yeah.

[22:27]

So the other thing we notice with PCOS is nutritional deficiencies.

[22:32]

So do you see in your practice a lot of women, you know, especially when they have migraines?

[22:38]

And is there anything that they can do to supplement to, you know, kind of prevent it or treat better?

[22:45]

Yeah, absolutely.

[22:46]

It's very true.

[22:47]

A lot of women have deficiencies and there are supplements.

[22:51]

And actually, the science really abounds in what we do at Migraine Heroes and a lot of the foods that we give.

[22:58]

However, you can also find them in capsules.

[23:01]

And so, for example, the leading supplements are magnesium, you know, going back to your stress.

[23:06]

Now, of course, find the one type that suits you, right?

[23:09]

Your bowel movement needs to be perfect.

[23:11]

Not runny, not constipation like or rabbit like, but really that banana shape that comes out very fast.

[23:18]

I know I talk about a bit of bowel movements.

[23:20]

They're really important.

[23:21]

Yeah.

[23:22]

So magnesium is one.

[23:23]

Another one that is quite famous for migraine is CoQ10.

[23:27]

And that will also help with migraine disease.

[23:30]

A third one that has been a beautiful article.

[23:33]

If you go on our website, MigraineHeroes.com, like feverfew, 1985.

[23:38]

Like as old as that, we did an analysis on women and we could see 40% of them responded really well to feverfew.

[23:45]

And the other one had diarrhea.

[23:46]

And back in the 80s, we were not sure why.

[23:48]

But this is something.

[23:49]

It's in the family of chamomile and you can find them in the form of supplements.

[23:54]

Another one that is really good.

[23:56]

Omega-3 for the brain.

[23:58]

Really good and stabilizing.

[24:00]

And so these are, I would say that.

[24:02]

Oh, yeah.

[24:03]

And one more.

[24:04]

Riboflavin.

[24:05]

So vitamin B2 can be also excellent.

[24:07]

It has been proven scientifically to.

[24:09]

There's a few scientific papers.

[24:11]

If you look them, they're on our website.

[24:13]

Like of other people having, you know, written exceptional documentation and analysis on this.

[24:19]

And they can be helpful.

[24:20]

The one thing I will say is I'm, of course, biased because all of the people I meet, they still have migraine in spite of the medication.

[24:27]

In spite of the supplements.

[24:29]

So again, they might be in a situation where they were having a lot of migraine and start to take magnesium and it helps.

[24:35]

And then it no longer does.

[24:37]

And the reason for that is really imagine your brain and imagine your body as an onion.

[24:43]

There's a lot of layers.

[24:44]

And so sometimes you catch a layer.

[24:45]

But there's just, you know, a lot of other layers coming on.

[24:50]

And so sometimes it's more complicated than that.

[24:52]

Also, if you've had a magnesium deficiency and stress for a long time, there's a bit of a domino effect going on in your systems.

[24:59]

And so probably the reason why you have migraine, you eliminate some form of migraines or some families of migraines.

[25:06]

For example, stress related migraines are less, but still the migraine during menstruation are a lot.

[25:11]

And it's just because they're not the same family.

[25:13]

And your brain is technically not seeing the same thing.

[25:18]

Let's imagine for a minute you break your knee.

[25:20]

You go to the doctor and you say, oh, I broke my knee.

[25:23]

Can you help me with that?

[25:25]

And they say, oh, yeah, I'm going to give you painkillers.

[25:27]

And you come back for three years and they give you painkillers.

[25:29]

At some point you come back and say, hey, what's the plan here?

[25:32]

Are we planning to fix my knee?

[25:34]

Like, am I going to go into surgery with your brain?

[25:36]

It's a bit the same, except it can say, oh, it's the cyst in your ovary or it's your insulin resistance.

[25:45]

It is your excess sugar.

[25:47]

It is the thickness of your blood.

[25:49]

And so it has a lot of different messages.

[25:52]

That's why you can feel them on your forehead, across your eyebrows, on the right side, on your left side, on the temples.

[25:58]

You can feel them behind the head.

[26:00]

You can feel them moving from behind the head to front of the head.

[26:03]

You can find them in your sinuses, in your ears, etc.

[26:06]

So they all correspond to different things.

[26:08]

So it's always worth trying some of these supplements and seeing if they work great.

[26:14]

If they don't, then no need to spend too much money.

[26:19]

If it's not working, also listen to your body and be reasonable.

[26:23]

Lashing more of that at your body might in itself create a bit more imbalances.

[26:30]

And what do you say is kind of a common theme that we see across women who are trying to manage their PCOS?

[26:37]

As in they present, you know, they go to a doctor and they're always given the oral contraceptive pills as a be-all end-all solution.

[26:47]

And a lot of them are trying to find holistic providers to get to the bottom of their PCOS and to manage their symptoms better, right?

[26:56]

To become a diva.

[26:58]

So it looks like migraines are being treated the same way.

[27:02]

As in you just have painkillers that are being prescribed to you.

[27:06]

And you are trying to look for a more holistic way of dealing with them, right?

[27:12]

So is that the same?

[27:14]

Absolutely.

[27:16]

And I want to really get a button because it goes even further than that.

[27:19]

As you would know, these contraceptives, sometimes they make the situation worse.

[27:22]

Depending, you know, do you still bleed, do you not bleed, etc.

[27:27]

And it's a big deal.

[27:29]

For migraine, it's very similar.

[27:31]

And in Western science, we have identified that when taking too many migraine medication,

[27:37]

you can have what is called medication overuse headaches.

[27:41]

Where you start to have migraine that are not stress-induced, that are not chocolate or wine or excess-induced, that are medication-induced.

[27:50]

They're also called rebound migraine, meaning you abort a migraine with medication.

[27:56]

And then the next day you have another form of migraine.

[28:00]

And that's because of the migraine of the previous day.

[28:03]

That's why in the Migraine Heroes app, we teach women how to, and men and children,

[28:08]

we have a Migraine Now button to teach them how to abort a migraine naturally.

[28:12]

So that the next day they feel completely sharp and free.

[28:15]

And they're like, oh wow, that's a different experience.

[28:18]

Now the reason for that is your liver system is massively linked to your brain.

[28:24]

And so if you over-intoxicate your liver system with any types of substances,

[28:28]

and lots of women will at some point stop drinking wine naturally.

[28:33]

They will say, oh my god, that's so not worth it.

[28:35]

So the more you intoxicate your liver with substances, among which are medication,

[28:40]

and among which can be long contraceptives, because it really changes your hormones,

[28:45]

the more your brain will hurt, will be in pain.

[28:49]

Now I will say for contraception, if you are given a contraceptive,

[28:53]

and it gives you more migraine, stop it as soon as you can.

[28:57]

Because otherwise you go in a massive domino effect,

[29:00]

and it might be really hard for you to come back on your own.

[29:03]

If you feel you've put, for example, a migraine IUD in particular,

[29:08]

and that two years later it started to give you migraine,

[29:12]

and you feel intuitively it's that, and your doctor tells you it cannot be that,

[29:16]

trust your intuition.

[29:18]

Maybe try to see someone else and try another contraceptive.

[29:23]

Trust your intuition.

[29:25]

Because the woman is going to have a lot of intuition with that.

[29:27]

And she's usually right.

[29:29]

The doctor might oppose to that idea and say, look, you didn't have them for two years.

[29:33]

Why would they just appear now?

[29:35]

Maybe over time the woman wins the argument and the migraine IUD is removed.

[29:40]

However, the migraine will not go.

[29:42]

Because now there's a domino effect inside,

[29:44]

and she has other root causes and imbalances that are taking over and keeping the migraine in.

[29:52]

So I just want to really call women for their smartness, common sense,

[29:58]

intuition, trust, and empowerment.

[30:02]

Really trust you need to feel better, and you need to be listened to.

[30:08]

Yeah, that's awesome advice.

[30:10]

So trust your gut, and ask more questions,

[30:14]

and try to get to the bottom of whatever symptoms you've been experiencing.

[30:18]

Right?

[30:20]

So, Diane, this was an amazing discussion that we had today.

[30:24]

And if our audience would like to know more about your work and more about what you do,

[30:30]

where can they find you?

[30:32]

They can find us on the Migraine Heroes app in the App Store and Google Play.

[30:36]

Or they can find us on our website, MigraineHeroes.com.

[30:40]

And they can also find former migraine sufferers who are Migraine Heroes on the Migraine Heroes podcast.

[30:45]

And these people do not come for pay.

[30:47]

They just come because they say, look, I just wish I had known this even earlier.

[30:52]

This is beautiful.

[30:54]

One hour long where people explain, you know, all of their life before.

[30:58]

And it's very, very moving and very beautiful.

[31:01]

I always thought, you know, I was always interested in it.

[31:05]

But I thought, you know, maybe others aren't.

[31:07]

And people just love those beautiful, not very Instagrammable, you know,

[31:12]

but very real, very real life with real people.

[31:15]

That sounds awesome.

[31:17]

Thank you so much, Diane.

[31:19]

Thanks for being here.

[31:21]

Thanks for sharing your experience and your knowledge with our audience.

[31:24]

And really nice talking to you today.

[31:26]

And thank you for bringing more divas in the world.

[31:29]

Thank you, Bina.

[31:31]

Absolutely. Thank you.

[31:35]

Well, that wraps up our podcast today.

[31:37]

Thank you so much for joining us on the PCOS Diva podcast.

[31:42]

I hope you enjoyed it.

[31:44]

If you are ready to detox and sparkle,

[31:47]

visit PCOSDiva.com slash sparkle to sign up today

[31:52]

and take the first step toward a brighter, healthier you.

[31:57]

And if you did like this episode,

[31:59]

remember to subscribe to PCOS Diva on SoundCloud or iTunes.

[32:04]

Or wherever else you may be listening to this show.

[32:06]

And if you have a minute,

[32:08]

please leave me a quick review

[32:10]

because I would love to hear from you.

Originally published March 2025

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