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You're doing everything right. So why does your system still tip into migraine over and over again?
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Welcome to Migraine Heroes, a podcast for people living with chronic migraines with years of pain,
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misunderstanding and lack of answers. I'm Diane Ducarme. I've helped more than a thousand people
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reduce the burden of migraines and feel more in control. My mission in life? To help a million
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people. Each episode brings you grounded insight into what your body might be asking for and what
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can truly help. Just to keep you fully supported, this podcast is educational. For diagnosis or
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medication, always work with your doctor. Now take a breath and let's dive in.
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In this episode, you will learn that maybe you're not missing effort, but you might be missing perspective.
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What looks healthy isn't always what your body can truly use, and that sometimes the biggest
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triggers aren't what you do, but what you live in. Stay with me till the end, because at the end of
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this episode, you will have more actionable ways to identify systematic potential migraine triggers
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in your daily life. I meet some of you and you feel confused. You're eating clean, you're exercising,
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you're doing all the right things, avoiding all the triggers, having read all the books, met all
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of the people, read all of the blogs, and you're still getting migraines again. And you're really
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not alone. And this is one of the most frustrating experiences. Migraine is complex and yours is
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unique. And through this podcast, I'm going to try to guide you through what could be happening here,
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sharing with you some of the biggest patterns that I've seen in my work. So I'm going to start
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with this analogy. A baby that is still crying, even though you've done everything right. They've
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been fed, they've not cold, you've held them, comforted them, their clothes are not too tight,
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the diaper is clean, and yet they're still crying. And if you're a parent, whether your children are
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little or like mine, they're now 14 and 11, you know this moment, you run through the checklist
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again and again, almost obsessively, asking yourself, what am I missing? Because you've got to believe
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your child, just like your brain, is not crying for no reason. And sometimes, all you need is just
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another pair of eyes, your partner, your mother, a friend. Because something is there, you just can't
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see it yet. There's a saying in Chinese that I love, it goes like this, you cannot see the true
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face of the mountain because you are in it. And that's exactly what happens with migraines.
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When you're inside your own body, inside your own habits, inside your own stress, your own routines,
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you lose perspective. You're doing your best, you're ticking all of the boxes, but you're still
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in the mountain. And sometimes, what you need is not more effort, it's a different vantage point.
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Someone or something that helps you step aside, even just slightly, to see what you couldn't see
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before. And this is where things start to shift. So today, I'm going to try to be that extra pair
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of eyes for you, your partner, your friend, the one who helps you step back and look again. Because
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migraine is complex and yours is unique. So the first thing that I've observed is how you eat.
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So we're going to start there. One of the biggest limitations is how we think about health in the
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West, is that we simplify too much. We talk about calories in and out, we talk about proteins,
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carbohydrates and fats. We reduce the human body to something almost mechanical. But your body
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is not a spreadsheet. There are not just three types of food and there are not just a few systems
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at play. And what matters is not just what you eat, but how your body actually receives it. Because
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the same food eaten in a different state does not become the same thing in your body. If you are
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anxious, if you are rushing, if you are eating in a state of fight or flight, your vagus nerve is not
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in a rest and digest. It's in survival mode. And maybe survival is your default mode and you don't
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even realize it. And in that state, food is not processed in the same way. It can stagnate,
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it can irritate, it can even become toxic to your system. And I have seen that over and over again at
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Migraine Heroes. Not in everyone, it's not a majority of the cases, but someone eating very
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healthily, yet managing to intoxicate their body. I saw this very clearly for the first time with a
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friend I took to see Dr. Zhang about 10 to 12 years ago. She was eating incredibly well, arguably
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better than most people, and she was constantly bloated. And she said to me, you've just had a
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baby and your stomach is flat, and I look like I've had four children. Not that there's anything, you know,
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systematic about someone having had four children, but you know, that's what she said.
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So when we saw Dr. Zhang, she said something very simple and very confronting. She says,
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I can fix the bloating, but it will come back because it's not about the food. And my friend
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broke down into tears, because underneath it all, there was deep stress. A fear of not finding a
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partner, not having children, not being able to build the life she longed for. And that stress
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was shaping how her body processed everything. She eventually built that life. She has a beautiful
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family today. And the journey mattered, the timing mattered, the internal state mattered.
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So if you feel like you're doing everything right, one of the first questions is not,
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am I eating well? It's, am I digesting well? And your body gives you clues in addition to
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the migraines. A good digestion is fairly quiet. It doesn't leave you bloated. It doesn't cause
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nausea. It doesn't give you vomiting. It doesn't feel stuck. Even your bowel movements tell a
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story. They should be smooth, easy, require no effort or discomfort, limited wiping. And if
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that's not your experience, then what you're looking at is not just diet, it's the gut brain
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conversation, it's the digestion. And that alone can be a major driver of migraines.
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The second big theme around what I see goes really wrong and why people feel they're eating healthily,
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but still having migraines is what we eat. There's something completely fascinating
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about what we eat today. The rhythm of it, it's fast, it's visual, it's like almost hypnotic.
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You have TikTok recipes and Instagram reels and YouTube shorts and food has become performance.
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It has to look good first, bright, aesthetic, camera ready. And I see that home too. So my
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daughter loves cooking. She's actually quite talented. She really enjoys it. And once a week
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she cooks for us and she started to make recipes sometimes from Instagram. And honestly, I adore
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watching her. I really do. Even if quietly, sometimes I know some of these creations can be a
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little, let's say gut-wrenching. The creativity matters and I don't want to cut her passion down.
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So I observe with love from the sidelines. Her body and my sons are much more forgiving than mine.
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And a little bit of naughtiness done with love is okay. Wisdom will come later. And for now
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it's about the love of it. Okay. But I still really understand what's inside of some of these
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recipes. And I'll share with you something that really shifted my perspective. So I have studied
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neuroscience at Harvard X and I did that because I was so curious to understand what we're actually
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doing to the brain and the body. And I remember this moment so vividly, the professor was dissecting
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the body, showing us what's really inside. And I had this almost daring thought. I'm like, wow, like
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this is not sexy at all. It doesn't look like a smoothie. It doesn't look like fresh or vibrant
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or Instagrammable. Trust me, this was not Instagrammable. If anything, this dissected body,
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this gut-brain axis presented in its most raw form, reminded me of what is left in my kitchen
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or in my pot after making a long chicken bone broth. The carcass softened, the vegetables
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completely faded. Everything melted together into something warm, subdued, almost unrecognizable,
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but deeply nourishing. That's what's the inside of the body resembles, the gut-brain axis, not
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bright colors, not sharp, raw textures. Something that has been broken down, transformed so lowly
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over time. And so it makes you pause because so much of what we eat today is designed for the eye,
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not for the body. A smoothie looks clean, it looks vibrant, it looks almost virtuous. A kombucha glows
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in a glass, it's beautiful. But digestion doesn't start in the glass, it starts in the mouth,
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with saliva, with enzymes like amylase, with that first intelligent step of breaking things down,
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signaling to the body what's coming. When we skip that, when we drink our food, rush it, bypass the
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process, the body has to work harder later. And over time, some of these healthy habits can create
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the opposite effect, heaviness, sluggishness, a kind of internal noise that builds quietly.
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So this isn't about removing the joy or the beauty, it's just a gentle invitation to look
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again and ask, is this truly nourishing me or is simply pleasing my eyes? And in this category,
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I'm going to add coffee with milk. Coffee with milk and other creations on Instagram
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are blended in a way that our bodies struggle to understand and make sense of them and creates
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this very heavy, thick, fluid build-up that starts to plug our gut and our gut-brain axis. That is
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something I see over and over again. And then the third thing are structural situations. That's the
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last piece I want to share today, something we don't talk about enough and yet it might be the
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most powerful of all, is the structure of your life, the environment you live in, a toxic relationship,
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night shift work that disrupts your rhythm, a period of grief that quietly sits in your chest
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and doesn't leave. These are not small things, they don't just stay in your mind, they move through
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your body, they shape your biology, they slow down, they slowly, persistently chip away at your
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energy, at your resilience, at your sense of self. And what I see is that you can do everything right
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on the outside, eating well, moving well, trying all the protocols. But if something in your life
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is eating away at you, your body knows, it responds. In the analogy of the baby, it makes me think of, you know,
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sometimes a baby cries because the mom is emotionally unwell or emotionally stressed
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and the baby picks up on it. And sometimes the solution in the case of a baby is as simple as
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explaining the child what situation is going on and it's enough to calm the child down.
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And sometimes something similar, subtly similar, can happen with the brain. Migraines in many cases,
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they're not random, they're signals. And I've seen so many of our heroes in deeply difficult
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relationships, in environments that drain them, and the body keeps the score, it speaks, sometimes
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really loudly. There are books like The Body Keeps the Score that talk about these topics.
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So this is where the work becomes more subtle, but also more profound. It's not always about
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doing more, it's about healing differently, about creating space for forgiveness where possible,
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about gently, consistently priming your mind towards safety, towards hope, towards something
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lighter. Not in a forced or superficial way, but in a way that allows your system to soften again.
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Because your mental and emotional world is not separate from your physical health, it's deeply
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intertwined. And sometimes tending to that is the most important step of all. So if there's just one
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thing to take away from today, it's this. Don't try to do more, try to see differently. Remember
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the Chinese saying, you cannot see the true face of the mountain because you are in it. And just to
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be honest with you, learning to see differently, that's really hard work. If it were easy, if I could
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have handed you a two-page checklist back when I started and said, hey, here's this, you know, it's
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going to solve your migraines, I would have done it, posted it online and moved on with my life.
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But it's not that simple, because you're not simple. Your body isn't simple. What we've been
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building over the last seven years, since 2019, is something that tries to meet that complexity.
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An app that helps guide you through these questions, helps you connect the dots, helps you
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understand your unique pattern. It's not perfect, and I won't pretend it is, but we're moving
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relentlessly and fast in that direction. We genuinely believe that your life matters, that
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what you're experiencing is very real, is nuanced and deserves to be understood. And our mission is
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simple, to take that complexity and help you turn it into clarity and into small meaningful steps
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you can actually act on. And remember, every small step you take moves you closer to freedom.
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You are powerful, you are resilient, and you're not alone. Keep rising, Migraine Hero.
