[00:00]
Now, there's a third type of stress, which I've observed, which is an internal induced
[00:05]
stress is when your body is stressed, but your environment isn't.
[00:09]
So there's nothing wrong with the family.
[00:11]
There's nothing wrong with the work.
[00:13]
There's nothing wrong with the thoughts, but your body's trying to deal with something
[00:17]
that really stresses it.
[00:31]
I'm your host, Krista Bingler, and I'm going to guess we have at least one thing in common,
[00:35]
that we're both in pursuit of a less stressed life.
[00:38]
On this show, I'll be interviewing experts and sharing clinical pearls from my years
[00:41]
of practice to support high performing health savvy women in pursuit of abundance and a
[00:46]
less stressed life.
[00:48]
One of my beliefs is that we always have options for getting the results we want.
[00:51]
So let's see what's out there together.
[00:58]
Okay, it is March and it is the month of my favorite holiday.
[01:08]
So we are going to celebrate here at the Less Stressed Life in partnership with Jigsaw Health,
[01:14]
and we created the first giveaway I've done in years and we made it really solid.
[01:19]
So there's four winners you can enter throughout the month of March.
[01:22]
Just go to KristaBingler.com forward slash giveaway.
[01:25]
That will also be in the show notes.
[01:26]
We're giving away four prizes, two mega bundles from Jigsaw Health with prizes worth more
[01:32]
than $200 of all of our favorite products like MagSoothe, MagSRT, potassium cocktail,
[01:39]
other electrolytes from Jigsaw, and also a 30 minute one on one with me, which you can
[01:44]
not normally get, and then also a mineral test with review.
[01:48]
So if you're interested in any of those, one prize per person to try to share the love
[01:52]
a little bit throughout the entire month of March, you can enter.
[01:56]
Just go to KristaBingler.com forward slash giveaway.
[01:58]
We've got a really cool software that makes it really easy.
[02:01]
You just click some button, subscribe to the podcast.
[02:03]
You can have more entries really simple, and then you'll be set to go.
[02:07]
We'll announce the winners after April 1st, after the giveaway closes throughout the month
[02:12]
So happy month of St. Patrick's Day, my very favorite holiday.
[02:16]
So go get entered, KristaBingler.com forward slash giveaway.
[02:19]
Today on The Less Stressed Life, I am joined by Diane DeKarm, who is the host of the Migraine
[02:24]
Heroes podcast and founder of the Migraine Heroes app.
[02:28]
She studied business and neuroscience with Harvard Business School and HarvardX and trained
[02:32]
in traditional Chinese medicine in Shanghai and at the Academy of Healing Nutrition.
[02:37]
She blends Eastern medicine, engineer thinking, and modern science to uncover the real roots
[02:42]
Through her podcast Migraine Heroes, she shares breakthrough insights, practical tools, and
[02:46]
empowering strategies to help people reclaim control of their lives.
[02:50]
Welcome to the show, Diane.
[02:51]
Diane DeKarm Thank you so much, Krista, for having me.
[02:53]
Krista Bingler Yeah.
[02:55]
I cannot wait to hear a little bit about how you got into this topic, how this became your
[02:59]
life's work with this background of business and neuroscience.
[03:02]
So tell us a little bit of the story of how you ended up here doing so much around migraine
[03:09]
or I don't know if you do more than migraine, any other pain-mediated things, but tell us
[03:13]
a little bit of this origin story and how you arrived here, please.
[03:16]
Diane DeKarm Yeah, I arrived here in the most unconventional
[03:20]
It was when I was 17, I had a skiing accident, broke my femur, I lost half of my blood, and
[03:24]
I shrunk a kidney.
[03:25]
And it took me 12 years to find a solution.
[03:28]
And because I was working for business in different places, I worked in all over Europe,
[03:32]
in South Africa, and then in China.
[03:35]
In China, I wanted to just try traditional Chinese medicine.
[03:37]
I just thought I'd like to make my mind over it.
[03:40]
I was studying it on weekends because I was just curious.
[03:43]
But I wasn't quite convinced.
[03:44]
I thought some of the concepts were a bit esoteric.
[03:47]
And my doctor, Dr. Zhang, who I love, she's 70 plus, she's retired, we still work together.
[03:54]
She fixed me within three weeks.
[03:56]
And I was not even trying to get fixed.
[03:58]
I was just so unwell, but completely passed.
[04:01]
When you've lived for 12 years and you just accept that this is now you, this is the new
[04:05]
version of yourself.
[04:07]
She put me back in place to where I was when I was 17.
[04:10]
And later in 2015, a couple of years later, my uncle died of a brain tumor.
[04:15]
And my sister took me apart, one of my sisters, and she said, look, I'm very concerned.
[04:19]
I have these migraines for the last three years.
[04:21]
I've done a couple of MRIs, and I don't dare say anything to mom, but I think I might have
[04:27]
And I told her, look, I don't doubt that you're in massive pain, but maybe it's not that.
[04:32]
Maybe it's something else.
[04:33]
And especially if they haven't seen anything with the MRI, which is, I don't know what
[04:37]
So I said to her, I know someone.
[04:39]
And together, we did a really long call with Dr. Zhang.
[04:41]
And after three to four months, she no longer had migraines.
[04:44]
Dr. Zhang was just adding food.
[04:46]
And I loved that model.
[04:47]
And I thought, wow, this is quite cool.
[04:49]
And so this was 11 years ago.
[04:52]
And I didn't think much of it.
[04:54]
Except four years later, another friend of mine says the same.
[04:57]
And she says, I have migraines, I've had them for seven years.
[05:00]
I suffer every month.
[05:01]
And I said to her, I'm so sorry, I didn't know.
[05:03]
She says, I'm not trying to advertise that at all.
[05:06]
I tried to hide it, actually.
[05:07]
And my father recommended I have a lifetime of injections in the brain.
[05:11]
And I told her, what?
[05:13]
Injections in the brain?
[05:14]
That sounds unreasonable.
[05:16]
Why would he recommend that?
[05:17]
And she said, actually, he's a neurologist based in New York.
[05:20]
And I thought, oh, OK, but still, 50 years of injections.
[05:24]
I understand you feel devastated.
[05:26]
Let me try to ask you a couple of questions and figure out if we can find why your brain
[05:32]
And three to four months later, she also no longer had migraines.
[05:35]
And I really thought, why?
[05:37]
Her father's clearly very smart, clearly very educated, and clearly a loving father.
[05:43]
Why would he not tell her what to do?
[05:45]
So some of the foods I must have recommended her must be very close to medications.
[05:50]
So on my weekends, because that's how, you know, I'm very nerdy, on my weekends, I had
[05:53]
to search for all of the medications that he was recommending and all the foods that
[05:57]
she had been consuming, imagining that they would converge and have the same chemical
[06:02]
And what I discovered was absolutely insane.
[06:04]
I discovered that she was taking, she was going to take painkillers, so a thing to silence
[06:11]
And I said, oh, what I wanted to give her was things to address why the body was in
[06:17]
A bit like if you hurt your knee and you go to your doctor and you say, my knee hurts,
[06:21]
And he was suggesting a lifetime of painkillers.
[06:24]
But you might say, hey, this is your knee.
[06:26]
Maybe we put a band-aid over it.
[06:28]
Maybe you stop walking for a while.
[06:29]
Maybe we deswell it and maybe you get operated if you need to.
[06:33]
And that's what happened for her.
[06:34]
And it was so life-changing that I started to look it up a little.
[06:38]
And I saw it was 18% of women in that scientific paper.
[06:41]
And I thought, what?
[06:42]
One in five women.
[06:43]
It means one in five of my friends.
[06:45]
I started to recollect all of these conversations.
[06:47]
And then I saw walls and walls of pain.
[06:50]
And I really thought, wow, this really doesn't make sense.
[06:52]
All of these people are in pain.
[06:55]
And they're taking more and more medication and being more and more in pain.
[07:00]
And I fell into a very compassionate love of these people completely suffering, being
[07:08]
And I called a couple of my friends and said, I remember you mentioning you had migraines.
[07:11]
You still have them.
[07:12]
And they'd say, more than ever.
[07:14]
And I don't know what to do about it.
[07:16]
And so that's how I unnaturally got into it.
[07:19]
Yeah, I am so curious, which is how this show really thrives, is I just have lots of questions
[07:28]
So I think that the provider that you were seeing, and you were in China, it was Dr.
[07:33]
So was she a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner?
[07:37]
For a couple of generations.
[07:38]
She had written eight books.
[07:39]
And as a teacher, I was like, OK.
[07:43]
On me, I thought, oh my God, I'm like back 12 years ago.
[07:47]
And I don't know what you did.
[07:48]
I don't know how you did it.
[07:51]
So I'm curious about this, because very often when we think of traditional Chinese medicine,
[07:55]
any time we hear certain words, we all have stereotypes on what that means.
[07:58]
So one stereotype or piece of information that I've had from other people trained in
[08:03]
traditional Chinese medicine on the show is that a lot of the modalities and treatments
[08:09]
that are being used are from ancient research.
[08:13]
So all these different healers would collect all this data and bring it together.
[08:16]
And they would say, here's the patterns we see with this condition overall.
[08:20]
The other stereotype might be that there is a lot of different herbal remedies put together
[08:26]
I'm curious if there was other modalities, because even the way you describe it, you
[08:29]
say, oh, a very long call with my sister and Dr. Zhang helped her a few months later.
[08:35]
So would you say that there was multiple modalities at play with traditional Chinese medicine?
[08:40]
So I'm describing how I've heard some of it integrated into people's lives.
[08:45]
Can you share some of the different types of modalities that are at play?
[08:48]
Because you mentioned adding foods or adding specific compounds.
[08:52]
So can you talk to us about generally the different modalities that you were working
[08:57]
with for traditional Chinese medicine?
[08:58]
And then we'll get into some of this pattern things.
[09:00]
Because when I look at some of the questions that you brought today and some of the questions
[09:03]
I have, I think we have something in common that we like to look at patterns that we see.
[09:08]
And I hear it even with your own curiosity of doing your own, essentially, anecdotal
[09:12]
research with friends.
[09:13]
So you tell us a little bit about how this sort of played out with the traditional Chinese
[09:19]
So usually in traditional Chinese medicine, you have acupuncture, which is a big part
[09:25]
And then you have food and food and arguably movement with Tai Chi, et cetera.
[09:30]
Food is something that is a bit left to the side for reasons a bit like in the West.
[09:37]
It's just being left to the side.
[09:38]
But what happened is that in the case of with Dr. Zhang, I told her, I don't know.
[09:43]
I think I can trust you, but I can't trust all of the herbs of China.
[09:46]
So I would like to go with food and she said food is a bit slower, but it's really deep
[09:50]
acting if you're disciplined.
[09:52]
And so when you talk about maladies, indeed, there is a truckload of possibilities as to
[09:57]
why the brain is complaining.
[10:00]
In Western languages, when we see a migraine, we designate the brain linked to every single
[10:07]
organ and part of your body in a complaint mode, trying to see something.
[10:13]
Now, when when someone says they have a migraine, they might see something very different than
[10:18]
Let's take some examples.
[10:19]
We might have someone who's gone through a traumatic childhood, an abusive parent, et
[10:25]
And from there, I started to have occasional headaches that over time in puberty transformed
[10:30]
And they have more and more.
[10:32]
And here we're going to have a certain domino effect.
[10:34]
We're going to have a certain types of migraine.
[10:36]
We might have let down, weakened migraine, completely related initially to the nervous
[10:41]
system that then tripled and trickled into more complicated forms of imbalances.
[10:48]
But we might also meet someone who had occasional headaches in their life, just occasional and
[10:54]
then terminal post are to have more and more migraines and then terrible in full menopause.
[10:59]
And so they have constant dizziness, fatigue, aura, inability, fog, inability to focus.
[11:04]
So these we both be called migraine, but they will correspond to a complete different
[11:11]
root cause, complete different modality and needs to be addressed completely differently.
[11:17]
And hammering these two people with the same treatment would not be acknowledging the difference
[11:24]
that makes their makeup.
[11:26]
I'm smiling because it's very funny.
[11:28]
I love I think that we should all be looking for patterns and common denominators.
[11:33]
And when you talk about I'm going to talk to you about types of migraines here in a
[11:36]
moment, I'll be classified them.
[11:38]
But similarly, I have the same thing with skin issues is that we tend to treat everything
[11:43]
the same and it's like it can be presenting differently.
[11:47]
And so when we give it a type and we give the body what it needs in that unique way,
[11:52]
we're much more successful, much faster.
[11:54]
And so it's like the skin is complaining or you're talking about the brain is complaining
[11:59]
And I'll just mention one other thing before we get into these types of migraines a bit.
[12:03]
I like to think about every condition or symptom through the lens of this health triad.
[12:09]
And so I imagine a triangle and there's like a nutritional chemical component.
[12:12]
And so I think of that being the food and the herbs of traditional Chinese medicine.
[12:16]
And then there is a structural, environmental or physical component.
[12:20]
And I like to think about the acupuncture there.
[12:22]
And then there's often an emotional, energetic component.
[12:24]
And you didn't mention that too much yet related to migraines, but I think it's probably what
[12:30]
I have learned in time is that it tends to be a big driver of pain mediated conditions
[12:36]
So we'll get into that in a bit, but I hear those similar, those correlations or those
[12:40]
similarities between these different conditions.
[12:43]
And your listeners will listen to that and think immediately when I think of food, I
[12:47]
can have so many triggers like wine, cheese, chocolate, histamine.
[12:51]
When I think of environment, my house is a bit damp or when the climate change, when
[12:55]
the barometric pressure changes, I have more migraine or I think when the summer hits,
[13:00]
I think when it's a bit hot, I have more migraines, I'm not sure.
[13:03]
And then emotional, each time I'm stressed during that stress period or after that stress
[13:08]
period, I have more migraines.
[13:10]
And if I manage to work less or feel happier at work, then somehow I can reduce that intensity
[13:18]
And so they will completely not articulate it as beautifully as you just did.
[13:22]
And I love your framework, the triangle framework.
[13:24]
I think it's superb.
[13:26]
It's just exactly that.
[13:27]
It's that emotions like stress, but not just stress.
[13:31]
There's other emotions we talk about that can also lead to more migraines.
[13:35]
And you just brought something up as you talked about that in a very resonant way.
[13:39]
Something that had frustrated me for many years working with people with pain mediated
[13:44]
symptoms is that they can be delayed, like you said.
[13:47]
So I have this stressor whenever, and then a little bit later, I have the onset of this
[13:53]
migraine or headache or whatever.
[13:57]
Let me give you one example.
[13:59]
Sometimes women will put a Mirena IUD.
[14:00]
Let's imagine someone who's bleeding a lot, is really tired and puts a Mirena IUD in,
[14:05]
no more bleeding and feeling good.
[14:08]
And that's great because the brain is 400 miles or 565 kilometers of blood vessels.
[14:14]
And so if there's not enough blood, we can be in pain as well or definitely very fatigued.
[14:19]
Let's imagine that you have a woman, she's so happy.
[14:21]
She now has her Mirena IUD, except that when she menstruate, it's also a time when her
[14:25]
toxins evacuate her body.
[14:28]
And over time, as she has migraines, she also medicates for them.
[14:32]
She's going to build up toxins inside of her liver.
[14:35]
And so over time, the Mirena IUD will cause a difference in environment in her body that
[14:41]
will cause migraines, except that just as you said, because there's a delay, she's going
[14:46]
to feel it's the cause, but the doctor might say it's not the cause.
[14:51]
And so she's going to still trust her intuition and insist to remove it, except when she removes
[14:56]
it, because there's a trickle down effect, she still will have migraine at least for
[15:01]
a certain amount of time.
[15:02]
So she no longer feels she can trust her body.
[15:04]
And by the way, I just mentioned doctors.
[15:06]
Doctors are incredibly important to diagnose migraines and always follow the treatment
[15:12]
That being said, the intuition of the person is paramount because it's like your dashboard
[15:18]
is saying something really loud and it needs proper listening.
[15:22]
Yeah, I appreciate this.
[15:24]
I think we're pretty aligned because that's my entire schtick these days is that all symptoms
[15:29]
are signals from your body.
[15:30]
So it's a matter of figuring out what the signal is.
[15:33]
Fortunately, for anyone listening, there are typically patterns that we see with these
[15:39]
signals and they're not all the same for everyone.
[15:41]
There's always options for everyone, but there tends to be patterns.
[15:45]
So I'd love for you to share with us.
[15:47]
You mentioned a type of migraine type a few moments ago.
[15:52]
So I wouldn't mind if you would share some types of migraines, but also want to invite
[15:56]
you to talk about patterns that you see and you've done a nice job of bringing those in
[16:02]
So for example, in the work that you do, you support many people with migraines.
[16:07]
And the beautiful thing about supporting people with the same set of symptoms is you start
[16:13]
And so it sounds like you have seen some patterns that aren't what you would find on
[16:19]
Google that don't always show up in the clinical setting.
[16:21]
So while you're telling us a little bit about types of migraines, maybe there's some room
[16:25]
to talk about some of the patterns that you see with migraines in general in your clientele
[16:31]
or in your work so far.
[16:33]
And indeed, you're right.
[16:34]
I've been doing this since 2019.
[16:38]
Maybe you've captured that right now.
[16:39]
I'm a very serious nerd.
[16:41]
I also speak a few languages and I find that migraine is also a form of language.
[16:46]
So it's really about the pattern recognition.
[16:48]
What is the brain trying to say?
[16:50]
And I find people are incredibly good at really describing their pain, even though oftentimes
[16:55]
it's not validated.
[16:56]
Let's talk about different patterns and different trajectories of patterns as well.
[17:01]
Let's start, given we're on the Less Stressed Life podcast, let's start with stress.
[17:06]
And in particular, I want to go slightly deeper than stress.
[17:09]
We're going to talk about stress and about trauma.
[17:11]
If we have a person who suffers trauma in childhood, there will be two things essentially
[17:18]
The first one is that they're going to have their kidney system really depleting very
[17:25]
So when you're born, you are born with a kidney bucket.
[17:28]
And in your kidney bucket, the whole goal of life is to keep it full.
[17:31]
Some people receive a large kidney bucket.
[17:33]
Some people receive a small kidney bucket, but essentially your kidney system.
[17:37]
So if I see Shen in Mandarin, I'm not designating just the two pieces of flesh at the bottom
[17:43]
I'm designating your kidney.
[17:45]
I'm designating your bladder, your adrenals, therefore your resilience to stress.
[17:51]
I'm designating your sense of smell, your sense of hearing.
[17:54]
I'm designating your ovulation, your hair, those different aspects, your neck, those
[18:00]
different aspects of the body.
[18:02]
Because in traditional Chinese medicine, they say an organ is a bit like a football team
[18:07]
He can't end pass and score and defend.
[18:09]
It's the team that does the job.
[18:11]
If I take the ends to kidneys and I put them to the side, they don't do any magic.
[18:15]
The magic comes from the operation and so that working together.
[18:18]
And so if I go through trauma in my life, basically I have two modes with my vagus nerve,
[18:24]
a nerve of rest and digest, which would be my default mode and a mode of fright, flight,
[18:31]
And my kidney system and my nervous system is going to go in that fright, flight mode
[18:35]
And I'm going to start to deplete my bucket.
[18:38]
Now I have another way to refill the bucket by eating certain foods.
[18:44]
But at that stage, because I'm in an extreme state of trauma, which I'm a victim of in
[18:49]
that moment as a child, my kidney bucket is going to start to deplete faster than it's
[18:54]
being replenished.
[18:56]
And the more I am stressed or the more my kidney system is depleted, the more I'm going
[19:01]
to be stressed and vice versa.
[19:03]
So in the West, we've understood quite well now the gut brain axis and the bi-directionality
[19:08]
of the gut brain axis.
[19:10]
The emotion to gut axis is also bi-directional, meaning the more I'm stressed, the more I
[19:16]
deplete my stress reserves, the more I deplete them, the more I'm prone to stress and I start
[19:22]
to enter a vicious cycle and that's going to start to tense up my body.
[19:26]
So I'm going to start to have, think of the migraines that are more neck related, shoulder
[19:30]
related, more sensitivity to smell when I have a migraine, sensitivity to noise when
[19:36]
I have a migraine, more this kind of like jaw tension, teeth grinding, these forms of
[19:43]
And there's something else happening, which is absolutely fundamental, is that meanwhile
[19:48]
I'm stressed, I start to learn to be in that stress mode more and more.
[19:52]
I no longer rest and I no longer digest.
[19:59]
Because if I don't digest, but of course I still eat, it means that the food entering
[20:04]
my gut starts to be unprocessed.
[20:08]
So even if it's beautiful food, it's really well curated food and I'm a saint with what
[20:13]
I eat, how it is transformed by my body is intoxicating.
[20:18]
And so I'm going to start to have a weaker stomach spin, weaker gastric juices, digested
[20:25]
I'm going to start to create a biome of a much less noble matter than I should.
[20:31]
And that biome is going to start to give a birth for SIBO, candida, mast cells, et cetera.
[20:38]
Essentially a bed where histamine can lodge itself, which is a big migraine trigger.
[20:43]
And then I have set a ground that is incredibly hard for me to come back from.
[20:49]
And if I add medication on top of that to try to manage the pain or manage the anxiety
[20:55]
or manage the sadness, let's face it, these lives are incredibly hard to lead.
[21:01]
And people and listeners, they're always doing their best they can to power through the day,
[21:05]
to love their loved ones, to show up at work, to push through, to try to show that they're
[21:09]
fine when they're not.
[21:11]
Because showing their weakness doesn't serve them well necessarily or quite terribly in
[21:16]
society because society doesn't recognize that invisible disability.
[21:22]
And so as they medicate, they will intoxicate their liver, which is going to have ramification
[21:26]
again on the kidney system and make it weaker.
[21:29]
We're pretty aligned here in general, because you're talking about supporting the physiology
[21:34]
And I find that has been of best service is to walk through it.
[21:39]
It totally makes sense that this kind of toxicity builds up in general, but I want to zoom in
[21:44]
on something you said.
[21:46]
I've never said it quite like this, so I appreciated this.
[21:49]
So while stressed, I learned to be in stress mode and I no longer rest and I no longer
[21:56]
I always joke that you can put on my tombstone, no one was digesting.
[22:02]
And even the best food isn't really supporting us in that state.
[22:05]
So what I want to focus on is while stressed, I learned to be in stress mode.
[22:08]
So the challenge I see very often, so there's a physiological downstream effect.
[22:14]
Under stress, we deplete all kinds of nutrients and we no longer digest and absorb nutrients
[22:18]
and essentially lots of things break down or you add more burden in general with life,
[22:24]
medication, whatever it is.
[22:26]
But I want to talk about this when I learned to be in stress mode.
[22:29]
And I'm going to ask you a question that kind of has plagued me in general for years about
[22:35]
people not really resonating with the word stress or not really feeling like they're
[22:43]
When you said, I learned to be in stress mode, it becomes this normal all the time.
[22:48]
And so what would you say about someone that is dealing with unrealized stress or someone
[22:52]
who doesn't feel like they're stressed?
[22:54]
Because maybe they're high performing, which is a lot of humans, right?
[22:58]
You just keep going under stress.
[23:00]
And so what would you say about helping people identify their stress patterns or become more
[23:07]
open to those so you can change them?
[23:10]
Over half of us are not getting enough magnesium, which is responsible for thousands of processes
[23:16]
But how do you know if you'd benefit from magnesium?
[23:18]
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[23:36]
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[23:42]
Now, up to 600 milligrams for that headache.
[23:44]
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[23:49]
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[23:51]
But if you're dealing with eye twitches or restless legs, you're past the point of as
[23:57]
These are major red flags that you're probably depleted in magnesium.
[24:00]
The good news is you could absolutely fix it, but it might take a few years to really
[24:04]
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[24:06]
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[24:11]
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[24:18]
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[25:10]
So indeed, if you've grown up that way, you will not know that you can live a different
[25:17]
You only know your pattern.
[25:19]
And indeed, it can come from trauma, which is one way, but it can also come from another
[25:25]
angle of stress that you mentioned, which is perfection.
[25:28]
If I have grown up with very demanding parents, I have a tendency to try to be more perfect.
[25:35]
There are three types of perfection, externally induced, but it can be also internally induced.
[25:40]
I'm trying to just comply with what society is trying to give me, or I can't remember
[25:46]
the third one now.
[25:47]
But there's different types of perfection.
[25:48]
And so you try to mold a certain way, and so you put your state of being under constant
[25:56]
pressure, which is less aggressive, but is more pernicious because it's a 24-7 pressure
[26:05]
Now, when you do that, you will put the system in strain.
[26:10]
And so externally speaking, you're going to look extremely efficient, always on the go,
[26:16]
requiring very little sleep.
[26:18]
In fact, you're actually, from a TCM perspective, you're restless, not always on, you're unable
[26:25]
It's a very different notion, but they're equally draining.
[26:28]
Now, ultimately, you will collapse.
[26:30]
I sound dramatic when I say that.
[26:33]
In one way or another.
[26:34]
I have some symptoms.
[26:35]
Ultimately, your system is going to say, okay, now we're out.
[26:39]
You've burned everything we have, there's nothing left in the tank.
[26:42]
But it can be a different way.
[26:43]
Now, there's a third type of stress, which I've observed, which is an internal induced
[26:49]
stress, is when your body is stressed, but your environment isn't.
[26:53]
So there's nothing wrong with the family.
[26:55]
There's nothing wrong with the work.
[26:56]
There's nothing wrong with the thoughts.
[26:59]
But your body's trying to deal with something that really stresses it.
[27:02]
So there's all sorts of migraines also related to cycle.
[27:06]
Some people have their migraines at time of ovulation, some people before the menstruation,
[27:10]
some people during the menstruation, some people after the menstruation.
[27:13]
For some people, it's quite related.
[27:15]
Now, one type is when, during your menstruation, that usually for us indicates there's blood
[27:20]
clots, fibroids or unwanted tissue in the body.
[27:23]
And I remember vividly this woman who had expelled, I suspected she had a few things
[27:29]
And so that uterus to brain relationship, we always talk about the gut-brain axis.
[27:33]
There's also a uterus to brain axis.
[27:35]
That uterus to brain axis was signaling a problem there.
[27:39]
And she expelled a blood clot the size of a baseball.
[27:42]
I had to think, well, what's a baseball?
[27:44]
Because I thought, I must have the wrong ball in mind.
[27:46]
That must be my French mind, but no, a really large ball.
[27:50]
And she said, you know what?
[27:51]
Of course my migraine stopped during my menstruation.
[27:54]
Of course it stopped overnight.
[27:55]
I really felt like I dodged a bullet.
[27:58]
But the other really interesting observation is I am much less stressed.
[28:03]
She says I had quit my job.
[28:04]
I had done so many things and yet I was still stressed.
[28:07]
I don't think it was her being stressed, it was her body.
[28:09]
So it can come from trauma.
[28:11]
It can come from external pressure that is temporary, in which case you'd recognize it.
[28:16]
It can come from being type A, in which case you might not recognize it because these dates
[28:20]
back also from childhood.
[28:22]
It can also come from inside the body where the body's thinking every single day, how
[28:27]
am I going to get rid of this problem?
[28:29]
And when you have a blood clot that size, it's not something that you can see with an
[28:33]
It's something that your brain will indicate is happening.
[28:36]
And that by addressing you expelled very naturally, but you need power and you need your uterus
[28:41]
to have what it takes to do such a huge job.
[28:45]
I want to underline a few things that you said that we don't always recognize stress.
[28:51]
But if we resonate with this tendency to want things to be, if we never feel like something
[28:56]
is good enough, right, that might be a version of perfectionism or type A or this constant
[29:02]
narrative of how will I get rid of this problem is so understandable.
[29:04]
It becomes this loop, of course, and the entire brain is fuels the entire migraine cycle.
[29:10]
I'm curious about the woman who expelled the large blood clot.
[29:13]
You described it a little bit, but was there something that happened right before?
[29:16]
Was there some kind of modality that supported her in expressing that?
[29:21]
Because I'm a curious person and I am like, good grief.
[29:24]
How did that happen?
[29:27]
In the Migraine Heroes app, we have a tracker and there's a number of things we track and
[29:30]
we look at, namely how is the cycle in comparison with the migraine?
[29:36]
And one of the patterns is for these women who have migraines during menstruation, usually
[29:43]
designed as either a fibroid, a clot, an unwanted tissue, it doesn't have to be really large.
[29:48]
We've had some people have it very large, some people very small, but the brain will
[29:52]
equally complain that when it contracts to expel the menstruation, it is struggling to
[29:58]
expel everything it wants to expel.
[30:00]
And so that's going to induce more pain, more contractions, more blood loss than is required.
[30:07]
You could have someone who's very depleted, very pale, very iron deficient, yet is going
[30:10]
to have really heavy menstruation and kind of not understanding why her body is quote
[30:15]
unquote so illogical.
[30:17]
Her body is completely illogical.
[30:18]
You remove these blood clots and usually the next menstruation is just slightly less and
[30:23]
then as her blood builds back up, then she goes back on her feet.
[30:26]
A woman will lose 23 to 28 litres of menstruation in her lifetime.
[30:31]
That is a lot of physical matter that she needs to reproduce.
[30:36]
So it can be very exhausting if you lose on top of it, double the amount because your
[30:40]
nutrients is going to clean itself.
[30:44]
I want to ask a little bit.
[30:45]
You say that vagal tone can explain why everything becomes a trigger.
[30:51]
So remind us about vagal tone and why the state of your nervous system can make anything
[30:59]
So I like to think of the vagus nerve as this massive tree inside of your body.
[31:03]
I like this analogy a lot where that tree is going to plant its roots around your heart,
[31:08]
around your lungs, around your small intestine, around your uterus.
[31:12]
And these roots and ramifications will form larger roots along your spine and then a bit
[31:16]
of a trunk in the neck.
[31:17]
And then they're going to plug into your brain, this electric car, and they plug into your
[31:22]
brain via the trigeminal nerve and comes a big mystery.
[31:26]
So in the West, we have a lot of ego, it's very male dominant culture, and we don't like
[31:31]
to see when we don't know.
[31:33]
So if you look at anything about the vagus nerve, it's going to describe what it does
[31:36]
neck and below because neck and below, I can see it.
[31:39]
The vagus nerve was discovered 200 years ago because if you dissect a body, you will find
[31:45]
However, in the way it plugs into the brain still has a lot of mysteries.
[31:49]
So beautiful years of neurology in front of us.
[31:52]
And so the vagus nerve still plugs in all of these cables, but we're not sure how.
[31:56]
And this is where working with East and West, you can start to use what do we know from
[32:00]
a Western perspective.
[32:01]
And then what we have has hypothesis from the Eastern perspective.
[32:05]
And so that vagus nerve, if it's constantly activated, it's constantly, constantly overworking,
[32:12]
then becomes hypersensitive.
[32:14]
And you can indeed have people who've been so stressed with such a weak, therefore stomach
[32:21]
has been overthinking that they start to be sensitive to all sorts of emotions of other
[32:29]
So they can be at a restaurant and they hear a couple fight next to them and they can feel
[32:33]
all of the fighting.
[32:35]
If someone makes a nod or a funny comment, they can feel what the person's not saying.
[32:40]
So it's this sort of hyper EQ that penetrates them and they can't shelter themselves from.
[32:46]
That's also when that, to some extent, that vagus nerve has done damage beyond its control.
[32:53]
I think that's probably going to help someone listening feel so seen, right?
[32:58]
When they can be, I always called it, and there's probably different ways to describe
[33:01]
this and different levels.
[33:02]
It's almost like this empath energy, absorb other people's energy.
[33:07]
And I can resonate with that to an extent.
[33:09]
I was pretty unprepared for the amount of emotional work.
[33:12]
And I think I will say that about most physical practitioners.
[33:17]
When we go into the medical field, there is not a lot, not enough.
[33:22]
There's certainly more now about nervous system work and trauma work, et cetera.
[33:26]
And what I will mention here is that it's a real gift when you can find someone to support
[33:31]
and to help you when there's an integration of the entire health triad that we were describing.
[33:38]
Because very often you're going to need to assemble someone in each corner quite most
[33:45]
Because we're just not, we work a little bit in silos in medicine, typically in the Western
[33:51]
And so it's very common that these would be separate silos.
[33:55]
And quite honestly, they're very connected.
[33:58]
And I think the longer, if you really are someone like you or someone like me who really
[34:03]
loves patterns, you can't stop seeing that there's more, that there's these other patterns
[34:10]
So I'm curious about, you haven't mentioned too much, you've done a beautiful job talking
[34:14]
about different types of perfection and some different types of stress and how we can realize
[34:21]
But how do you start to generally handle trauma, nervous system, opportunities, et cetera,
[34:28]
in your work with migraine clients?
[34:31]
It's a very good question.
[34:32]
And it's a very complex one.
[34:34]
I love when you ask or you talk about in Western science, you see these different professionals.
[34:39]
My experience is that when you do that, you may have experienced that.
[34:43]
I do one professional and I fix sort of one thing, and then I go to the next one, I start
[34:47]
to fix something else, but then something else pops up or the previous one is down again
[34:53]
and I have to almost start again.
[34:55]
When you repair a system, you repair systems, they're interdependent.
[35:00]
So you have to go and boost each one and turn, but then come back to them.
[35:06]
You can't say, I'm going to take my kidney system and go from zero to a hundred.
[35:10]
That would create so much damage.
[35:13]
And if you feel very depleted and if you feel you had a nervous breakdown, replenishing
[35:18]
your kidney system head on might really create a ripple effect that causes other problems
[35:24]
and potentially more problems and more migraines is how you would know.
[35:27]
And so you have to really take all of these systems one by one or two by two and boost
[35:33]
them until they all become a better version of themselves.
[35:36]
It's a bit like you're the CEO of a new company and the company is underperforming and has
[35:42]
a really low culture and everyone's a bit down and not excited about their work.
[35:46]
You can't come in and say, I'm going to fire everyone and I'm going to hire everyone because
[35:51]
that's going to bring down the entire system.
[35:53]
You have to say, okay, who are the toxic people that don't really have a job and really annoy
[36:00]
Let's get rid of those first.
[36:01]
Then who are the key positions that should be replaced?
[36:05]
Let's fire those, but immediately replace them with someone else.
[36:09]
Now we have a better culture.
[36:10]
Let's train everyone.
[36:11]
Let's give more budget, more trainings.
[36:13]
And then, okay, let's go to the second layer, et cetera, et cetera, until you find you have
[36:17]
a really successful and thriving company.
[36:19]
And with the body, it's very similar.
[36:22]
And so you're going to go systems by systems or two systems at a time and nudge them or
[36:29]
And there are certain things you can't do before you do others, but that's complexity.
[36:34]
Also with foods, I think people don't understand that some foods, while they repair something,
[36:38]
they can damage something else.
[36:40]
So for example, if you've had a lot of surgeries and you have left side migraines and maybe
[36:45]
you have occasional blood clots, turmeric might be a good idea, but if you have dizziness
[36:49]
and you're in perineum pose, turmeric would actually increase the dizziness, increase
[36:53]
the aura, et cetera, because it also comes with a second life force that actually would
[37:00]
And so another food should be selected instead.
[37:02]
And I think this is what leads unfortunately to a lot of confusion and therefore to a disbelief
[37:08]
that nature doesn't really have what it takes to help us.
[37:13]
But I'm here to say it's not true.
[37:14]
It still has everything.
[37:16]
It's still as glamorous as ever, and we're still really old species that require very
[37:21]
simple ways to solve our physical beings.
[37:26]
I have one, another question that just comes from curiosity as I think about, we talked
[37:30]
about the pieces of traditional Chinese medicine, which I think informs some of your work, I
[37:35]
think, based on the experience and the story that you told.
[37:40]
Maybe I want to emphasize on that.
[37:41]
Basically, migraine heroism is not dogmatic or anything.
[37:43]
It's just whatever it will bring you from A to B, regardless of beliefs.
[37:48]
And I find that traditional Chinese medicine is bringing a lot to the table.
[37:52]
And when you augment it with proper Western diagnosis, then it's a complete gem.
[37:59]
So I want to hear a little bit about this topic that came up in my brain.
[38:02]
And there was something you said at the beginning that sort of prompts even this.
[38:07]
When you went to Dr. Jiang, you said, she fixed me in this amount of time.
[38:11]
And very often we go to someone to fix us.
[38:14]
But ultimately, your body is healing itself by you getting the tools that it needs.
[38:18]
One of the tools that you talked about was acupuncture.
[38:22]
And in your work right there, I can understand where you bring in some of the traditional
[38:28]
Chinese medicine pieces.
[38:29]
Now, something interesting about acupuncture is, I think, as many things do, it plays into
[38:34]
a couple parts of that angle of the health triad.
[38:37]
We consider it to be this physical intervention, but it does largely impact the emotional energetic
[38:45]
I'm curious, because I would assume in your work, you are not doing physical acupuncture
[38:52]
So how do you plug in some of that, or how do you get some of those benefits, or does
[38:56]
that part just not used in some of the ways you support people?
[39:00]
And this, again, just my brain being curious, because we often think we're going to have
[39:05]
to go to someone to be able to get the same benefits.
[39:08]
I'm curious if you're bringing some of those benefits from acupuncture in a different way
[39:14]
That's a terrific question, because I get that quite a little bit when people come.
[39:19]
And if you think of a woman versus a man, a woman in her lifetime is going to lose,
[39:24]
we talked about this, 23 to 25 liters of blood.
[39:27]
And she's also going to produce one, two, three, four, five children.
[39:32]
And so it means that by the time she hits her 40s, she's produced about half of her
[39:38]
weight in physical matter.
[39:41]
A man doesn't go through as much.
[39:44]
And so for a woman, she is a lot of physical matter.
[39:48]
If you've produced, I don't know, a solid 30, 35 kilograms of human matter, you really
[39:53]
need to regenerate yourself.
[39:56]
And I find that women have three to four times more migraines than men, that a lot of the
[40:01]
migraines have to do with physical matter, a lot more so, I would say, than movement.
[40:08]
Now with food, you can also create movement.
[40:10]
So if, for example, let me give you an example that is really concrete.
[40:14]
Let's imagine a woman who's bled a lot.
[40:17]
She just had heavy menstruation for a long time.
[40:20]
Her brain is just going to crave for blood volume.
[40:23]
She might be diagnosed as iron deficient or having too low ferritin or being borderline.
[40:30]
But from a traditional transmedicine perspective, even though that's very precise, it's still
[40:34]
not completely accurate.
[40:35]
They would talk about having a full blood volume deficiency and replenishing the blood.
[40:42]
And by having more blood, you can and think and digest.
[40:46]
If you don't, your body has to arbitrage and this is when it can start to complain.
[40:49]
So if you have that wine, cheese, chocolate, then the blood goes straight into your liver
[40:56]
And then your brain doesn't have enough power to function.
[41:00]
And it's going to start to complain.
[41:01]
So if you take a tryptamine, which is a type of medication, it's going to constrict your
[41:05]
blood vessel and force them back into your brain and give an impression of enough.
[41:09]
But the problem is very chemical, as you can feel.
[41:12]
If I do acupuncture on a body like that, I can momentarily redistribute the blood equally.
[41:18]
But I can't really restore or regenerate the blood itself.
[41:22]
And there's a lot of patterns like that for women, a lot.
[41:26]
And so I find them a lot more chemical than they're physical usually.
[41:30]
And even then you can act with certain foods in certain meridians and certain parts of
[41:36]
Now, that being said, in the Migraine Heroes app, we have this Migraine Now button.
[41:40]
So over the course of the years, we realized not only could we prevent migraine attacks,
[41:44]
we could also teach people to stop them in their tracks.
[41:48]
And I've learned that from the people I was working with who would call me initially,
[41:52]
it was still on WhatsApp, saying, oh, I was starting to have a migraine attack.
[41:55]
I started to feel tingling sensations.
[41:58]
And this in my right arm, I closed my curtains, I called my husband, canceled all my appointments
[42:02]
for the next three days.
[42:03]
I had one of your last infusions before going to bed because God knows when I was going
[42:08]
And by the time I reached my bed, I was like, what?
[42:11]
I swear I had one.
[42:15]
And then overjoyed that this saves three days of their life, they started to text me.
[42:18]
And so it happens quite a lot.
[42:19]
And so we've created the Migraine Now button, and that button is the fourth generation now
[42:25]
is really to aim to teach you how to stop a migraine, which is incredibly difficult
[42:30]
because it's incredibly personal.
[42:32]
So we have to take into account weather and your situation and emotions, et cetera, but
[42:37]
And so one of the things I want to add is acupressure, because acupressure can also
[42:42]
be self-administered and can help in a certain moment to relieve.
[42:46]
So for example, if you touch the back of your skull, you have these two little balls
[42:51]
at the top of your neck.
[42:53]
They're called gallbladder 20 meridians or wind pools.
[42:56]
And for some people, just massaging those can bring a really massive relief.
[43:01]
So in that regard, yes, through the app, we can still access it.
[43:04]
But I do find that acupuncture is usually more useful after us, not necessarily before.
[43:10]
If you have, for example, too many toxins that your liver is completely behind, yes,
[43:15]
you can stimulate liver, but chemically you can do so much, like you can make it so efficient,
[43:20]
especially when you have the power from your home to actually do that to yourself, understanding
[43:26]
intellectually what you're doing.
[43:27]
And so having that power, it means that when you're on holidays, when you're at work, when
[43:32]
you're just having dinner and suddenly it hits, knowing what to do in that moment gives
[43:37]
And that's what we're about, is like the control and the joy to teach you your patterns.
[43:43]
I can see Crystal, you're so smart and you can see a zillion patterns in a single human.
[43:48]
Here we're trying to say, hey, you don't need to know the zillion, but we teach you yours
[43:52]
so that in that moment you can feel empowered and you can feel free.
[43:58]
You can live again.
[43:59]
You can choose, do I stay or do I go?
[44:01]
I don't have to not go to this party or stop being at this party because I'm in pain.
[44:05]
I can actually stop my pain, reset and continue.
[44:10]
Something I want to highlight that you just said was that acupuncture works better after
[44:14]
people, I will say, recalibrate with some of the other work because so often we are
[44:20]
driven to get help and especially we have been maybe dealing with something for a long
[44:24]
time and sometimes we maybe haven't given up hope, but we'll try another thing because
[44:28]
that's what happens when we have symptoms.
[44:30]
And so very commonly there's a lot of imbalance in the entire biology of the human, right?
[44:37]
And so when we bring back or restore function to that biology of the human through different
[44:41]
modalities, then something like a one-off thing, a simple thing like acupuncture, pressure
[44:47]
may be more supportive, right?
[44:49]
Otherwise it's just a piece of the entire puzzle.
[44:52]
And so that makes a lot of sense to me.
[44:54]
If you can get back to a much more mild place, it's going to be easier to course correct
[45:00]
I love that. I think, you know, our job as clinicians, if someone's listening to this as
[45:05]
a clinician, our job is shifting to be able to help people be more empowered instead of,
[45:11]
I find that if we create a system where they rely on us forever, that's a very disempowered state.
[45:15]
And that was very unenjoyable for me. I saw that a lot of times when I was working
[45:19]
in more heavily in one-on-one for many years. It's like, people thought I had all of the
[45:24]
patterns. Only I could tell them what was wrong. It's like, you have the control over your body,
[45:29]
right? Like you have autonomy and you can regain autonomy and control over your body.
[45:33]
So it sounds like we're also very aligned there as well. Whenever we're in a podcast,
[45:37]
we want to make sure we have some tangible things someone can start to do today. And so
[45:42]
what would you leave people with? If someone's struggling with migraine or a pain-mediated
[45:46]
condition or someone who just wants to break this stress pain loop, like what would you say
[45:51]
to that person for something that they can do today? What are some of the first steps that
[45:55]
they can do today? Yeah. So one of my favorites is to make an infusion in the evening, which is
[46:02]
a chamomile and goji berries infusion. And here's why. The chamomile is going to do two jobs for us.
[46:07]
It's going to stimulate my liver and it's going to detox it. So I love it. It's also very inexpensive
[46:12]
and you can find it pretty much everywhere, anytime. Now, the chamomile also does something
[46:18]
a little naughtier. It's going to cool down my digestive tract. I don't quite like that because
[46:24]
it means if I was having too much, unless I overheat all the time, I would start to have a
[46:29]
weaker large intestine and start to have a bit more loose tools and ultimately diarrhea. So I
[46:34]
would have solved something, but then I would have created myself another problem. Now, if I
[46:40]
add goji berries to it, goji berries are an adaptogen. It's a really beautiful, sweet little
[46:46]
berry that is elongated. Think of it like a raspberry meets a strawberry in a very small
[46:52]
format. And that beautiful goji berry is going to be able to do six jobs for me. It's going to
[46:57]
stimulate my liver and detox it just like the chamomile does. But in addition to that, it's
[47:02]
going to feed my kinesthetum. It's going to increase my yin, we haven't talked about. It's
[47:07]
going to increase my blood. It's going to remove inflammation. So it has that power to address
[47:12]
excesses and deficiencies. Plus it's neutral to slightly warming in temperature. So it's going to
[47:18]
come to balance the temperature of the chamomile. And together, they're going to address a lot of
[47:25]
different root causes that can come from migraines. And so you can have that in the evening
[47:29]
beautifully as you sip it. Now, it's not because it's food and it's natural that it can be harmful.
[47:36]
Do not have this beverage. When? First of all, you menstruate. When you menstruate,
[47:42]
your body needs to detox and there's no point in stimulating the liver. Your body knows exactly
[47:47]
how much it wants to bleed. And if you were to have it, you would notice that you would bleed more.
[47:52]
You don't need to bleed more. So when you have your menstruation, don't have it. Number two,
[47:57]
if you are having an IBS, like proper full-blown irritable bowel syndrome, and you were put on a
[48:04]
FODMAP diet, know that chamomile and goji berries contain fructan. And fructan is one of the FODMAPs.
[48:11]
And so you would immediately notice that when you sip it, you would feel bloated. If you would feel
[48:16]
bloated, your body's just politely declining the invitation. Don't push it. We're damaging
[48:22]
something. There's no point. And also last but not least, if you're pregnant, it's probably
[48:27]
not the best time to have such a powerful tonic on the liver, like a powerful detoxification tonic.
[48:34]
So just refrain from having something so potent, even though it seems very inoffensive when you're
[48:39]
pregnant. Yeah, that was fun. Thank you so much for sharing that. It's always fun to hear something
[48:45]
different or new. Diane, where can people find you online or learn more about the things that
[48:51]
you offer? So Migraine Heroes is a podcast. Migraine Heroes is an app and Migraine Heroes
[48:56]
website. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on today. I really enjoyed our conversation and
[49:01]
our alignment. I think there's this beauty when you see similar patterns in the world or you find
[49:06]
that other people are gravitating towards some similar things or themes or patterns in general.
[49:12]
So it's just very fun to talk about this through a different lens with you. Absolutely, Krista. I'm
[49:16]
sure we continue after this call since we share so much interest. Thank you so much for the work
[49:22]
that you do, for the light that you bring in sometimes a very cloudy world. Yeah, for sure.
[49:27]
Thank you. Thank you.
