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When pain drags you down and sadness lingers, are you feeling depressed because of your migraines, or are migraines making you feel depressed?
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Migraine Heroes is a podcast for chronic migraine sufferers who've seen countless doctors with no results.
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Learn how to reduce your migraine attacks without endless medications or constant sacrifices.
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Hello, I'm Diane Ducarme. I've helped over 500 people break free from migraine, even after suffering for up to 60 years.
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My mission in life? To bring this relief to a million people using a unique blend of Eastern medicine and Western science.
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In this episode, you will learn why depression and migraines are genetically connected,
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how depression and migraines work biologically,
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and what Eastern medicine reveals about the deeper relationship between mood, energy, and migraine resilience.
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Stay with me here, because once you see the science, you'll understand why your experience of pain and sadness is not just in your head,
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but literally in your DNA, and how you can still do something about it.
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First, let's start from the West and define the relationship.
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Migraine and depression are what researchers called comorbid conditions,
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meaning a health problem that shows up together with another one in the same person, not just by coincidence,
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but more often than you'd expect if they were unrelated.
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And a large 2022 review further confirms that the relationship between migraines and depression is bidirectional.
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People with migraines are about twice as likely to develop depression,
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and those with depression are also at much higher risk of developing migraines.
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Why? From a Western science perspective, genetics is said to play a huge role.
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Studies using twins, like the landmark research by Leithard et al. in 2014 in neurology,
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shows that migraine and depression share a heritable component.
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In other words, some of the same genes that predispose to depression also predispose to migraines.
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Now this is what the West says, and how it presents it, and in many ways is very factual,
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but you will see shortly that the East sees genetics in a different light.
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So from a Western perspective, three biological events are observed and reported.
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Number one, we have serotonin dysregulation.
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Both migraines and depression are observed to be linked to low serotonin signaling.
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Serotonin is actually more than just a happy hormone.
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It regulates blood vessel tone, pain perception, and mood.
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Fluctuations in serotonin can ignite migraine pathways, while also fueling depressive symptoms.
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The second biological event observed is inflammation,
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and research shows that depression isn't just in the mind, it's tied to inflammation and the immune system.
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A review in Biological Psychiatry in 2009 found that pro-inflammatory cytokines like TNF-alpha and IL-6
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are consistently evaluated in people with depression, altering brain chemistry, lowering resilience, and fueling fatigue.
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And those same inflammatory markers are also seen in migraine,
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which means the two conditions share a biological pathway.
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This overlap helps explain why pain, exhaustion, and low mood often feed into one another,
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creating a vicious cycle that's hard to break.
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And the third biological observed in the West is the hypothalamic-pituitary-aglenal HPA axis dysfunction.
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And so chronic stress is going to dysregulate cortisol production,
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and cortisol is supposed to help you cope, but when it's stuck on or off,
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it destabilizes mood and makes the nervous system more sensitive to migraine triggers.
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Now, because depression and migraines are deeply intertwined,
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the solution isn't to treat them separately, but to treat the shared mechanisms.
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In the West, doctors will suggest antidepressants,
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and it's important to note that for the longest time, there were no medications for migraines per se,
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but more medications that were borrowed from other diseases and pathologies
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that were showing an impact on certain people with migraines.
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That was the case, namely, for antidepressants,
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where the West could observe in some patients a benefit while taking those medications.
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Now, while I am advocating for you to go to a doctor and to get properly diagnosed with migraines,
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medications are beyond the point of this podcast.
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You need to do what's right for you.
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I will say this, however.
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In spite of everything you will be told in your life, your brain is always right.
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So, if it doesn't respond well to a medication, or that medication does not work,
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it is best not to load your liver with too many toxins for too long.
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That is something simple we see in our data.
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Science has proven rebound effects in medication overuse headaches
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for a series of medications such as triptans and over-the-counter medications.
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I think the West will take its time to prove this with the advent of new medications.
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But now, in all honesty, I was hesitant to put this in the podcast,
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but there were actually already more than 4 scientific articles
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showing an increase in headaches and migraines due to antidepressants.
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Now, the reason why I want to be honest with you on this
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is because migraines can be awful, and an awful road stealing your life.
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You will know how much it has stolen from you, and only you know.
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And you will know how much it has stolen from you, and only you know that.
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And no words that I can say will take that pain away.
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And the reality is, no matter the wrong advice you have gotten along the way,
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you are the one needing to live with the consequences of those wrong advice,
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not the ones who gave them.
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So, my advice to you is change one thing at a time,
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and with your doctor, wean off medications that do not work for you,
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because that additional load of toxins, if not doing any good,
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not serving you in any way, can do harm on your migraines in the long run.
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We have a lot of data to illustrate that,
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and look forward to contributing that data to the scientific community.
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Now, the key takeaway is if you feel both weight of sadness and the pain of migraine,
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you are not broken.
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Your pain is expressing the same genetic expression in two ways.
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Solve one, and you lift the other.
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Now, how do you truly solve for something that is genetic?
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This is where combining Western neuroscience with Eastern holistic approaches becomes truly powerful.
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So, let's look at how genetics is perceived in the East for thousands of years.
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Instead of describing inheritance through DNA,
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Eastern medicine speaks of the vital essence you are born with.
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Your Jing, in Chinese medicine,
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and your Prakroti, in Ayurveda.
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This essence comes from your parents and ancestors,
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shaping your constitution, your strength, and your vulnerabilities.
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But empirical evidence, gathered over centuries and thousands of years of observation,
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showed something profound.
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Lifestyle, food, and daily habits could supersede that initial constitution.
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In other words, what you inherit sets the stage,
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but how you live determines whether imbalance takes root or harmony is maintained.
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And that is a huge nuance.
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Your actions, the choices you make every day,
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can shape how that inherited potential is expressed in your body.
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And now, more and more, Western science sees it in this way too.
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When I started to work on migraine heroes in 2019,
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I had created a questionnaire with 30 questions.
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I would ask those initially on WhatsApp,
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and then created a first migraine assessment.
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And I remember getting this feedback from this guy.
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Now, he was not just a random guy.
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He was someone who had invested in a couple of really large companies
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and made a few billions.
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And that guy said,
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Oh, you have 30 questions?
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That's way too much.
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People don't answer 30 questions.
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But I needed the answer to these questions
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to understand what is happening inside of the body.
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I thought I might need to buy a DNA sequencing machine at the time.
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But luckily, I didn't do that.
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I realized it would have given me nothing.
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I would have not done anything differently with a DNA machine.
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I needed to know your symptoms.
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And what happened is that not only people,
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and women in particular, would fill in the questionnaire without any problem,
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they would point out to the things I had forgotten to ask them.
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And so they made me add questions, not remove any.
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And so I added and got up to 100 questions.
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And then I refined and refined what was most needed
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and was truly bringing insights and brought it to 75.
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But so very far from the 10 questions he was advising me to ask.
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You see, that guy was trying to make money.
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And I was trying to solve a problem.
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And that's a very different goal.
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And with those questions, we know exactly what to do.
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Now, my team recently has asked me, in all fairness,
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have asked me for years to be able to give results on that,
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instantaneous results on the margarine assessment.
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It has taken me a serious five years to be able to offer something tangible
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within the space of a couple of minutes.
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It was intellectually very, very difficult as an exercise.
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So now there's a full report, and that report is good.
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They are surprised with what they find.
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And it's the dimensions for recovery that we highlight
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and take into consideration as
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it surprises them.
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They start to make new connections for the first time.
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And I'm proud of it.
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But it's not yet the full answers we can provide
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that make people happy having finally answers that they're looking for.
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And I'm proud of it,
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Just yesterday, I onboarded a woman in Australia,
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and she had had about four decades, so close to 40 years with margarine.
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That call lasted for two hours,
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and it was so much joy for her to finally get answers.
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So you kind of get a report, but you also get me personally.
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I was discussing with her and saying that one of our dreams
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would be to replicate the call automatically,
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and she said, I'm not sure that's possible
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because of the level of personalization and explanation you give step by step
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from the first onset of my migraines to now.
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It's just mind-blowingly good and mind-blowingly my life.
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And I agree with her.
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It's just really, really true.
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So back to the initial question,
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is the depression causing the migraine
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causing the depression?
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While in the West, they both share a genetic component
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that, with our Western minds, we could see as static
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and cannot be changed,
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in the East, they are seen as dynamic,
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like a tendency to,
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which can be corrected with food and lifestyle and habits,
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non-invasive solutions that drastically increase quality of life.
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You see, one of the things I used to do,
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and I do them again these days
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because they energize me and teach me so much,
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what strikes me the most
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is that I have someone completely different in front of me.
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I have their true self.
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Now, I'm not saying it's easy.
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I'm saying that there's a road
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and that you don't have to be alone to go through it.
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Now, what you can do today in your home
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if you have migraine and depression,
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you have to try to stay away from these slow triggers
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that perpetuate the deep, vicious cycle of both.
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And these are kombucha, flat whites,
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milk and any alternative milks and forms of sweetened dairy
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And remember, every small step you take
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moves you closer to freedom.
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You are powerful, you are resilient,
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and you are no longer alone.
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Keep rising, Migraine Hero.
