[00:00]
Welcome to the She Talks Health Podcast, dedicated to guiding and supporting women on their journey
[00:11]
to optimal thyroid health.
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I'm Sophie Shepard, your host and mind-body wellness coach, here to bring you inspiring
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stories of resilience, education, and transformation.
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Do you want to stop walking through life feeling like a zombie and start being present?
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Are you sick of struggling with depression, constipation, hair loss, crippling fatigue,
[00:32]
weight gain, cold intolerance, and irregular periods?
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Do you wish that you had a direct pathway to taking back your mental and physical well-being?
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Well, my friend, you are in the right place.
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As a functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner, I help women transform their thyroid health
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through physical, mental, and emotional healing.
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I am so excited to be your guide on this health adventure.
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Let's embark together on a path that leads to release, joy, empowerment, and normalcy
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that you've been seeking.
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Get ready to feel the strength of shared experiences and the power of possibility.
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Welcome to the She Talks Health Podcast.
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As always, ladies, this podcast and the information being provided to you is for educational and
[01:17]
informational purposes only, and it should not be taken as medical advice.
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This is not intended to treat or cure any specific illness, and it is not to replace
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the guidance provided by your own medical practitioner.
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This information is to be used at your own risk based on your own judgment.
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And if you suspect you have a medical problem, we urge you to take appropriate action by
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seeking medical attention.
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Welcome back, everyone, to another episode of the She Talks Health Podcast.
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I'm your host, Sophie Shepard.
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And today I am joined by Diane Ducarnay, who is a migraine expert.
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In this episode, I interviewed her about what a migraine actually is, how it's different
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than a headache, what are the root causes, and how the migraines are connected to the
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gut, the nervous system, and hormones, and how hormonal migraines are not what you think
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and may not be the root of the actual migraine.
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We also talk about how to uncover what's going on beneath the surface and some practical
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tips for supporting yourself if you're dealing with migraines.
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Now, Diane is the host of the Migraine Heroes podcast and the founder and CEO of the Migraine
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She's a Harvard Business School alum with neuroscience training from HarvardX, and she
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blends Eastern medicine, engineering, and modern science to uncover the true roots of
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Her podcast shares breakthrough insights, practical tools, and real stories to help
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you heal deeply and sustainably.
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I really enjoyed this podcast.
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We've had other people on to talk about migraines, but no one from this perspective, and it's
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absolutely incredible.
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Thanks, as always, for listening, and I hope you enjoy this episode.
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I'm super excited to be joined by Diane Ducarm today, who is a migraine expert.
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Welcome to the podcast.
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Thank you so much, Sophie, for having me.
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Yeah, I'm really honored, especially because I know it's very early for you in New Zealand
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Yes, it's a special morning.
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It's 5.30, and the city is still very quiet.
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Kind of nice when we get to get work done first thing in the morning when everyone else
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Well, this is actually, I think, the third podcast we've had about migraines and headaches,
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and I just love getting your perspective because I know you just, this is your specialty.
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And I actually, it's interesting, this past weekend, someone asked me, well, what is a
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And so I want to start there because maybe some people don't actually know.
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I think if you know, you know, you've been dealing with it for a while, but like, what
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is a migraine and maybe how is it different than a headache?
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Because it is indeed not a headache and it's profoundly different.
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So migraine is a full body experience.
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So it may involve usually head pain, but not always.
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And we involve all other types of symptoms inside of the body, such as nausea, it can
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be vomiting, can be tingling sensation in the arms and the legs, trembling sensations,
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can be half paralysis of the body, can be aura.
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So visual disturbances, seeing double, seeing very blurred, blurred at night.
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And so it's going to last, it's an episode that's going to last anywhere between three
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to four hours to three to four days, but sometimes can start one day, for example, with a traumatic
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brain injury and sort of never stop and the person is in constant pain.
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And so what is really difficult for people who suffer from migraine disease is that most
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other people they share this with will associate it with a headache because that's what they
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Because it's genetic, it's sort of unrelatable unless you've experienced them.
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And sounds so much more painful and complicated than a headache as well.
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Sometimes I tell people more labor than headache.
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Well, and the double vision and the aura and the length of time is certainly different
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And this is kind of a question that just popped into my head.
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Do you find also that I think with a headache, a lot of people kind of know if you take Tylenol
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or Advil, it'll mute the pain.
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But my understanding is with a migraine, that might not always be the case or definitely
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I think sometimes early days, it can be.
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So if the headaches involve into becoming migraine, then initially over-the-counter
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medication use works.
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And then over time, people are going to start to combine them sometimes and then start to
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go to the doctor for prescription medication.
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And we usually step up and step up and take stronger things over time, realizing that
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they never leave the home without medication anymore because they have that anxiety of
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having a migraine attack taking them by surprise and not being able to function in social settings
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and work settings and family settings, which makes it incredibly hard because it's also
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completely invisible.
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And so they take these medications with them.
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And over the years, they start to wonder, what's next for me?
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And over time, you can have what is called rebound effects of migraine.
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So it means you start to have migraine from the medication itself, which is really disheartening.
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It just sounds like kind of a big hole that people can find themselves in and not know
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how to get out of.
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Yesterday, I was onboarding on Migraine Heroes inside the app, a woman in London.
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And she was expressing, she's like, I'm a pastry chef and I work with a lot of men and
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I work under a lot of stress and I feel so misunderstood.
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I take my migraine log to my doctor as they completely don't look at it.
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They give me just more pills and I feel so isolated in my daily life because I have them
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more often and sort of every day and I'm accused of being moody with jokes by my colleagues
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and it's just really not pleasant.
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Yeah, it really impacts lives at work.
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I would imagine it impacts work, your family life, your ability to even enjoy certain things
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kind of goes out the window when you're in that much pain, huh?
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So it can be, for example, I remember a woman named Wendy in Arizona and they had twins,
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Wendy and Patrick, and her and her husband had a special code that if she started to
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lose her eyesight and couldn't take care of their twins anymore, she'd have a special
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text to say, hey, no, I need you to come back home from work.
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And so basically Patrick would come back from work and take care of the twins and she'd
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spend a couple of days in bed.
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And it was really interesting.
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It was beautiful in the Migraine Heroes podcast how he was sharing for the first time with
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her what it felt like at home when she wasn't able to be there and how the twins wanted
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their mother and how the house was full of silence because there was this cloud of we're
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We're not sure what's going on and we're not sure if it's ever going to go away and we're
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not sure of what's the future.
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And so, yes, it's very debilitating.
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It's very taxing on families, extremely intense, intense disease and very invisible.
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An invisible illness that's just impacting everyone in the family, including the person
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who's having the migraine.
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Well, we love on this podcast to talk about some of the hope and some of the things that
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we can do for ourselves.
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And I know that you are also someone who thinks about the upstream issues that could
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be triggering symptoms.
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And so in this case, migraines, what are some of the most common root causes that you've
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seen with all the women that you've supported with chronic migraines?
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So like one very strong thing that happens for a lot of people is migraines just before
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So it's going to be random.
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And here it's really important.
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So if you log your migraines in a tracker, which is important, you'll see that you have
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a tendency and that your intuition is right.
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It tends to be before your menstruation, tends to be before certain triggers, but not always.
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And still follow your intuition.
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It still is a pattern, even though your data is not sort of rocket clock, like the one
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So as a woman, we have cycles.
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And so what is really interesting is in spite migraines are genetic, it's five percent of
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boys and girls because it's genetic.
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The incidence is going to triple to quadruple for women only at puberty.
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So leaving 18 to 21 percent of women with migraines.
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So one in five, you're not alone, you're surrounded.
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One in five women is like that.
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And oftentimes it's going to start with migraines just before the menstruation.
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And from a Western lens, we're going to have a tendency to jump to hormones.
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From an Eastern perspective, you might take the time to look at the liver as a system.
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And so having the liver as a system, well-regulated and well-operating is going to help us prevent
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these sort of monthly migraines that look hormonal migraine together.
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Shall I expand maybe a little bit on that?
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Yeah, well, I would love to, because, you know, it's interesting in this field.
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Obviously, I work mostly with Hashimoto's and hypothyroid people, but I also get quite
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a lot of people who are looking for support with their cycle, whether it's period pain
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or regulating their hormones or maybe they're bleeding throughout the month.
[10:09]
But a lot of them, you know, we have a lot of smart listeners and a lot of smart clients
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who say, well, can we run a Dutch hormone?
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You know, do you run hormone testing?
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And I always have to say, well, I do, but I don't find that hormones are really the
[10:21]
root of the problem ever.
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I mean, they might be triggering the actual symptoms, but it's not that they don't they
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go out of whack for other reasons.
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And then I try to redirect people to the liver, to the gut, to stress, to nutrition.
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So I would love to expand a little bit more about how you're linking the liver with hormonal
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So I completely agree with you.
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The hormone is almost the tip of the iceberg.
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It's the symptom under the symptom, but it still is a symptom in my view.
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So when you lead your cycle, basically you're going to have, every day is different.
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So let's imagine I speak seven languages.
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You can hear from my mother tongue.
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I'm a French speaker.
[10:59]
I come from Belgium.
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And in Belgium, you have to speak at least French and Flemish, otherwise you can't have
[11:03]
And then you have to talk with English.
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Otherwise you don't go anywhere.
[11:05]
And then I went overboard.
[11:06]
Yeah, I went overboard.
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I was just, you know, I was just curious about the world and I wanted to understand more.
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And so I learned seven, but it's almost, I only speak two.
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I speak West and Mandarin and in West, when you say liver, it means the largest piece
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of organ in your body.
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It means what is the organ just below your right rib cage.
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It doesn't have any other meaning regardless of the language.
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In Mandarin, when you say gan, it does not mean that they managed to take it to a whole
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In China, it means liver and gallbladder and all of your female hormones and all of your
[11:41]
mood hormones and a lot of your brain, your temples, your eyebrows, the top of your head.
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It means your eyes and your vision.
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It means your tendons, your ability to detox your breast and your uterus.
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So when they say gan, they say all of that.
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Because they say, well, if you cut Sophie's liver and you put it to the side, it doesn't
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It's like almost like a team of football of one.
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It can't shoot and defend and pass.
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You need the whole team for the liver to actually make sense and to be able to pull its magic.
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And so in the magic of the liver, we do have the hormones in traditional Chinese medicine,
[12:20]
And so when a man wakes up, he has one sex hormone every day.
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His liver system to-do list is roughly the same.
[12:30]
When a woman wakes up, the to-do list varies.
[12:32]
Some days produce oestrogen, some days LH, some days progesterone, some days detox from
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a bit of makeup, some days a bit from inorganic food.
[12:40]
Some days have so much toxicity that the kidney system, the stress system, we're going to come
[12:45]
back to him in a minute, needs to also take a bit of the burden.
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And so it's hard to predict when your liver system is in overload and has so much inflammation
[12:56]
that your vagus nerve, which imagine it's like this really big tree that plants its
[13:01]
roots around different organs inside of your body, collects a hundred billion nerve cells
[13:06]
of your body, is a bit like a trunk in your neck and like beautiful leaves in your brain.
[13:11]
He's going to pick up the signal of inflammation in your liver and send it to your brain like
[13:16]
And so when your liver has too much toxicity overload, either because you didn't have a
[13:23]
really good hygiene of life, which is really there for migraine sufferers, migraine sufferers
[13:27]
are angels with their foods, they're saints, like saints on this planet.
[13:32]
And in spite of that, they're in pain.
[13:34]
Or because your liver is sluggish, meaning every day it wakes up and says, Hey, good
[13:41]
I see we have an order for 20.
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I'm just going to be able to do 15 or 16 today.
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So we're going to have to prioritize.
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And rightfully so is going to prioritize what is most important today.
[13:54]
But tomorrow that order of importance might change again.
[13:58]
And so before you have your menstruation, which is in traditional Chinese medicine,
[14:02]
a way to flush your toxins.
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So imagine you are cooking in your kitchen, which is your liver, and you have your garbage,
[14:09]
which you put in the rubbish bin outside.
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And then the garbage truck comes, that's your menstruation, and the menstruation, you
[14:16]
lose 23 to 28 liters of menstruation in your lifetime, it's going to allow to keep your
[14:22]
blood clean to produce life.
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And so if you have too much toxicity in your liver, it's going to overflow.
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The birds come, the cats, the dogs, and everyone's just pulling apart your rubbish bin and it
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creates a big mess.
[14:37]
That big mess is going to be the migraine and you're going to be more felt before your
[14:41]
menstruation when all of the toxicity is collated inside of your liver and it's going to translate
[14:48]
Now, the solution is not harsh detox because that would have other implications on the
[14:53]
Things are interdependent.
[14:54]
You can't harshly cool down the liver without damaging the gut, your small and large intestine.
[15:00]
However, having it well stimulated and well functioning is absolutely essential when you
[15:06]
have a genetic predisposition for migraine.
[15:08]
Oh, I love the analogies of the rubbish bin.
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That's really interesting.
[15:14]
It's interesting to me because it's from TCM, traditional Chinese medicine, but it's definitely
[15:20]
how I think about it as well in terms of just like the overload and the accumulation of
[15:25]
toxins and needing to support that.
[15:28]
Yeah, there's so many ways to support that.
[15:29]
As you mentioned, like not doing a harsh detox, I'm a big fan of, but supporting the way that
[15:34]
it is necessary to be stimulated to function optimally, even just to give it the right
[15:38]
nutrients that it needs to function optimally, the liver is like such a nutrient hog.
[15:43]
So I just love this.
[15:44]
And then it makes sense too that if, yeah, the liver, it's backed up essentially or is
[15:49]
struggling that there would be before the release every month of those toxins, there
[15:55]
would be a potential trigger for that migraine.
[16:00]
And so liver congestion or toxicity or stagnation is one of your root causes that you see with
[16:08]
women with chronic migraines.
[16:10]
And again, back to your point, they might go for a full hormonal test and feel, hey,
[16:18]
looks like sometimes they don't even have the date and how it relates to their cycle,
[16:21]
in which case the data in any way cannot be interpreted.
[16:25]
So if you do that, please ask your practitioner to ask for the date.
[16:28]
But even then, just with that information, it's too, it's too precise and at the same
[16:33]
time too wrong, like it has a lot of correct precision, but big picture inaccuracy, if
[16:43]
Another massive root cause is stress.
[16:45]
You can have stress because of life, because of work, because of work life situations,
[16:51]
but you can also have the anxiety of the next migraine attack.
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If you know every single day you get hit by a migraine in the morning, of course you're
[17:01]
going to be very stressed going to sleep.
[17:03]
If every day you know that at 8 p.m. the migraine, the evening migraine is going to hit you,
[17:08]
you're going to live all of your day thinking about what's going to happen in the evening.
[17:13]
And it's incredibly stressful.
[17:15]
And so anxiety and stress is going to conduce to more migraines.
[17:19]
Now, where is the anxiety and the stress coming from?
[17:23]
Sometimes it can be a weak kidney system, but sometimes it can be also the kidney system.
[17:27]
Say to the liver system, hey, I can see you struggling with your toxins.
[17:29]
You can flush some of them through my system, in which case it makes the kidney system weaker.
[17:34]
And we're going to start to have in my kidney system, I have my kidney, my bladder, my adrenals,
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behind my neck, shoulder tension.
[17:41]
I'm going to have my hair.
[17:43]
I'm going to have my ovulation, my ovaries.
[17:46]
And because I have my adrenals, I have my resilience to stress.
[17:49]
And so it's going to start to impact negatively my resilience to stress.
[17:52]
It means that the situation does warrant attention, but not necessarily does it warrant stress.
[18:00]
And so I start to struggle to make decisions faster and better.
[18:04]
Now, the complication is also as we move into perimenopause as women, the liver organ, according
[18:09]
to the West, can shrink and lose up to 44% of its volume.
[18:13]
And so the beautiful abilities of the liver and the kidney is going to also decrease in
[18:19]
ability are going to start to decrease.
[18:22]
So my ability to be resilient to stress and to deal with toxins is going to be reduced.
[18:26]
And so the amount of migraines and headaches and dizziness, vertigo, fogginess, speech
[18:32]
impairments that I can have is just going to be more.
[18:35]
And I'm going to feel really lost because most of what I'm going to be told to do is
[18:39]
to add medication.
[18:40]
What that medication is going to do is going to be a painkiller, which momentarily may
[18:45]
work, but then it's going to add to the toxicity of the liver.
[18:50]
That's how you can explain beautifully rebound migraines from a TCM perspective.
[18:54]
Both medicine will say that more toxins will lead to more migraines.
[18:58]
And so these become lives where you are doomed if you don't and you are doomed if you do.
[19:03]
And no one wants to hear your story anymore after a decade or two or three or four or
[19:09]
I mean, sometimes people at 66, they've had 60 years of migraines and the life has been
[19:14]
And all along the life, you wonder, is this me forever?
[19:17]
And the answer is no, it is not you and it is not forever.
[19:21]
So, so kidneys can get overloaded to the kidney system.
[19:26]
It can sometimes get overloaded because of the liver, can also get overloaded because
[19:33]
And so we have all of these things kind of accumulating together that could be putting
[19:37]
strain on the body and triggering these migraines over and over again.
[19:42]
So the kidney system can also be overloaded if you've had a traumatic childhood or abuse.
[19:48]
Now in Western science, we've realized that this would trigger the vagus nerve in a very
[19:54]
And so that's therefore in extreme cases, emotions are translated physically, which
[19:59]
in the Eastern philosophies have always been the case.
[20:03]
So if someone has had, um, is under chronic stress, it's going to chronically impact the
[20:09]
And instead of being able to rest and digest or constantly between going to be in a mode
[20:14]
of right flight fight.
[20:16]
And so that nervous system is always on alert mode and therefore depleting the kidney system
[20:23]
So it's when my kidney system is weak, I'm going to have more stress.
[20:29]
But when I'm more stressed, I'm also willing to deplete my kidney system.
[20:34]
So it goes two ways.
[20:35]
So I start to enter a very vicious circle where if I have more stress, I'm going to
[20:40]
start to have more migraines.
[20:42]
And so this is also a very big door for migraine.
[20:47]
Migraine disease and migraine attacks.
[20:49]
This is so good because I mean, this is like so connected to what I have learned and what
[20:54]
I, and a lot of what I've learned has been through experience and working with like 300
[20:59]
women at this point with a variety of health concerns.
[21:02]
But with the thriving thyroid method that I teach, I always say, you know, we have to
[21:08]
And what I mean by that is we have to find ways to regulate the nervous system, to support
[21:12]
the vagus nerve, to also support like nutrients and sleep and rest and like stress regulation,
[21:19]
because I find it, you know, bi-directional for the thyroid as well.
[21:23]
And that we can get really depleted.
[21:25]
And people who have a lot, a high ACE score, for example, adverse childhood issues, you
[21:29]
know, traumas, things like that, they tend to be more susceptible.
[21:33]
So it's, it sounds like there's this bi-directional system that you're also noticing with it when
[21:37]
it comes to migraines with stress.
[21:39]
And so is that what you mean when you say that migraines are not just in the head, but
[21:43]
they're in the gut, the hormones and the nervous system?
[21:47]
Now it is a completely 100%.
[21:51]
Also in traditional, the brain is not an organ, it's the, it's a dashboard.
[21:56]
It's the result of multiple organs that are in the thorax.
[21:59]
And so it's a different lens to look at it.
[22:02]
Women have three to four times more migraine than men.
[22:05]
If you compare a man to a woman, a woman is going to produce in her lifetime 23 to 28
[22:10]
liters of blood and a child, like a child, a pair of eyes, a brain, a set of collagen,
[22:16]
a set of bones, nails, a stomach, a heart, blood.
[22:21]
She's going to fabricate all of that.
[22:23]
Meanwhile, she has received from her partner, a cell, okay?
[22:28]
So the man produces a cell, that's his output for life.
[22:32]
A bunch of cells, not 23 liters of them, just a bunch of cells.
[22:37]
The woman's going to produce children.
[22:38]
So if you had to compare the female body to the male body, they're two factories, they're
[22:43]
very different factories.
[22:44]
Maybe men produce envelopes and women produce cars.
[22:48]
It's a very different machine.
[22:49]
So the dashboard of the factory can indicate more things that went wrong.
[22:56]
There's more places where things can go glitchy.
[22:58]
And that's really how to look at migraine disease.
[23:02]
It is not a curse that you're not dysfunctional.
[23:06]
Oftentimes it is positioned as a neurological disorder.
[23:10]
If you put things together, migraine is a genetic predisposition of a fifth of women.
[23:15]
No, not a fifth of women are cuckoo.
[23:18]
So you are making sense.
[23:20]
It's not just because people cannot make sense.
[23:23]
You just need a bit of help to decrypt.
[23:26]
What does it mean?
[23:27]
What does it relate to?
[23:28]
What does it correspond to?
[23:29]
That's what we do with the Migraine Heroes app.
[23:31]
We try to teach you, you teach you what is your brain trying to see right now.
[23:37]
And once you do that and you are able to not just understand the foods that trigger you,
[23:42]
but the foods that untrigger you, then you feel you come from a place of power and joy
[23:49]
and you're like, oh wow, this body does work and it is a boss voice and I am fertile and
[23:53]
I am, you know, I do have a glow and I have a lot of hair and I actually have a lot of
[23:58]
energy and I'm actually very zesty and I actually don't have any depression and I'm actually
[24:02]
not an anxious person.
[24:03]
You just rediscover who you truly are.
[24:06]
But in the absence of that, it's a lot.
[24:08]
And if you have thyroid issues, there's going to be a tendency to medicate, please always
[24:12]
follow your doctor.
[24:14]
However, is this the plan for the long run?
[24:17]
And is that not a medication as well?
[24:19]
And then what does it do to other systems?
[24:23]
You have to take those for a lifetime.
[24:25]
So these are things for you to think about.
[24:27]
You have one life and one body.
[24:30]
One life, one body.
[24:31]
I love the similarities in our work is so, so similar.
[24:37]
Like you know, when you learn about your body, you understand your body, you decode the body,
[24:41]
you all of a sudden realize, oh, I like, I love what you said.
[24:43]
I'm not an anxious person.
[24:44]
I hear this all the time.
[24:45]
Oh, I'm just an anxious person.
[24:47]
This is just how I am.
[24:48]
All these like beliefs we have, because that's like what we think our body is trying to tell
[24:53]
But actually, when we are able to be empowered to help our body to be optimized and be in
[24:58]
optimal health, we realize that those things are just the stories that we were told or
[25:05]
It makes me so much think of the story of Jade, a gorgeous woman, young woman in Melbourne
[25:10]
And I meet with Jade and Jade had episodes of migraines where she would fall on the floor,
[25:16]
And so they have to call the ambulance.
[25:18]
They couldn't even sit her in a chair, so it has to be a bed to get to the ambulance.
[25:23]
And when you go to the emergency room, which is a big decision to take when you have a
[25:26]
migraine attack, because you're surrounded with more light, like the light is in your
[25:31]
face because you're on a bed, more sound, truckload of medication.
[25:36]
So here she receives what is called the green thistle, the highest level dose of morphine
[25:40]
to make the pain go away.
[25:42]
And wakes up three days later to just be told, you have a migraine, go home, there's nothing
[25:47]
And so when we met, she was quite desperate and we corrected it.
[25:52]
She even had been fired.
[25:53]
So two weeks into the work, she calls me and says, I've been fired.
[25:56]
I won't be able to continue with you.
[25:58]
And I said, look, we're not an organization that is about money, we're about health.
[26:02]
So you can stop paying me.
[26:04]
You're going to stop having migraines, then you're going to have a job back and then you
[26:07]
pay me later, which is what happened.
[26:09]
But what was really interesting with Jade is she said, at some point, I remember I was
[26:13]
out of migraine and you said, what's with that five out of 10 of energy on your tracker?
[26:18]
And she replied, Jade replied, this is just my personality.
[26:21]
I'm a lethargic person by personality.
[26:23]
And I said, Jade, there is no such personality.
[26:27]
Let's just work on it.
[26:29]
And we worked on it.
[26:30]
And she said, the day I clicked 10 out of 10 stars, this is in a podcast, in the Migraine
[26:34]
Healers podcast, I felt like, oh, wow, I am an energetic person and I am not lethargic.
[26:39]
And yeah, she got back to work and she was so happy.
[26:43]
She went on holidays for the first time without migraines and she was really thriving.
[26:47]
But she didn't say, I thought I had a lethargic personality.
[26:53]
I have everyone do an assessment in the beginning, too.
[26:55]
And it's always low energy at the beginning.
[26:57]
But then you, yeah, you work on it and not such a not a thing, which is hard for some
[27:01]
people listening properly to understand because you might have been low energy for many years.
[27:06]
But there's always a reason for low energy.
[27:09]
And once you get to the lat route, then you can start energizing your whole body and reducing
[27:13]
other issues like migraines, like thyroid issues.
[27:19]
And, you know, you know, one thing that is really important is why it matters is because
[27:23]
you have circadian rhythms.
[27:25]
And if you are in pain every single day, chances are you're in your bed every single day.
[27:31]
So every single day, you don't even bother waking up anymore because you think at some
[27:36]
point your life is not worth it or that you're just in so much excruciating pain that you
[27:41]
start to stay in bed.
[27:42]
And so little by little, your body clock starts to be different to the moon and the sun clock.
[27:50]
And it might seem a small deal, but it means that all of your system starts to be dysregulated.
[27:55]
And then that in itself can start to prolong the duration of your migraine.
[28:01]
Circadian rhythm, such an important other topic, and definitely people can delay getting
[28:06]
up and it can kind of shift their whole body clock.
[28:08]
OK, so you feel like we've talked about the root causes, we've talked about these success
[28:13]
And I know that you also have a model and a system that works.
[28:16]
And you've mentioned this app a couple of times, but you've also mentioned one to one
[28:21]
So I would love to hear from you, like how, you know, if someone was coming to you or
[28:25]
how does this work?
[28:26]
Do they go through the app?
[28:27]
Do they work with you one to one?
[28:28]
Like, what's your process like for people?
[28:31]
So you go on the MigraineHeroes.com website and take the migraine assessment.
[28:36]
It allows to understand what are the underlying root causes of your migraine on top of your
[28:42]
And then we meet one on one and I explain to you those, that conversation takes usually
[28:48]
It's only $30 and sometimes it's even free on the website.
[28:51]
I think understanding the root cause of your imbalances and understanding that you actually
[28:57]
It's such a moment of relief.
[28:59]
It's an incredible moment.
[29:00]
I really enjoy it.
[29:01]
It doesn't take me energy.
[29:02]
It gives me a lot of energy.
[29:04]
And then from there we work on the app.
[29:06]
We add foods to your diet.
[29:08]
It's very different.
[29:09]
We add food to diet.
[29:10]
We don't remove anything.
[29:12]
We let you know of your triggers in case you take them every single day for health reasons.
[29:16]
Sometimes it can happen.
[29:17]
And then we monitor your migraine, your energy, your bowel movement until little by little
[29:22]
they decrease intensity and frequency and they disappear.
[29:26]
And so that's where we are happy as a team because that's the joy, like that's the massive
[29:32]
joy it just gives us.
[29:33]
It's just amazing for us.
[29:35]
It always feels like the first time when we have, yeah, hashtag team victory.
[29:42]
It's like the team.
[29:44]
This is a great system.
[29:46]
Thank you so much for sharing that.
[29:47]
Well, I think the last question I have for you is, I know you mentioned, you know, tracking
[29:51]
your symptoms and like a migraine log.
[29:54]
And obviously we talked about some root causes, but if there was just someone who was looking
[29:58]
for some, like maybe one to two or maybe even three tips when it comes to their migraines,
[30:04]
what would you tell them for their health?
[30:06]
What are some of the most important things?
[30:07]
You mentioned sleep and circuiting rhythm, but is there anything else that you think
[30:13]
So you need to measure your pain location, the intensity, the timing matters, your energy
[30:19]
level, your bowel movement, like along a Bristol chart, like the different types of
[30:24]
They really, that's your gut brain axis and your symptoms and your menstruation.
[30:28]
And you can actually do all of that free of charge and download reports that you can take
[30:32]
to your doctor on the Migraine Heroes app.
[30:35]
It's work is love made visible.
[30:37]
I can see the love you give to all of your customers and you know, and it's the same
[30:44]
It's just, you know, it's just helping you make sense because you do.
[30:48]
And just, you know, that is there to help you make sense of all of these things that
[30:51]
seem random and some are louder than others.
[30:55]
If you have a lot of migraines, it's really loud, but you know, try to listen to what
[31:00]
else is causing migraines and what else is making noise.
[31:04]
What else is your body asking for?
[31:05]
Because it's in those ones you find gems.
[31:09]
Absolutely listening, listening to the wisdom of our bodies.
[31:16]
So if people want to find you, they can go to MigraineHeroes.com.
[31:19]
And then you also have the Migraine Heroes podcast.
[31:22]
Is there any other places you want to send people?
[31:25]
No, they're perfect.
[31:26]
And actually the podcast is bite-sized advice, like concrete advice, things you can do every
[31:32]
It's twice a week.
[31:33]
It's loved by people.
[31:35]
And yeah, it's a really special time.
[31:37]
It's a really special time because, you know, every day for 15 minutes or twice a week for
[31:40]
15 minutes, we give you actionable things you can do from your home, from your kitchen.
[31:45]
Absolutely amazing.
[31:46]
Oh, I'm so excited to plug into the podcast now.
[31:49]
And thank you for being on my podcast and sharing all your amazing wisdom.
[31:52]
It's a totally different approach than what we had previous.
[31:55]
And I'm just super excited for people to have you and have the resources you're providing.
[31:59]
Thank you so much.
[32:00]
Thank you so much for the integrity of your work, Sophie.
[32:02]
It's amazing to find souls that genuinely care.
[32:08]
And I hope everyone has enjoyed this podcast.
[32:09]
Thanks for listening.
[32:10]
And don't forget to check out MigraineHeroes.com.
[32:16]
Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of the She Talks Health podcast.
[32:21]
If you enjoyed the show, please remember to leave us a five-star review on iTunes and
[32:26]
share this with a girlfriend.
[32:27]
This is how we get the podcast into the hands of women all over the world.
[32:31]
If you'd like to connect with me directly, be sure to shoot me a DM on Instagram at She
[32:35]
Talks Health to start a conversation.
[32:37]
I'd love to hear from you.
[32:39]
Or you may always visit our website, SheTalksHealth.com if you're interested in joining a program
[32:44]
or scheduling a future call with me or even taking advantage of our thyroid and other