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Welcome to the Fit and Fueled Life podcast,
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where health, fitness, and fuel come together
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for a stronger, more confident you.
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I'm Tina Hopper, an FDN practitioner
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and certified holistic nutrition coach.
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I'm here to help women in perimetopause and metopause
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lose fat, build muscle, balance their hormones,
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and optimize their metabolic health.
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Ready to get fit and fueled for life?
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Welcome to the next episode
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of the Fit and Fueled Life podcast.
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Today, I have a special guest.
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I have Diane Ducarme,
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who is a founder and CEO of Migraine Heroes.
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So today, we're gonna talk all about migraines,
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maybe why they're more common in perimetopause and metopause.
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So excited to dive into this topic.
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So welcome, Diane.
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Thank you so much, Tina, for having me.
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Yeah, yeah, I'm excited to dive into this.
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So just to start out, will you please introduce yourself,
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tell listeners who you are, what you do,
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all those good details?
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Yes, so my name's Diane.
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The accent you can hear is my mother tongue is French.
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I live in New Zealand,
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and that's after living in South Africa,
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in the US, in China.
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My husband and I love traveling,
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and we thought we'd go back home,
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and we just did one last stop in New Zealand,
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It's been 10 years now.
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And in the last 10 years, something else happened.
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It went from my sister having migraine
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and sharing that with me
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as our uncle had just passed away from glioblastoma,
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which is a very violent form of brain tumor,
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all the way to now the Migraine Heroes app,
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which is a testament of love to her
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and of love to millions of women
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who suffer from migraine disease.
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It has been a really unexpected journey
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as I was having a completely business career.
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And so what happened is that she took me apart
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and said, I have this super strong migraine,
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and I've been seeing lots of doctors,
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and I did three MRI, and they swear I have nothing.
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But my big fear is that I'm gonna develop
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what our uncle had.
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And it was indeed very disheartening.
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He passed away, leaving four children behind.
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And so I understood how much anxiety
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she would feel having unexplained pain.
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So pain that she would go to doctors,
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and doctors would say, no, your blood tests are fine.
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No, you're fine, no, you're fine.
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And she'd say, but inside, I am not fine.
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And I told her I know someone who can help,
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and that someone is Dr. Yifang Zhang.
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I had known Dr. Yifang Zhang for a couple of years.
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She had helped me with my own skiing accidents
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a few years prior.
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And we wrote together three pages of all of her symptoms.
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And why I'm sharing that is because when you impair
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menopause, you have lots going on.
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So you do have potentially the migraine,
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or the Meniere's disease, or the dizziness, the vertigo.
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You also have bloating, and night sweats,
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and constipation, and vaginal dryness.
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And those things can come in play.
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And so we brought together three pages,
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and then had an hour consultation with her.
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And she explained to her what to eat.
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And after she ate these things, four months later,
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three months later, she had no more migraine,
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which I thought was logical.
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For me, she had imbalances that she had resolved.
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And fast forward four years later,
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my neighbor says the same,
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except now my neighbor is the daughter of a neurologist.
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And her father advocates for a lifetime of medication,
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including injections in her brain.
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And I'm telling her as a friend,
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I don't understand why you would do that.
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That sounds very dangerous.
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It also sounds very discomforting.
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Like you're gonna do that?
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What, like injections in your brain for a lifetime?
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Like that doesn't make sense.
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And so I said, look, if you don't mind,
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I'll just ask for a few questions on WhatsApp.
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And between WhatsApp and WeChat and my work,
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normal work, we make it happen.
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And we made it happen.
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And after three to four months, she no longer had migraine.
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I really thought that's bizarre
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because her father is a neurologist.
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So probably the foods are very,
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very similar to the medication.
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They do the same just for more naturally.
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And what I found was completely the opposite.
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The medication were painkillers.
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And I was like, ah, well, I understand.
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So they're trying to silence the pain.
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What I'm trying to do is listen to the pain
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And so this is how Migraine Heroes was birthed
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with then evolved, evolved, evolved.
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As I started to appreciate that there was such a plethora
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of different types of migraine,
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different types of people and how everyone was unique.
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And now coupled with technology and AI,
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it's possible to serve and to cater to every single person
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in their most uniqueness, which is super, super special.
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So it's a huge letter of love to women.
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Oh, I love that so much.
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That's a great story.
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I think a lot of that can resonate with people too,
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because yeah, when you have a migraine,
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it really does impact like so many parts of your life.
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So when I started, I told a couple of friends,
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well, after I read these papers,
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I thought it's 18% of women.
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I read that in the scientific papers.
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I thought, wow, that's a lot.
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That's one in five.
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How bad a friend am I?
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And then I started to think, going to bed,
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oh my God, this friend, yes, she did mention,
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I'm going to home, I have a migraine.
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So I started calling back my friends.
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I said, how is it going now?
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It's like, oh, wow, thank you for asking.
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I'm worse than before.
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And I'm a lot more medicated.
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I would tell them, I think I know how to help.
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And they'd be like, seriously?
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I'm like, yeah, seriously.
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I think I made a finding.
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And what really struck me is that afterwards,
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I received a lot of other women coming to me
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and my jaw would drop.
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I would hear their story and my heart would melt and crush.
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And I was trying to stay calm and composed.
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And I was like, oh my God, your life is so, so, so hard.
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Like they would be living for five, 10, 20, 30,
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40 years with pain.
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And initially for the first couple of years,
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they'd mentioned to their friends and family.
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And over time, they'd stay silent
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because no one really had a realistic solution.
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If people were giving them solution,
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they were not realistic and they were kind of well-intended,
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but completely off and completely underappreciating
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what people were going through.
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And these lives were after traumatic brain injury
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or starting with an exam in college
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or starting with headaches in childhood,
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transforming into migraine later,
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or starting with a burnout,
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their life would completely flip.
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And even though these women were alive and standing,
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they were not able to live their life.
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And I found that profoundly touching, profoundly unfair.
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And I really thought as a society,
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how can we let that happen and accept it?
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That's how I started to do the podcast of Migraine Heroes
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because I thought, wow, these lives are so un-Instagrammed,
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And so these women come to tell an hour of their life
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before we met, that we speak of what happened after,
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but incredible, yeah.
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Yeah, and so something I want to talk about real quick,
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just for ladies who might not know what a migraine is
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or maybe not know the difference between a migraine
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and just your typical headache,
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because I feel like I didn't know that difference
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until a migraine actually hit me for the first time.
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And I was like, this is so much worse.
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So will you talk about like the difference
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between a headache and a migraine
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and maybe what is actually happening to the body
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during the migraine epidemic?
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It is not enjoyable.
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So a migraine is a full body experience.
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Like you started to allude to, it's not just the head pain.
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And in fact, sometimes there can be no head pain involved.
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It's a minority, they're called silent migraine.
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So it's a full body experience that's going to last
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anywhere between three to four hours to three to four days.
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And it's going to involve potentially head pain,
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excruciating, more labor-like in the level of pain
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and will involve other symptoms such as vomiting,
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having nausea, losing eyesight, seeing blurred,
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having dots and prisms in the vision,
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can also involve trembling sensations,
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paralysis, half paralysis of the body, cramps, spasms, numbness.
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And we occur in three phases,
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a prodrome where the woman knows it's going to hit.
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And she knows because she sees the symptoms.
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For example, she's starting to lose her eyesight
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or she's starting to have a partial paralysis in her body
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and she knows it's coming.
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And so she's going to need to quickly take action.
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She's going to try to reach for medication
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that she probably has in her bag right there,
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possible for her to access.
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She's going to cancel her meetings,
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let the one person she trusts know
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and sort of disappear from the surface of the earth.
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And she's going to be in massive pain,
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potentially in bed in a dark room
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for the main phase of the migraine.
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And once she gets out of that phase,
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she still has a hangover for quite some time.
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Now, this is a typical quote unquote migraine attack.
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However, some people can start to have a migraine attack
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and it's never going to leave them.
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They're going to start to be in pain
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and the pain is never going to go away.
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For some people, it's more of a dizziness, vertigo.
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It's also called Meniere's disease
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that is going to appear in perimenopause and menopause
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and stay with them sort of drumming in the background.
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So we can't generalize too much,
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but overall that's a migraine.
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And the major difference between a headache is genetic.
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So there's 128 genes, lucky,
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that have been identified linked to a migraine.
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And so it's really a deaf dialogue
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between a person who has headaches
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and can relate to headaches
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versus someone who can experience a migraine
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and knows what it is,
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therefore can lead to a lot of anxiety
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and then the anxiety of having migraine,
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but also the anxiety that provokes the migraine
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becomes a bit of a chicken egg sometimes.
[10:03]
That's super interesting about the genetic component.
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So I think perimenopause, menopause,
[10:08]
sometimes migraines are more common.
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Could you talk a little bit more about that
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as far as like the hormone fluctuation,
[10:15]
but also some of the common triggers?
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Some of them I feel like are familiar,
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but then there's also like silent triggers.
[10:21]
So would you be able to talk about that a little bit?
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Because I feel like there are things that maybe ladies do
[10:26]
that they don't realize could be contributing
[10:28]
to their migraine.
[10:33]
Let's talk about that.
[10:35]
The stats are really strong on hormones
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because it's genetic.
[10:38]
It's 5% of boys and girls, right?
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Because mother nature has to be equal, even 50-50.
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However, at puberty, so as women ramp into fertility,
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the incidence of migraine is going to triple
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to quadruple for women,
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leaving 18% of women with migraine.
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And now in the US,
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we even talk about 22% of women with migraine.
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And when we look purely in Western science,
[11:04]
the scientific body says, interesting,
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because when we look at pure hormonal migraines,
[11:11]
they do not account for that gap from 5% to 18%.
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So we're not exactly sure why,
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which tells you a lot about,
[11:18]
this is the first cause of disability under 50, right?
[11:21]
Like how can we invest so little in understanding why
[11:24]
from a Western science perspective?
[11:26]
But that's what we know.
[11:27]
So we know they're linked to the fertility,
[11:31]
but precisely to hormone,
[11:33]
some link can be established, but not fully.
[11:36]
So from a Western science,
[11:38]
we were a little bit puzzled
[11:39]
and we need to go East to understand more.
[11:42]
Now, obviously, as we go from fertility into perimenopause
[11:47]
and sort of second spring,
[11:49]
then there's again a variance.
[11:50]
And so you're going to have women
[11:52]
who are going to have a few headaches
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sort of throughout their life
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that become full debilitating migraine
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in perimenopause-menopause.
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You have for some women,
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they're going to have some certain types of migraines,
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such as left temple, right temple migraine,
[12:08]
across the eyebrows migraines,
[12:10]
no aura that are suddenly going to become aura
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or change in nature.
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So there's a change.
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And for some, it's going to stop.
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And because for some it's going to stop,
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I have met several women who had done a hysterectomy
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in the hope to stop their migraine and it hadn't worked.
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So that's how desperate people can be.
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That's also how confusing it is.
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Is it going to be better
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or is it actually going to be worse?
[12:33]
And so the hormones will play a huge role,
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It's really, if we think of the overall reproductive system
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with hormones and beyond,
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and we can talk about that a bit later.
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When it comes to triggers,
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I love that you mentioned that
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there are some known triggers, such as wine.
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Among the foods domain,
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it's the only one that has been scientifically proven
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to cause migraine for all.
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If you really like alcohol
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and you feel very frustrated with wine,
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you might get more luck.
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I say might get more luck with another type of alcohol,
[13:07]
because some alcohol actually work really well
[13:10]
for some women, yeah?
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But wine is quite universal.
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The second one that is quite strong
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is of course chocolate,
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and women find out very fast,
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as well as cheese.
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And so, as you can see,
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all of these stimulate and go and intoxicate
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a little bit my liver system,
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which is incredibly connected to the brain,
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and we'll talk about that,
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and explains a lot of the migraines.
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Those are quite self-report,
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but not so straight.
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Also straightforward is stress.
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Fatigue can also be inducing a lot of migraine.
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And so those women will feel.
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Now, much more subtle are things that will,
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for example, dry the body, such as nuts.
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And so they can be quite silent.
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So nuts are incredible, and seeds as well,
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and they're very, very useful,
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especially seeds and perimenopause are wonderful,
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because a seed helps to create life.
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So they are full of incredible nutrients,
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and they're very small and very dense.
[14:09]
However, they need to be soaked.
[14:11]
If they don't soak in water overnight,
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they will soak in your body and make you further dry.
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And that's really important.
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That's not gonna be a trigger
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that is gonna be immediate,
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but it's a trigger that is gonna slowly create
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an imbalance inside the body
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that is gonna exacerbate a number of the symptoms
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that a woman would experience in perimenopause.
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Oh, that's super interesting about the nuts and seeds.
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I did not realize that.
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Any other triggers as far as nutrition goes,
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like meal timing, skipping meals,
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blood sugar fluctuating?
[14:44]
I've definitely heard that from ladies where-
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And then they get a migraine.
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No, I mean, let's go over what you said.
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Skipping meals, absolutely.
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So skipping meals can be a trigger for migraines, yes.
[14:57]
And therefore intermittent fasting can also not be good.
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If it's not good for you, it's just not good.
[15:05]
Even though a lot of people will argue for it,
[15:09]
Like intermittent fasting or fasting
[15:11]
is not a one-size-fits-all.
[15:13]
It really depends on your body constitution,
[15:15]
on your imbalances, and imbalance inside.
[15:18]
Fasting or intermittent fasting,
[15:20]
if it gives you more dryness in the eyes, more aura,
[15:23]
then it's not for you.
[15:25]
And please listen to your body.
[15:26]
Because if you don't and you push,
[15:28]
because you've read some articles
[15:30]
and people are advocating for it,
[15:32]
then you can have more and more other imbalances.
[15:35]
Other things that diet-wise can help or trigger
[15:38]
and therefore cutting can help
[15:39]
is gluten and dairy, quite common.
[15:42]
Because you need to think of the gut-brain axis, right?
[15:45]
So anything that is gonna gut-brain axis
[15:48]
give you inflammation in your gut
[15:50]
is going to send a signal of inflammation in your brain.
[15:54]
So you can think of two things.
[15:55]
One is the gut-brain axis,
[15:56]
which we've proven in the West is bi-directional.
[15:59]
It's quite incredible that scientifically
[16:01]
we're able to prove that not only does the brain
[16:03]
communicate with the gut,
[16:04]
the gut communicates with the brain.
[16:07]
It's something that has existed in Eastern medicine
[16:10]
for thousands of years, literally.
[16:12]
So Ayurveda or traditional Chinese medicine
[16:15]
would always access the brain via the gut.
[16:18]
That's really powerful.
[16:19]
The other thing to think about is the vagus nerve.
[16:21]
So imagine your vagus nerve like a massive tree.
[16:24]
It's the chief of orchestra
[16:26]
of the hundred billion nerve cells
[16:28]
that you have in your body.
[16:30]
And imagine like a big tree that plants its roots
[16:32]
around your heart, around your stomach,
[16:34]
around your liver, around your large intestine.
[16:36]
And all of these ramifications
[16:38]
will form larger roots along your spine
[16:41]
and a big, big foliage and tree in your brain.
[16:44]
And so when you hydrate properly your vagus nerve,
[16:47]
then your brain is happy.
[16:49]
But if you have a lot of inflammation in your gut
[16:53]
along your vagus nerve,
[16:54]
your brain will pick up that signal.
[16:56]
And so a migraine hero is a woman who masters
[17:00]
not so much her triggers,
[17:02]
but knows the foods that she can add in her diet
[17:05]
specifically for her,
[17:07]
and that will rebalance her
[17:09]
so that her threshold for migraine
[17:12]
is a lot more tolerant.
[17:14]
Then she can have a little bit of wine
[17:16]
and get away with it.
[17:17]
Have a bit of cheese or chocolate and get away with it.
[17:20]
Still have a little bit of a gluten
[17:22]
and not have inflammation.
[17:23]
And so it's all about finding that balance,
[17:25]
that internal balance is quite personal
[17:28]
in order to have a good brain access
[17:29]
that is simply happy.
[17:31]
And I wanted to go there next with you
[17:32]
as far as this gut brain access
[17:34]
and just how common gut issues like leaky gut, SIBO, IBS.
[17:39]
I have IBD, I have ulcerative colitis,
[17:40]
but how some of these symptoms,
[17:43]
as far as the gut goes,
[17:45]
what's going on there
[17:46]
and how might gut issues make migraines worse
[17:52]
That's a brilliant question.
[17:53]
And indeed, IBD is super connected to migraine.
[17:57]
Like when you look,
[17:58]
when you read scientific articles
[18:00]
and they look at comorbidities.
[18:01]
So what do people have migraine with?
[18:05]
And what is the incidence rate
[18:06]
of someone who has an irritable bowel issue?
[18:10]
What is the likelihood they also have migraines?
[18:12]
Really, really high.
[18:13]
Depending on scientific papers,
[18:14]
it can turn around 40%.
[18:17]
And so how does it relate is,
[18:19]
it's really interesting.
[18:20]
I speak a lot of languages, seven,
[18:22]
but it's almost, I only speak two.
[18:23]
I speak West and I speak Mandarin.
[18:26]
And in West, when you say irritable bowel,
[18:29]
you designate the bowel to say it's irritable.
[18:32]
And so you almost designate that he made the bad thing.
[18:36]
But when you speak in Chinese,
[18:40]
you don't mean it like that.
[18:41]
You say when the bowel receives the work of his coworkers
[18:46]
and his coworkers are to blame.
[18:48]
So technically he's not the issue.
[18:51]
And so in the East,
[18:52]
when you look at an irritable bowel,
[18:54]
you look at the digestive process upstream.
[18:57]
How and what shape is the food arriving in your bowels?
[19:03]
And so that's really like the mastery.
[19:05]
How do you master as a hero of your health?
[19:08]
How do you master the digestion process of,
[19:12]
for example, your liver system?
[19:14]
So when I have fermented oligosaccharides
[19:17]
that are extremely healthy for my life
[19:19]
and extremely important that I'm able to eat and digest them,
[19:24]
who's in charge of digesting them
[19:26]
and who is not doing their job
[19:27]
and passing along the hot potato to the next guy
[19:30]
who's the bowel and making him irritated.
[19:34]
And then having that inflammation picked up
[19:36]
through the vagus nerve
[19:37]
and creating sort of a pain signal in my brain.
[19:41]
Does that make sense?
[19:42]
That's really a link.
[19:43]
I think it's really important to establish
[19:46]
because if I go back to these women I had met all along,
[19:49]
you can silence your pain and medication have their place.
[19:52]
It's also super important to go to your doctor
[19:55]
to get a proper diagnosis.
[19:57]
However, can you medicate for 10, 20, 30 years
[20:01]
without damaging your liver further
[20:03]
and making your migraines worse?
[20:04]
No, we make your migraine worse.
[20:07]
So over time, it's what is called
[20:09]
in the West scientifically proven rebound migraine
[20:12]
and medication overuse headaches.
[20:14]
So the more you will medicate for your migraine,
[20:17]
the more you're gonna make the IBD stronger.
[20:21]
And those links, they haven't really been established
[20:25]
to IBD because let's face it,
[20:27]
why would we pay people to prove that?
[20:30]
That's quite negative,
[20:31]
but you need to really think about
[20:33]
how do I improve my digestive process
[20:38]
and who are my allies in the digestive process?
[20:41]
And so I have my liver system.
[20:42]
I also have my stomach,
[20:44]
my stomach and my digestive enzymes, my gastric juices,
[20:48]
and both of them need to collaborate and cooperate
[20:52]
and beat at the similar rhythm
[20:55]
in order to digest the food at the top of my digestive tract
[20:59]
so that the food be digested that lands into my bowel
[21:03]
that then can process his work, not being irritated.
[21:08]
Yeah, I love that.
[21:09]
I love how you're just talking about the collaboration
[21:11]
between different organs as far as like the stomach
[21:14]
and the liver and the colon and all that
[21:16]
because this was something coming from somebody with IBD.
[21:18]
It was hard for me to understand
[21:20]
how all these different systems were connected
[21:23]
and gut health just isn't what's happening
[21:25]
in just your colon.
[21:27]
So I love that you talked about that.
[21:29]
And do you have any just simple like everyday habits
[21:33]
or even foods that could improve gut health
[21:36]
and just reduce the frequency of migraines?
[21:40]
Because I know a lot of ladies struggle with gut health
[21:42]
and there's so much information out there.
[21:45]
So a lot of times I like just making it as simple
[21:47]
as possible as far as, you know, you have got issues
[21:50]
and you're also getting migraines.
[21:52]
What could you do, I guess?
[21:54]
Yeah, so there's maybe two profiles that we talked about
[21:58]
if we like really exaggerated.
[22:01]
One is really perimenopause and one is IBD, yeah?
[22:04]
And maybe let's look at those separately
[22:06]
because they're a bit different.
[22:08]
Or yeah, what we're trying to solve for is a bit different.
[22:11]
In the case of IBD, if we stay on that, what do we want?
[22:15]
We want a happy stomach and we want a happy liver, okay?
[22:19]
And we want them collaborating.
[22:20]
Essentially, they're really the two that sort of
[22:23]
making the mess upstairs.
[22:25]
And it's a bit like with siblings,
[22:26]
like when there's one provoking the other one,
[22:28]
the second one shouts and then mom says, you know,
[22:30]
yells at the second one and says, it's not me, it's her.
[22:33]
And that's exactly what's happening.
[22:35]
And so what we want to do first of when we start
[22:39]
and we have so much issues, we want to not irritate.
[22:42]
And so momentarily a FODMAP diet has its own place
[22:47]
to suppress FODMAP foods to avoid irritation.
[22:50]
And so when we work at Migraine Heroes,
[22:53]
we always pay a lot of attention to that.
[22:56]
And as simple as a chamomile will give bloating to someone
[22:59]
because it has fructan, right?
[23:00]
Goji berry will also make someone bloat
[23:03]
because it also does have fructan.
[23:05]
So there's a lot of super healthy foods,
[23:07]
but it's really mindful to, there's a few apps,
[23:10]
I think an app from Monash University that will tell you
[23:13]
all of the FODMAP foods to remove initially.
[23:16]
And then what you want to do is you want to stimulate
[23:19]
the liver with foods that would not contain FODMAPs.
[23:23]
And you want to also stimulate your gastric juices.
[23:28]
Those are really, really important.
[23:29]
So for example, a very good foods that would be good
[23:32]
to combine for people with IBD, also with perimenopause
[23:36]
is a very bland food that is consumed a lot in Asia
[23:40]
called millet congee.
[23:42]
Millet is translated in Chinese as small rice.
[23:47]
For the anecdote, we have Apple phones,
[23:49]
they have millet phones because the millet is a staple food
[23:52]
and that staple food does an incredible job
[23:55]
at cleaning the biome.
[23:57]
So at stimulating the gastric juices, it's exceptional,
[24:00]
stimulates the gastric juices
[24:02]
and it's gonna increase the yin,
[24:05]
so the essence for the machine to oil the digestive process
[24:10]
as well as remove the glue, the phlegm,
[24:13]
the sort of mucus more forming things that are in the colon.
[24:18]
And so it's an extraordinary food
[24:20]
because it has these three properties all combined,
[24:23]
which is very rare in nature.
[24:25]
That's why they love, they call it xiaomi so much.
[24:28]
And so it's just a very basic preparation,
[24:31]
incredibly inexpensive,
[24:33]
where you have a very small handful of millet in one hand,
[24:36]
a very small handful of rice in your other hand,
[24:40]
you rinse them both, you need to rinse them a lot,
[24:42]
and then you make them soak for two hours
[24:45]
and then you cook them for an hour and a half
[24:47]
in a rice cooker, in a mold porridge,
[24:50]
or just in your pan for an hour
[24:54]
until it becomes very, very mushy.
[24:57]
And what's gonna happen is that it's beautiful food
[25:00]
that will give you starches that your stomach
[25:04]
has to develop digestive enzymes to digest.
[25:08]
And so it's gonna turbocharge
[25:09]
your number of digestive enzymes
[25:11]
and allow for the following foods
[25:14]
to be digested really well.
[25:16]
If you have that for breakfast,
[25:17]
have it for pre-breakfast
[25:18]
because you will digest it very fast.
[25:20]
And so have a bit of protein afterwards.
[25:23]
And it's incredible food to reset your stomach
[25:26]
and so that at least your stomach does a good job
[25:29]
and then the rest can sort of follow order.
[25:32]
And so a lot of people promote
[25:33]
or like intermittent fasting for breakfast,
[25:36]
but for someone who suffers from micro-disease
[25:38]
might be a really unreasonable choice.
[25:41]
Also in perimenopause,
[25:42]
having really strong gastric juices
[25:44]
is super important to not be bloated.
[25:46]
So this is gonna rehydrate me from within
[25:49]
to avoid hot flushes, to avoid vaginal dryness,
[25:52]
to avoid constipation, and to hydrate my brain, yeah?
[25:57]
And so that's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful food,
[26:00]
inexpensive, not sexy, not in fashion,
[26:04]
but in fashion I can promise you for thousands of years
[26:08]
and it's gonna come back therefore.
[26:11]
Oh, that's awesome.
[26:11]
Yeah, I mean, I've heard of it.
[26:13]
It's not something I've personally tried,
[26:14]
but I just took a ton of notes.
[26:15]
I'm definitely gonna try this
[26:16]
because I think a lot of women, myself included,
[26:19]
we just have low stomach acid.
[26:20]
And of course, like the downstream,
[26:22]
like you want things to digest well in your stomach.
[26:25]
So that was super helpful.
[26:27]
So thank you for that.
[26:28]
And another question, this is a little bit personal,
[26:30]
but I've heard mixed reviews
[26:32]
on how caffeine can affect migraines.
[26:35]
Sometimes it can help, sometimes it can hurt.
[26:36]
Will you talk a little bit about that?
[26:39]
Yes, so for some people, caffeine can trigger migraines
[26:43]
and for some people, it can relieve them.
[26:46]
And that is completely personal.
[26:48]
That's why with the Migraine Heroes app,
[26:50]
we guide people in all of that
[26:52]
because it's just incredibly personal.
[26:54]
In the absence of that, follow what your gut says
[26:57]
and what your brain says and trust it blindly.
[27:00]
If caffeine, how would you know caffeine can help is
[27:03]
a lot of people, they take a medication called Exedrin
[27:05]
and it contains caffeine in it.
[27:07]
And for some people, it will do wonders
[27:09]
and some people will really stay away from that medication.
[27:12]
And so you can trust, you can really trust your gut
[27:15]
on this one, but if indeed, photo opposite.
[27:18]
What is really important to say about caffeine is
[27:21]
coffee is best consumed black.
[27:23]
The moment you add milk and it can be cow's milk
[27:27]
but it can also be plant-based milk.
[27:30]
And even with plant-based milk,
[27:32]
you make the beverage very damp
[27:34]
and it's completely changed in properties.
[27:37]
Yes, it still contains caffeine,
[27:38]
will give you a boost of energy.
[27:39]
However, it will also make your biome a lot more dirty
[27:44]
and therefore your brain a lot more foggy.
[27:47]
If this is you, it takes a bit of process
[27:50]
to get away from that beautiful latte
[27:52]
or flat white to start the day.
[27:54]
So go decreasing and start to have them black
[27:57]
and little by little, little by little,
[27:59]
that is a habit that can be very,
[28:02]
very pro-inflammatory for the bowels.
[28:06]
The next question I wanna ask you is
[28:08]
about pre-menstrual migraines,
[28:10]
which we've talked a little bit around the hormones,
[28:13]
but will you talk a little bit why they're so common,
[28:15]
the days leading up to your period
[28:16]
or even like the first few days of your period
[28:18]
and potentially what ladies could do in that situation?
[28:22]
Mm-hmm, yes, fabulous question.
[28:25]
The migraine before menstruation
[28:27]
and the migraine during menstruation
[28:28]
are actually extremely different.
[28:30]
They can feel like it's a long version
[28:33]
of the same migraine attack.
[28:35]
However, on my watch, they're completely different.
[28:39]
I'll start with the second one.
[28:41]
The migraine during menstruation
[28:43]
is usually due to a cyst, blood clots,
[28:47]
fibrids or unwanted tissue in the uterus
[28:51]
that needs to come out.
[28:54]
In the east, if you want to keep your beauty,
[28:57]
it goes to having a beautiful uterus,
[29:00]
to have a beautiful face.
[29:02]
If your uterus goes out of order
[29:04]
and is not irrigated properly and is not maintained,
[29:08]
it will need to be removed in the west
[29:11]
and that surgery will damage your digestive system
[29:15]
and it will damage your face.
[29:17]
So in the east, we love the uterus beyond the children
[29:21]
and beyond the perimenopause and menopause.
[29:23]
It's an integral organ that is part of the body
[29:26]
that we want to keep healthy.
[29:27]
Now, if you have one or multiple cyst,
[29:31]
fibrids, unwanted tissue, blood clots,
[29:33]
your vagus nerve, that's my hypothesis
[29:35]
based on the thousands of work that we've done
[29:38]
and the data that we have on women,
[29:42]
my hypothesis is that the vagus nerve
[29:43]
picks on the fact that the uterus feels the abnormality
[29:49]
and sends the signal back to the brain.
[29:51]
And basically, when you remove that,
[29:53]
which we do all day long, then the migraine goes.
[29:57]
And not only does the migraine goes,
[29:59]
the hysterectomy goes too.
[30:01]
I have had a lot of customers saying,
[30:03]
oh, my cysts reduced or I used to have three cysts.
[30:06]
I went for my hysterectomy and the doctor said,
[30:09]
oh my God, you can go home.
[30:10]
I'm not sure what you did, but they're all gone,
[30:12]
which is unheard of, so bizarre.
[30:15]
And I would always say, just tell them
[30:17]
you've made a few lifestyle changes, which is true,
[30:20]
unless they're very open-minded.
[30:21]
Yeah, and then the cysts go and that's really important.
[30:24]
So those type of migraine, they are,
[30:26]
and they can be excruciatingly painful.
[30:29]
I had one woman, she expelled a blood clot
[30:31]
the size of a baseball.
[30:32]
I had to Google the word baseball thinking it was,
[30:34]
I had a French problem, but it was that large.
[30:37]
And so sometimes women will have these things.
[30:40]
Why do they come about?
[30:41]
It can be leftovers from medication,
[30:45]
things that haven't come out after birth.
[30:47]
It can be also when we have a lot of emotions
[30:50]
and a lot of blockages, it can be tissue forming.
[30:53]
And this really is not healthy.
[30:56]
And the brain is speaking up on that.
[30:59]
And it's sending an alert.
[31:00]
So if you really read your migraine as a fire alarm,
[31:03]
really listening to it and thinking,
[31:04]
is it normal that I feel so much pain?
[31:08]
You should not feel pain during your menstruation.
[31:11]
And then the first one that you talked about,
[31:12]
which is the pre-menstruation migraine,
[31:15]
is completely different.
[31:16]
That's usually a reflection of the load of toxicity
[31:20]
So you see in the West, we see bowel movements.
[31:22]
Everyone's going to agree that is mostly waste.
[31:25]
Urination is mostly waste.
[31:27]
Both still have good stuff in it, but it's mostly waste.
[31:31]
The menstruation is an opportunity for the body
[31:34]
to reset once a month,
[31:36]
and for the woman to have beautiful blood inside.
[31:40]
So if you think of the woman is carrying life,
[31:42]
she's going to produce a child,
[31:44]
which is a huge responsibility, right?
[31:46]
She's going to produce a brain.
[31:48]
She's going to produce a liver, a heart, flesh, nails, hair.
[31:52]
She needs to have a really well-oiled machine
[31:54]
and a very clean machine.
[31:55]
So every month she has an opportunity
[31:56]
to detox from the menstruation.
[31:59]
And so the accumulation of the toxins
[32:01]
will take place in the liver system
[32:04]
before the menstruation is flushed.
[32:06]
So think about the menstruation,
[32:09]
such as the garbage truck,
[32:11]
and the liver collecting the trash,
[32:13]
so the toxins, and having that as an opportunity.
[32:15]
Now, there's many ways to detox.
[32:17]
You can also sweat.
[32:18]
You can also detox with certain foods.
[32:21]
You can detox in your urination.
[32:23]
It's one extra tool that the body has in order to detox.
[32:27]
And so you can observe if you've been extra,
[32:30]
and you can observe,
[32:31]
if I have been extra naughty this month,
[32:33]
and I've had a lot of chocolate and a lot of toxins,
[32:36]
a lot of alcohol, or after Christmas, for example,
[32:39]
you might notice, ooh, my PMS is stronger.
[32:44]
I have more migraine.
[32:46]
I have more bloating.
[32:48]
My breast is more sore.
[32:49]
I have more trembling sensations, et cetera.
[32:52]
And so that's how you notice these things.
[32:53]
And so really go with your instinct
[32:56]
and go with your common sense.
[32:58]
It also means, as you can guess,
[32:59]
that if you're not bleeding because of contraception,
[33:02]
things become more complicated for your system.
[33:05]
But it's more nuanced than that.
[33:07]
There's a lot more nuance in that statement.
[33:11]
That was super interesting,
[33:13]
as far as the difference
[33:14]
between the different types of migraines,
[33:16]
and helpful as far as where to look
[33:18]
as far as what's going on with your health.
[33:20]
And I also want to ask you, could potentially be related,
[33:23]
is how does sleep affect migraines?
[33:27]
And I know there's probably some other organs in there
[33:30]
as far as the liver and whatnot
[33:31]
that could also affect sleep.
[33:32]
So will you talk a little bit about that as well?
[33:36]
You have amazing questions, Tina.
[33:38]
Yes, yes, absolutely.
[33:40]
So there's a dual relationship
[33:41]
between liver and brain during the night.
[33:44]
If you look at the circadian rhythm,
[33:47]
according to Eastern medicine,
[33:48]
if you take the circadian clock
[33:50]
of traditional Chinese medicine,
[33:52]
the gallbladder rests from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m.,
[33:56]
and the liver rests between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m.,
[33:59]
and then the lungs take over.
[34:01]
And so depending when you wake up at night,
[34:03]
it indicates for me,
[34:05]
so in the Migraine Heroes app, for example,
[34:07]
this is something we ask, like, when did you wake up?
[34:09]
Did you wake up at night?
[34:12]
I need you to sleep.
[34:13]
I need your brain to detox,
[34:15]
and I need it to detox at the same time as the liver.
[34:17]
And so the sleep and the liver
[34:21]
are incredibly, incredibly connected.
[34:25]
So the more I'm going to have migraine,
[34:27]
the less my quality of sleep,
[34:29]
the more I'm going to medicate,
[34:30]
the more my liver is going to be intoxicated,
[34:33]
the more I'm going to tend to wake up at night.
[34:36]
Yeah, so very correlated.
[34:37]
Now, in paramenopause, everything's even more complicated
[34:41]
because in order to be in a deep sleep,
[34:44]
I need to lower my temperature,
[34:46]
and to do that, I need a substance called yin.
[34:50]
And yin, think of yin as that deep hydration
[34:54]
and that deep hydration inside of the body
[34:56]
is what is becoming more scarce
[34:58]
as I go through paramenopause.
[35:00]
And so that's what's going to make me have more heat,
[35:04]
struggle to regulate my temperature,
[35:06]
and therefore give me a sort of Meniere's disease,
[35:09]
vertigo, dizziness, dryness in the skin, et cetera,
[35:12]
during the day, and vaginal dryness,
[35:14]
and it's going to make me give hot flushes at night,
[35:17]
and it's going to perturbate my sleep quite profoundly.
[35:20]
So sleeping is key to have a happy and rested brain,
[35:23]
and a happy and rested brain enables good sleep.
[35:28]
And we've been actually talking with our clients
[35:29]
about when they're waking up at night,
[35:31]
and yeah, a lot of times it is gallbladder hour,
[35:34]
liver hour, so it's just so interesting,
[35:37]
and it does, it kind of helps you listen to your body
[35:39]
as far as what's going on.
[35:41]
So as we wrap up here,
[35:42]
are there any myths about migraine,
[35:45]
or maybe just things that people don't understand
[35:48]
about migraines that would be helpful
[35:49]
as far as them just feeling better
[35:52]
and not having migraines so frequently in their life?
[35:55]
Yeah, yeah, there's a massive myth,
[35:57]
which is accept, medicate, because this is your life.
[36:03]
And that's what people say over and over again,
[36:05]
and when I say people,
[36:07]
I come from a family of doctor,
[36:08]
and I have a massive respect for the profession.
[36:11]
Doctors are not trained on migraines specifically.
[36:13]
That's not a training,
[36:15]
and I mean, it is a training for some doctors
[36:17]
because it was so lacking,
[36:19]
so now there's a few centers,
[36:20]
but it's very rare that people have been trained on this.
[36:24]
And so just saying accept it because it's genetic
[36:27]
and medicate and you have a neurological disorder,
[36:31]
like if you really assemble things, what are we told?
[36:34]
A fifth of women have a genetic neurological disorder.
[36:37]
That doesn't make any sense.
[36:38]
If you really take a step back,
[36:41]
a fifth of women have a genetic predisposition
[36:44]
to have a neurological disorder
[36:45]
that Mother Nature did not do that.
[36:48]
Anyone can agree to that.
[36:51]
And so the myth of medicate, stay silent, and accept,
[36:56]
just let go of that.
[36:58]
Really think back to when you did not have migraine
[37:01]
and recurrent headaches in your life.
[37:03]
That moment, now that is your true self.
[37:06]
And it's really interesting when I work with women,
[37:09]
I meet them the first time we meet
[37:11]
for a diagnostic of 90 minutes.
[37:13]
And when they're finished, I meet them.
[37:15]
And for me, I really meet them
[37:17]
for the first time that second time
[37:19]
because it affects your personality.
[37:21]
It affects who you are so profoundly.
[37:24]
And so if I have one message to your listeners,
[37:27]
if you don't have migraines,
[37:28]
then just double down on empathy each time people.
[37:31]
Recuperate 10 people and give the empathy
[37:34]
worth of 10 people when you meet someone who says,
[37:36]
I'm gonna go home, I have migraine.
[37:38]
And if you do have migraine,
[37:40]
then really trust in your North Star and your Happy Star.
[37:43]
Trust in yourself, trust your gut, trust your instinct,
[37:47]
and trust that this is not you.
[37:50]
You are not meant to be fatigued all the time.
[37:52]
You are not meant to be in pain all the time.
[37:55]
You're not meant to be irritated all the time.
[37:58]
You're not meant to be desperate.
[37:59]
Like this is not your personality.
[38:01]
This is not who you are.
[38:02]
Do not let society today
[38:04]
dictate how you should think of yourself.
[38:09]
Please, that's a really big myth out there.
[38:12]
And it's really time to change the narrative.
[38:14]
There's beautiful advocacy being done more and more,
[38:17]
thanks to social media actually.
[38:19]
However, we're still in the this is me
[38:23]
and it doesn't have to be.
[38:25]
Like genes are things that can be expressed
[38:28]
and can be silenced.
[38:30]
It's a migraine is a firearm.
[38:32]
And there's a beautiful scientific article
[38:34]
written by a doctor called Elizabeth Loder in 2002.
[38:38]
And she talks about what could possibly be
[38:40]
the genetic advantage of migraine disease,
[38:43]
given it's so many people.
[38:45]
And she talks about a firearm.
[38:46]
And it's interesting that I received
[38:48]
that article very recently.
[38:49]
And I was like, wow, that's exactly how I frame it.
[38:53]
So some houses have no firearm.
[38:55]
Some houses have a firearm.
[38:57]
Some houses have a firearm with one sensor,
[38:59]
which is a small genetic predisposition.
[39:01]
And some have a firearm with 16 sensors,
[39:05]
which is a very sensitive body.
[39:06]
However, it's not because you have an alarm
[39:09]
that it needs to be on.
[39:10]
And it's not because it's on
[39:11]
that you have to take a hammer and hammer the box
[39:13]
or cut the electricity of your house.
[39:16]
No, you just need to stay at the top of your ladder,
[39:19]
smell and see where is the smoke coming from?
[39:23]
Where is the fire?
[39:24]
And go and do that, extinguish that.
[39:27]
And if you need help along the way, because it's hard,
[39:29]
then there are people to help.
[39:32]
And but believe in yourself
[39:33]
and believe you have 100% of the rest of your life.
[39:36]
So if you listen to this and you're 60, 70, 80,
[39:39]
we've even welcomed my oldest customer was 86.
[39:43]
So it's never too late.
[39:44]
I love that so much.
[39:45]
That's great advice.
[39:46]
And I love that analogy.
[39:47]
And I have loved this conversation.
[39:49]
I mean, for personal reasons,
[39:50]
because I've definitely had my own migraines over the years.
[39:53]
And I know there are other ladies who listen,
[39:56]
who struggle as well.
[39:57]
So I think this is gonna be super helpful to them.
[39:59]
So as we wrap up here,
[40:01]
where can listeners go to learn more about you,
[40:04]
what you do, resources, all that good stuff.
[40:07]
So it's all Migraine Heroes.
[40:08]
You can listen to the Migraine Heroes podcast.
[40:11]
You can go on MigraineHeroes.com to find our service
[40:14]
or download the Migraine Heroes app.
[40:17]
And one good way to start is just 90 minutes consultation.
[40:22]
And I'll explain to you,
[40:24]
I think it's really step one is understand.
[40:27]
And I'll explain to you why you have migraine,
[40:29]
how they relate to imbalances,
[40:31]
but also really going back to your first migraine attack.
[40:34]
How did that domino effect happen inside of your body
[40:37]
that explains not just your migraine attacks,
[40:40]
but also all of the other symptoms
[40:42]
that you experience in your body.
[40:43]
Once you understand, you feel the power.
[40:46]
You're like, wow, this is actually feasible.
[40:48]
That actually makes sense.
[40:49]
And it ties all of these specialists
[40:51]
that I've seen over the years.
[40:52]
It really ties everything together.
[40:54]
It's really one big mess, but it's one cohesive mess.
[40:59]
And I think what we miss is the female body
[41:01]
is so sophisticated in order to be able
[41:05]
to produce a full baby, not just a cell like sperm does,
[41:08]
but a sophisticated child.
[41:10]
It's a complex machine.
[41:11]
However, it's a very, very sensible
[41:15]
and very logical machine.
[41:17]
And understanding the logic
[41:19]
will give you tremendous confidence.
[41:21]
Yeah, that's a great message.
[41:22]
And I love that so much.
[41:23]
So thank you so much for being here.
[41:26]
I'll put all those details in the show notes
[41:27]
so you guys can connect.
[41:29]
And yeah, just thanks again.
[41:32]
Love the conversation.
[41:34]
Thank you for having me.
