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Hello, this is the Migraine Heroes podcast, a podcast where we share real stories from
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real people suffering and battling with migraine disease.
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In this podcast, we seek to provide support, hope, holistic health advocacy, and inspiration
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for those who suffer from migraines.
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The content in this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered
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a substitute for medical professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
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Always consult with your health care provider for any health-related concerns.
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And remember, everyone and every situation is unique.
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Hello, I'm going to do a bit of a solo episode on how things started and what
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it is that I do day to day, you know, so that I create just more transparency on my
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life and why I do what I do.
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Everything started when I was 17.
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I was in the French Alps after my exams, and I was with a lot of other students and we
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were going all of us skiing.
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And one of those was my boyfriend.
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And that morning we had gone skiing together, there was no one on the slope, it was just
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The snow was perfect.
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The sky was blue and the sun was just shining.
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One of those really perfect days where you have a bit of relaxation after a really intense
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It was on the 28th of January, 2001.
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And so we go in a snow park, and the reason why we do that is that my boyfriend at the
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time, who I still really get along with, was a snowboarder instructor.
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And so we go in the snow park, and I was an average skier.
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And there was a jump, and he said he would do that jump.
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And at the time, probably I still had the brain of a teenager, I don't know.
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I wasn't thinking properly.
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My daughter would say, you were trying to impress your boyfriend.
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Probably there was an element of truth in that too.
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But anyway, he looks at the slope to see how he wants to jump, and I'm like, look, I've
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never done jumps, so I'm just going to go.
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It was a jump done for snowboards, and it would end extremely vertically.
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It was not one of those straight where the slope is straight.
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It would really end and curve up.
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And so I go, I curve up, my ski arrives in the sky, my head is down.
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I'm almost like doing a half moon or a circle, just except, of course, that's not what I
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That's not what I'm capable of doing.
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And I'm up in the air, and I fall completely on my back.
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And when I have that first impact on the floor, I start to have that moment of prayer.
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And I'm like, oh, please, not that, not everything, but not that.
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I was very conscious from past experience in my family that if you break your spine,
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the future looks very different and difficult and challenging, beautiful, but really, really
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And so I was like, please, please, not a wheelchair.
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And I was extremely conscious.
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And those seconds were really, really slow.
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And I don't know why, I bounced back three times on my back.
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So I've had the time to really process what was going on.
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And I get a ski in my forehead.
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I fall on the floor.
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And my first reaction is to see, can I move my limbs?
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So I move my fingers and my arms, and I feel reassured.
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And I start to try to move my leg, and I feel this massive pain.
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And my whole body shuts down.
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I had broken my femur.
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So terrorized, my boyfriend calls the ambulance, and they take me in a, I don't know, in a
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bed that these, you know, I don't know, with a motor, you know, a motor on the snow, like
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pulls me to a flat place.
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And on that flat place comes a first helicopter.
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And I remember, I don't remember much.
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I remember waking up naked in aluminum foil with, you know, I was really 17, with a gorgeous
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man, you know, helping out and, you know, in the helicopter.
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And then I again, you know, remember going into a second helicopter.
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And so basically, I was being transferred.
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I had broken my femur.
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If you broke your femur and you break the artery next to it, you have, you know, a couple of
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Luckily, you know, I was losing my blood big time, but everything was inside my body and
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not, and not too fast, although I still lost half of my full blood.
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And so I go to the second hospital and I, there I have that memory of shouting in the
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And I could really feel that, you know, maybe some of you were taken to emergency room and
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for migraines with aura and would, you know, have that massive shout and cry where you're
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so ashamed of yourself, but you're beyond shame.
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You're in so much pain, so much pain.
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So I would, I would, you know, all of those hours were interrupted between shouting and
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losing consciousness until I lose consciousness again and arrive in the hospital room.
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And there, I don't know, I think I fall asleep.
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And little by little, I get the diagnostic and the doctor comes and says, OK, so you're
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not going to be able to drive.
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You're not going to be able to walk for a year.
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And I was like, I broke my leg.
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And I remember the doctor saying, no, no, no, you didn't break your leg.
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You broke your femur.
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So if you don't know what the femur is, it's the big, big bone.
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It's the biggest of your body, which is in your upper leg, in your thigh.
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And I was really lucky because you can repair a femur and you can't repair a back.
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And somehow, I don't know, somehow that day I got really, really lucky to break a bone
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that, you know, we could repair.
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And so I got operated, remarkably so, by a doctor, a remarkable doctor in Tonon-les-Bains.
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His name might come back to me.
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And so they put a pin inside my femur.
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And in that operation, I lose half of my blood, literally.
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I went from a scale of 140, I get to 70.
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At that time, there were problems of contaminated blood in France.
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And so I don't know exactly the ramifications of the story.
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But I think healthy people had received blood that was contaminated with disease
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and therefore had gotten the disease themselves.
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So it had made scandals.
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There were lawsuits and there were a lot of blood that had to be thrown away.
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So they said, you know, she's borderline.
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She's, you know, really young.
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She's going to survive.
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And so I was not transfused.
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And it's interesting, I still remember my mom, when she came to visit me the first time,
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she had a big smile.
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She asked me if she could take a picture of me, and I refused.
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I regret that now.
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And when people would see me, they would make these really weird comments.
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Like they would say, you look very gothic.
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I'm like, you know, I'm asking my boyfriend, why do they say that?
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And he's like, I don't know.
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And then someone, you know, another nurse came into my room and says,
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you don't need makeup.
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And I'm like, why is she saying that?
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It's like, I don't know.
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And then one day a nurse came to see me and she said, do you want to see yourself?
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And I'm like, see myself?
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You know, I could feel my nose was in the right place.
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I hadn't showered in a couple of days, but that's just because I had no energy.
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But I was like, see myself?
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You know, I could feel, I felt my face.
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I'm like, what is she referring to?
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And I had also a skin in my forehead and my blood was completely,
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Maybe a combination of black, purple and blue all over the face.
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And so I asked my boyfriend to get out of the room and I didn't want anyone to see me like that.
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I was just, you know, so, you know, devastated.
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Although, you know, well, it took, you know, two to three months to get away, but it's fine.
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I still remember a month after I had one of my best friends sitting on top of my bed
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and I was with a mirror trying to put my hair in a braid because they were so greasy.
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I thought it would be more appropriate if they were at least put away.
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And he took my mirror away from me and said, stop looking at you.
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You're harming your heart and your soul.
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Like you shouldn't, you know, obsess about your face.
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I was like, I'm not trying to obsess about my face.
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I'm just trying to put my hair fine.
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But, you know, thank you for letting me know that I should just be completely
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feeling bad about what I look.
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And look, I didn't take it wrong.
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It was coming from the right place.
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But it's just to say that at that time, which was a month later, I was still very, very bruised.
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What I later found is I had also a shrunken kidney, but at that time I didn't know it.
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And so I stayed in the hospital in France for a long time, three, four weeks.
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And then they can't send me by helicopter or plane back to Belgium.
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They decided to take me with an ambulance, you know, lying down because I was still too weak.
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And when I arrived in Belgium, they said, oh, my God, she's only at 90 over 140.
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We have to transfer to her now.
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And my parents said, look, we've been through that question.
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Now we've decided not to take any risks.
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We'll continue like that, which I was really fine with as a consequence.
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But I didn't know all of the implications that would come with that because I was chronically
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anemic as a child and how hard it would be for me to recuperate the last carats of my blood volume.
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And so life goes on.
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I stayed in that second hospital for some time and then I come back home with a wheelchair
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and then crutches for a while.
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I can't put my foot down.
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And I go back to university or I start to study at home.
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And I'm trying to finish my year and try to have no more holidays.
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And after that, you know, it was a bit like if I was a car that whereas in the past,
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I could go in the fifth gear.
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Now I could only go into second gear or first gear.
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And the moment I try to go into third or even into second, my body wouldn't follow.
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And I just couldn't.
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And so I was left with a whole new body.
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I also suddenly gained about 12 kilos.
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And I was really, really, really struggling to keep that weight down or to lose it.
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And so I started to yo-yo diet.
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Whereas when I was 17, I was extremely fit.
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So that was like a whole new self, a whole new identity.
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And I was, you know, I was struggling with that identity, even though I was still very
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grateful that it was just a femur.
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And I was going to get back on my legs that the doctor said it.
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And, you know, over time, there was nothing wrong with me anymore.
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But I was I was feeling very weak.
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And at that time, around those years, I started to do these naps that would
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last start at 2 p.m. and finish at 8 p.m. the next day.
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And so my body was really, really limping.
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So the first thing I tried to do was to get back into shape.
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So what do you do?
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You do lots of diets like protein diets and weight watchers and other diets like that,
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which are, you know, serve a purpose.
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But for me, the weight was coming from a profound imbalance inside of my body.
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And so I went on continuing my studies like that,
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really struggling with my weight, really struggling with my energy.
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And and then starting to work and then doing my MBA in the U.S.
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But whereas from the outside, you'd feel I'm fine.
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And on paper, I was fine.
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I was really struggling with fatigue.
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I was no longer myself.
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I was just a different, you know, a bit like I had stepped into a different body.
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And initially, my right leg was tripled, the left one.
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And and and, you know, and that would have me,
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you know, be quite desperate because, you know, nothing would really fit.
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You know, with the body so asymmetrical.
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And but over time, with sports and other stuff,
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things sort of moved back into a normal norm.
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But I wasn't, you know, I had lost something along the way.
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And through work, I worked all over Europe and South Africa.
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And then I went on to be into the U.S.
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Then I went to work in China.
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I was just really curious.
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I had been in China.
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I had learned Mandarin.
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I was just really curious about the culture and everything it had to offer.
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You know, I felt like each time I was going there, I had some questions
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and I would come back with more questions.
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And there were things that were intriguing me.
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And when I was in China, I met and I was pregnant.
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I was pregnant with our daughter.
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I went to the gynecologist and I remember she
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shouted at me or yelled at me.
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She was a great doctor.
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She is a great doctor.
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She said, look, you're borderline gestational diabetic.
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You have to stop eating sugar.
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You're putting on too much weight.
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We're going to need to get that child out of your womb together.
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And that it's a first.
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And, you know, just don't eat so much.
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And I cried and I told my husband, look, I'm not doing it on purpose.
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I'm really struggling.
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Like I felt fatigue before.
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Now I feel smashed, exhausted.
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And at that time, I had on my to-do list to go and see Dr.
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Dr. Zhang was my teacher.
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She was, I had started to take traditional Chinese medicine classes on weekends.
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I was just curious.
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I had done cupping once.
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It had really changed me massively.
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And I was like, oh, I wonder, you know, I wonder what this is.
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And I found her as a teacher, she was quite average.
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I would have a lot of questions around how much sick I was and how much unwell I was.
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And whenever she'd reply to an answer, she would say to a question, she would say, it
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And I was like, look, either you know it or you don't.
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You know, I like things a bit more clear, a bit more black and white.
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And so I go to see her to sort of almost rule it out.
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Like almost say, look, it's on my to-do list.
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I'm keen to see, you know, do I prolong that love for traditional Chinese medicine or do I
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just drop the whole thing?
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And so I go and see her and I explain her some of the symptoms I have.
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So you go and see a traditional Chinese doctor when you have, quote, unquote, nothing.
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And I was thinking, quote, unquote, I have nothing.
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And you explain all of the symptoms you have.
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And she took my pulse, she looked at my tongue, and she asked me how I was eating.
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And her conclusion was, you have not enough blood volume.
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And that's why your legs are dry.
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And in spite, you hydrate them.
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This is why your hair is falling when you feel stressed.
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This is why you have sugar cravings when stressed.
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This is what you have a bit too much weight on.
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This is why you're tired.
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And this is why, in spite of you being fertile, your cycles are profoundly irregular.
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And within three weeks, I was on my feet.
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So she had given me a list of foods that I could eat that would help me increase blood volume.
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And I had told her, look, I can't trust herbs.
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I can trust you as a person.
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But, you know, like herbs is a no-no for me.
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She said, look, it's possible to do it with food.
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It just requires a bit more discipline.
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But it's completely feasible.
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And a bit more discipline, a bit more patience.
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But it's completely feasible.
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And so that's what I did.
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And after three weeks, I was flying.
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I had so much energy.
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I thought, oh, wow, that's really interesting.
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And after having our daughter, my cycles became regular for the first time.
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They were regular.
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And I thought, oh, wow, that's crazy.
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That's because I can't just order that.
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You know, they were like 56 days, you know, 46 days, you know, 38.
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They were all over the place.
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And for the first time since that accident, they are actually regular.
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And this is not something I can control.
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So I went back to work.
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And I shared that experience with my colleagues.
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And they said, oh, Diane, it's placebo.
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And I thought, oh, no, this is so not placebo.
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I've tried too many things.
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I am back to who I was when I was 17.
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And I had so much energy in that, you know, second part of the pregnancy.
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And I was just myself again.
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And I'm like, no, something completely shifted.
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So that got me really curious.
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And so whenever we would have friends coming to visit or family coming to visit in Shanghai,
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and they would talk to me about their health issues.
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I'm like, I think I know someone who can help.
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And so I take them to see her.
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And she had this completely different logic.
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And yet she would fix so many things that seemed unfixable or had been unfixable.
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And so it got me more and more curious.
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And I started to love that space and learn more, study more,
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become really, really interested, absolutely fascinated.
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And in that moment, I had the dream of doing what I do now.
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But I thought, hey, it's impossible to create what a food is in the CNI.
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Like, you know, how would I?
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And plus, you know, I have such a quote, unquote, good career.
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But having my daughter was really a moment.
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I remember the first time she landed on my belly after birth.
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What a massive slap in my face of, you know, of I think as a child
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and in my values, I was someone raised to do good in the world.
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And and for many reasons that are very personal,
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a new life was short and very short.
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And now finding meaning and finding purpose as a child
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had always been very, very dominant in my brain.
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And when our daughter was born, it was a massive slap in my face.
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At the time, I was pushing consumption in China as a consultant.
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And I think when when Manon came to life,
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I really had this massive slap of what are you doing with your brain?
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What are you doing with your heart?
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You know, why are you wasting your time, you know, doing this?
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And and and it was a process to accept my passion and to accept.
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You know what I'm doing now, a long process,
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a process of probably eight years of curiosity, thinking.
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I know the universe is its timing, and I think I needed those years to process it.
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Also, technology needed those years to be ready for what I'm doing now.
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And so I had our daughter.
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I still got to that next level promotion, which I thought would,
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you know, give me a lot of respect to be a manager.
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And then and then I changed to move internally in a chart to to to really think through,
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OK, what am I going to do with my life?
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I had almost like a crisis of being 40, you know, at 29.
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But it was the extent of my crisis.
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It was very existential.
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You know, what sort of world am I raising my daughter into?
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And and how am I contributing to that world?
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Like the bar suddenly became so much bigger of how what I do with my time
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and how do I contribute to the next generation?
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How do I be a good mom beyond, you know, with my brain, with my heart?
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And so she grew up and we were living in Shanghai.
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And and after Shanghai, we moved to New Zealand.
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At that time, I faced a number of losses in my life.
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The first loss was my godfather, my first godfather,
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who died in a in a diving accident as a as a paracommando in the military service.
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And he was he was when I was a child, you know, so much to me and almost,
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you know, not a mother, not a dad, but very, very close in that field.
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And I was devastated as a child.
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And and now my second godfather was dying from a brain tumour, a glioblastoma,
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which is an extremely violent form of tumour.
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And I discussed with my sister and one of my sister says,
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I haven't said anything to mom, but I have migraines and I think I have the same.
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And and of course, you know, in the past, of course,
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some friends had mentioned I have a migraine.
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And of course, I'm not a saint.
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I didn't hear them.
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I thought they said I have a headache.
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OK, I, I, I, I really I really mean it.
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Like it had happened to me and I hadn't heard because I couldn't relate.
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That day, one of my sister said that I thought, oh, hold on, suppose stop.
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Well, it's quite a big deal.
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I don't think it's that.
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But at the same time, you know, I don't want to leave you with all of that anxiety.
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Let's call together, Dr. Zhang.
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I was still working at the time.
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I have had still a sort of a regular career.
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And and we call her together and we she asked a bunch of questions
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and she recommends a bunch of foods.
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And three to four months after my sister no longer has migraines,
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but I have no appreciation of the world of migraines,
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no understanding of what it is, no nothing.
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Yeah, I've just my sister said, I'm in pain.
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And I said, I know someone who can help.
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And together with that person, I help my sister.
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And and and and she was really happy and really relieved.
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She had done three MRI in search of answers and nothing had worked.
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But also the the doctor who gave the MRI said,
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you look, you have to stop doing MRIs like there is nothing.
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And even if there's something he said, you know,
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it's not like I can have a magic wand about it.
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With migraine disease, we only have each other to make a difference.
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If you know of someone suffering from migraine attacks, share this podcast with them.
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And let's let's try to move on peacefully here.
[23:14]
And so life goes on and I'm now living in New Zealand.
[23:17]
And in New Zealand, I don't have Dr. Tang anymore.
[23:21]
I don't have her for myself, for my family.
[23:24]
But I also don't have her for my friends.
[23:25]
But health is really a topic for me because I've struggled for so long.
[23:29]
And and I love to be at full potential.
[23:31]
And I know the difference between being at full potential and partial potential,
[23:35]
you know, that I'm interested.
[23:38]
And so I need to rely more on myself, on books, etc.
[23:41]
And I continue to sort of self-study.
[23:43]
And whenever I have a big question or a big problem,
[23:45]
I call her on WeChat and we have a long conversation.
[23:50]
And when I was in New Zealand, my friend comes and says,
[23:56]
oh, I've had this really confrontational conversation with dad.
[23:59]
I'm like, oh, what is it about?
[24:00]
She's like, I've had seven years of migraines.
[24:01]
And I'm like, oh, yeah.
[24:03]
You know, my sister used to have them.
[24:05]
Yeah, they can be very debilitating, plus also concerning.
[24:07]
And she goes, well, my dad is advocating that I have
[24:12]
injections in my brain for a lifetime.
[24:15]
And I'm like, what?
[24:16]
And she says, yeah, you know, it's like new treatment
[24:19]
where we do injections in your brain.
[24:20]
And I didn't know anything about anything.
[24:22]
And I said, well, that sounds not very appealing.
[24:25]
Like, you know, and she's like, yeah, I mean, I'm a bit concerned.
[24:28]
And I'm like, yes, I mean, completely.
[24:32]
I'm like, oh, I'm sure there must be another way there.
[24:34]
You know, what is the reason why you have migraines?
[24:36]
Let's just figure this out.
[24:37]
So I'm busy with work.
[24:39]
And through a combination of WhatsApp and WeChat,
[24:42]
I exchange with Dr. Zhang.
[24:45]
I ask her for a couple of questions.
[24:47]
Then I tell her what to eat.
[24:48]
And she eats them.
[24:49]
And as I see her again, she says, oh, yeah, by the way,
[24:52]
my migraines have gone.
[24:55]
Like, so, so bizarre.
[24:56]
And I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm glad.
[24:58]
And I'm like, why did your father say that you need to take injections?
[25:02]
And she goes, because my father is a neurologist.
[25:04]
I really thought that it didn't make sense.
[25:08]
I'm like, well, he's a neurologist, clearly a really smart guy.
[25:12]
You know, based in the US, clearly very smart, very educated.
[25:15]
And clearly, he loves his daughter.
[25:17]
You know, I've seen the relationship and the admiration
[25:21]
and the love they have for each other.
[25:23]
Like, you know, then why?
[25:25]
And so that afternoon, I started to really dig up in my computer
[25:29]
because I thought probably that medication does,
[25:32]
you know, what I've given her as food or recommended her as foods.
[25:36]
And what I realized was that the medication was after silencing the pain.
[25:40]
They were what is correctly labeled painkillers.
[25:44]
What I was trying to do was not silence the pain,
[25:46]
was listen to the pain and try to find what the root cause of the pain is
[25:50]
and give her that.
[25:53]
And so I started to collect facts.
[25:55]
I started to understand that migraines were genetic,
[25:57]
that whereas 5% of boys and girls had migraines,
[26:00]
18% of women had them,
[26:02]
like the incidence would triple to quadruple at puberty.
[26:06]
I tried to find that there were all sorts of painkillers
[26:09]
through all sorts of mechanisms of action.
[26:11]
And when I was looking at the scientific papers like that,
[26:17]
the success rate wasn't so great versus other medications or other situations.
[26:23]
I could also find a few scientific papers with a few foods, for example,
[26:27]
dating back from 1985, which is, you know, from the family, same as chamomile.
[26:33]
And I thought, oh, interesting, because, you know, that's one ingredient I've used.
[26:38]
But I could see that in the scientific trials,
[26:40]
they were saying that it would work for some women,
[26:43]
for others, it would give diarrhea and problems.
[26:45]
And I could understand why.
[26:47]
And so then I went on Facebook and I like 18% of women.
[26:52]
And so I started to see all of this wall of women,
[26:55]
like these walls of pain.
[26:58]
And my eyes were so big.
[26:59]
It's a little bit like you discover, I don't know if you know what esports is.
[27:04]
The first day I discovered esports, I was like, what?
[27:08]
And millions of people watch this.
[27:12]
Or you might discover, I don't know, something else that sort of everyone knows,
[27:16]
but you're not aware of, like there's an entire world.
[27:19]
And so I discovered the world of migraines.
[27:22]
I was like, oh, my God, what is this?
[27:25]
And I could see all of these people in pain.
[27:27]
And I'm like, well, hold on.
[27:29]
If they're given pain killers and toxins in their system,
[27:34]
well, then no wonder they have more pain and rebound migraines.
[27:37]
And for many years, I had been wanting to do a food as medicine AI.
[27:43]
What I was after was to replicate my own experience.
[27:45]
What I was after was, oh, let's go into hospital for people
[27:48]
who lost blood and help them out.
[27:51]
And I was like, how does that work?
[27:54]
And so I hadn't given up on the idea.
[27:57]
But I thought, oh, I could really help these women.
[27:59]
Because clinical trials, if you do that, you just ask.
[28:07]
How you know that a woman doesn't have a migraine is you just ask.
[28:10]
So I thought, OK, 18% of women, I need to have friends.
[28:12]
And so I started to call back my friends and apologize, first of all,
[28:15]
for my lack of awareness and my lack of real empathy.
[28:20]
I said, you know, probably empathize in the moment.
[28:23]
But I empathize over what I knew.
[28:25]
What, you know, empathy is the ability to be able to relate to something.
[28:29]
So I empathized for headaches.
[28:31]
I didn't empathize for migraines, which now I knew I couldn't relate to.
[28:35]
And where this full body experience with so many symptoms that could last for days.
[28:40]
Anyway, it turns out they all still had migraines.
[28:42]
And I said, I think I found an idea.
[28:46]
Now, when I started, I was super naive.
[28:48]
Naive on the complexity on what I was getting myself into.
[28:52]
And I think that naivety was a complete gift
[28:56]
because I was naive enough that I thought I could have my sister and my friend.
[29:01]
And that had led me to be able to help them.
[29:05]
And and when I thought I could replicate that, that naivety led me into trying.
[29:11]
And I think that being naive in the first place is what helps me.
[29:17]
I had no idea, no idea how complex the system that I would need to develop would need to be.
[29:27]
So I thought there would be three or four root causes for which women had migraines.
[29:30]
And I discovered so many more.
[29:33]
And and I would go unpaid.
[29:36]
I stopped working and I said to Dr. Dang, I've had a really deep thought.
[29:41]
And I think I'd like to do this.
[29:43]
I'd like to take a crack and see if with foods we can help people with their migraines.
[29:49]
And she says, look, I completely support you.
[29:51]
Anything you need, I'm here for you.
[29:55]
And and so I started to do that unpaid.
[29:59]
Why I was not paying myself was because I, you know, couldn't make any promise.
[30:03]
I'm like, look, I think I can.
[30:05]
I have done it, but I'm not sure I can.
[30:08]
And, you know, I don't want to overpromise you.
[30:13]
I don't want you to pay me.
[30:15]
And so I said that to a couple of friends.
[30:17]
And so I started to have other people reach out to me that I had never met.
[30:21]
And I received these cases that were, oh, my God, lives I had never imagined even existed.
[30:29]
And so I was in front of people that would come to my place in Auckland, New Zealand.
[30:34]
I'm from Belgium originally and would tell me their life.
[30:39]
And I was trying to keep it together.
[30:41]
And I was thinking, oh, my God, what is this?
[30:48]
What is this life?
[30:49]
I mean, how do we let people live like this?
[30:54]
And I think this was really the birth of Migraine Heroes.
[30:57]
And I remember I remember the same day arrived to my place two different women,
[31:03]
one in the morning, one in the afternoon.
[31:05]
The first one, she had had 40 years of migraines, 40 years of antidepressants,
[31:09]
40 years of anti herpes medication.
[31:12]
She was taking six times a day, five days a week.
[31:17]
And she had done a hysterectomy in the hope to get rid of her migraines.
[31:21]
The second one, she had had she had had a concussion.
[31:27]
And after that concussion, she went from having recurring headaches
[31:30]
to debilitating migraines that would be constantly there for a year and a half
[31:36]
with the local insurer saying that the accident compensation saying,
[31:41]
look, you have to take antidepressants, medications and get back to work
[31:45]
because we have tried everything on you and now it's on you to go back to work.
[31:49]
And I remember calling Zhang and said, look, I don't know what this is.
[31:55]
Like, this is just like, oh, it's just a migraine.
[31:58]
Like, what do you mean?
[31:59]
It's like, yeah, well, this is what we're dealing with.
[32:02]
And so it was like, oh, my God, I said I could help with migraines.
[32:05]
I didn't say I could help with that.
[32:08]
That is beyond my imagination.
[32:11]
But one thing that was always true is that because I had felt things
[32:16]
that people had ignored for a long time, I was determined to never negate,
[32:23]
never tell them that they were feeling something that they weren't feeling in their body.
[32:27]
Yeah. And so that carried me a lot because initially I would ask them,
[32:32]
I had collated about 30 questions that I would ask them
[32:36]
in order to understand the systems routing their migraines.
[32:41]
And by listening to their stories and listening to the types of migraines
[32:45]
they were having, I added questions.
[32:48]
And then also I had the time paper tracker.
[32:51]
So I had put a system in place.
[32:52]
I had a great coach, JJ Casper, if you hear me, JJ, like, thank you so much.
[32:58]
And he said, don't raise money, try to bootstrap things
[33:03]
and try to do things very, very modestly.
[33:06]
And so I had a paper tracker, no technology.
[33:08]
And so I said, OK, here's your paper tracker.
[33:09]
You're going to record the things that you've eaten from your list
[33:12]
and also your migraines.
[33:14]
And so there was a little face and they could color the face with,
[33:21]
well, there was a little round and they could color the round with their paint.
[33:25]
So for me, red, green, yellow, like it was a traffic light.
[33:29]
And the second woman, she and the first one as well,
[33:33]
they drew an entire rainbow as a legend with like 10 different colors.
[33:39]
And then they color them differently every day.
[33:41]
And I remember the second one, as she was getting better,
[33:44]
I'm like, what did you mean with those colors?
[33:46]
She's like, oh, sometimes I experience pain here, sometimes there.
[33:49]
Sometimes I lose my vision, sometimes this, sometimes that.
[33:52]
And there was born the daily tracker
[33:53]
and how women experience migraines in a lot of different locations
[33:58]
and different times of the day and the cycle, etc.
[34:04]
And so I went on to do that for women,
[34:09]
sort of purely word of mouth.
[34:10]
I had no websites, no charging, no nothing.
[34:14]
I was just trying to see, can I really help women?
[34:18]
Did I get lucky the first two times or can I do this?
[34:22]
And I started to really be able to do that more, but sometimes I'd fail.
[34:27]
And so I was really close.
[34:28]
I would serve maybe five, 10 women parallel maximum.
[34:32]
And I would have all of them on WhatsApp.
[34:34]
They were all represented by flowers because I didn't want their last name.
[34:38]
And so they all had a flower in my phone and on a board that I had at home.
[34:43]
And so hence is born the name Nectar Health.
[34:46]
And so that they were represented by a flower for the identity.
[34:52]
And so I'd follow them.
[34:55]
And what I could see is some I'd go, I'd be done really, really fast.
[35:02]
And some would take me much longer time.
[35:06]
And some I'd fail.
[35:10]
Sometimes also it happened to me 10 times that I recommended a food,
[35:15]
just a simple food, the way you find in supermarkets.
[35:17]
But it would induce a migraine.
[35:19]
And I thought, oh, wow, why, why, why?
[35:21]
And by refining and refining and refining, you know, like I got to do things better.
[35:28]
Ask 97 questions, identify, you know, 14 locations and sensations in the brain.
[35:35]
You know, really develop an entire methodology to find the root cause
[35:39]
is an answer to it with, you know,
[35:41]
I realized that the order in which I was removing the layers of imbalances mattered.
[35:46]
And so I did that for a while, still unpaid for a while using no code technology.
[35:53]
So technology that were just forms.
[35:56]
So for a while, I just had a form for the daily tracker and nothing else,
[36:00]
except she's for the rest.
[36:01]
So things were ugly, but they were happy.
[36:04]
And I was making a difference in this woman's life.
[36:06]
I mean, I was completely transforming their lives completely.
[36:10]
And I think whereas initially the idea was,
[36:15]
oh, I really want to prove with a food as medicine AI to,
[36:19]
to that you can, you know, use food in order to, you know,
[36:25]
really reprogram a body and help it live well.
[36:28]
I certainly started to completely fall in compassionate love
[36:33]
with these women suffering and find an increasingly massive calling to say,
[36:38]
you know what, there's something going on here,
[36:41]
and it's not fair and it's not beautiful.
[36:44]
And it needs to change.
[36:47]
And when women would feel better and without migraines,
[36:52]
you know, and you can hear that through their own words
[36:55]
in the Migraine Heroes podcast,
[36:58]
they would have sort of two feelings coming with it,
[37:01]
an immense feeling of gratitude
[37:05]
and then an immense responsibility to help me carry that message forward.
[37:10]
And so some of them, depending on their abilities,
[37:13]
they would help me with stuff.
[37:14]
One woman in Singapore started to do all of my business plan.
[37:18]
Another one started to do all of my marketing.
[37:21]
Another one, you know, started to speak about me on social media.
[37:25]
A couple of other ones did, you know, like long form videos.
[37:30]
And I started to really feel the love and feel their willingness
[37:34]
in that community to contribute in their own ways
[37:37]
to tell others there is another way.
[37:40]
And that way, you know, is fantastic.
[37:44]
And I'll share with you all of my life in detail
[37:46]
so that you can, you know, benefit from that yourself.
[37:50]
And so little by little, I continued in no code
[37:53]
and I continued to really, really bootstrap.
[37:55]
I was bootstrapping because, you know,
[37:57]
you feel vulnerable with your migraines.
[37:59]
And I really hear you.
[38:01]
You feel vulnerable because you feel you've been used and abused
[38:04]
and that, you know, you've tried so many things
[38:09]
and they don't work and you have to pay so much
[38:11]
and it still doesn't work.
[38:14]
And I completely understand and embrace that.
[38:18]
And yeah, and so there was a massive willingness to help
[38:23]
and massive willingness to, yeah, change the status quo.
[38:28]
And so I bootstrapped because I too felt vulnerable,
[38:32]
but in a very different way.
[38:33]
I had invented something very small and very tangible
[38:36]
and very actionable that could help women
[38:39]
and I needed to protect it.
[38:42]
And when you raise VC money, and I have been a VC myself,
[38:47]
you need to, it's like you have 100 chicks on the starting line
[38:53]
and you're gonna feed the chicks that move on the fastest.
[38:56]
But at the end of the day, all you want,
[38:58]
all you need to do your job properly
[39:00]
is to have one chick that becomes a unicorn.
[39:03]
And so you're gonna, you might have to professionally
[39:06]
starve the other little chicks that are making progress,
[39:10]
starve them to feed the one that is running the fastest.
[39:13]
And I would not be running the fastest
[39:15]
because, you know, because of the cycle
[39:19]
that a person needs to go through
[39:20]
in order to feed the results I was after.
[39:22]
And some would go really, really fast
[39:24]
and some would go really, really slow.
[39:25]
And at that stage, I wasn't sure why it was happening.
[39:29]
Now I understand that a lot more.
[39:31]
So there's ethnicity, but also past medication.
[39:34]
So history of medication, current medication,
[39:39]
gastric juices and most likely genetics playing a role.
[39:45]
And so I went on to do that
[39:47]
and only last year I went full stack.
[39:49]
So that means I started to have my own app,
[39:51]
which, you know, implies a lot more costs.
[39:54]
But we were after having stuff like a Migraine Now button,
[39:58]
which is extremely exciting, but we couldn't.
[40:01]
Of course, there's no good tool
[40:02]
or off-the-shelf tools to develop that.
[40:05]
And so I started to do that full stack.
[40:10]
And I feel along that road, I had to make a huge effort.
[40:18]
So for me, along that road,
[40:19]
of course, every penny I was making
[40:21]
was going back into the system to make the system stronger, right?
[40:24]
So I was not paying myself.
[40:25]
And at no moment was this a desire
[40:34]
to have a successful career.
[40:36]
I had a very, very good career and very good work, right?
[40:41]
A very good income, you know, and, you know, very stable.
[40:47]
This is not what I was trying to do.
[40:49]
What I am trying to do is solve an issue.
[40:51]
And so it's a very, very different mindset.
[40:54]
But so every penny I would reinvest.
[40:57]
I think that's a big gift.
[40:59]
I think the bigger gift for me was I have this limiting belief
[41:03]
that in order to be living happy, you have to live hidden.
[41:06]
And so I had no social media accounts.
[41:09]
Or maybe when I had, I think, opened a Facebook account in 2000,
[41:13]
I want to say, eight or nine.
[41:16]
And then I had closed it the year after.
[41:18]
So I had to reopen that and, you know, do all of the social media thing.
[41:23]
For me, it was like a big, big effort.
[41:25]
I'm someone, you know, of the shadows.
[41:27]
And I don't like to be front and center of things.
[41:32]
But I thought, you know, here I'm going to have to be there for them and trust them.
[41:37]
And over through social media, I've met so many amazing women
[41:42]
that it made me appreciate it so much more because things are so unfiltered.
[41:47]
And I'm very grateful for the revolution that is going on
[41:50]
on women's health, on social media and podcasts.
[41:53]
Therefore, and I started to really appreciate.
[41:55]
But for me, it was quite a journey to get there emotionally and physically
[41:59]
and just, you know, action things.
[42:03]
And so at this stage, things are really proper and they're incredible.
[42:08]
And the result of the work that you see today
[42:10]
and the experience that women can have with very sleek app
[42:14]
and a sleek, I would qualify as a very sleek recovery
[42:18]
in terms of time and in terms of understanding and education.
[42:24]
And so in the app, for example, there's a chat
[42:26]
and there's me and another health practitioner in the chat
[42:30]
so we can follow people on a daily basis.
[42:32]
And we ask women not only just to not to know what we're doing,
[42:37]
but they can also feel it.
[42:39]
And it's a grand, you know, a lot of grand moments
[42:45]
when they're like, oh, my God, this is a win, this is a win.
[42:47]
We also have a community where women can exchange
[42:50]
and see that, yeah, we're actually doing it for other people too.
[42:53]
And then there's the Migraine Heroes podcast where women say,
[42:56]
you know what, I just I want to also explain,
[42:59]
you know, what happened to me and to my life
[43:01]
and how it was shaped by migraines and how, you know,
[43:06]
how I was taken out of it and how grateful I am today.
[43:09]
And I want to pass on the baton and my message to others.
[43:13]
And so, yeah, that's where we are today.
[43:17]
And look, I feel immensely grateful to my husband in particular.
[43:23]
I have an amazing husband.
[43:25]
Like, he does so much at home and works
[43:28]
and so sustains us financially and physically, you know, in many things.
[43:34]
And the reason why he says that is like, you know,
[43:37]
I do well and you do good and it's a balance.
[43:39]
It's a good example for the children.
[43:42]
And he sees the impact I have in women's lives.
[43:44]
And I think that keeps his fire going.
[43:47]
But I don't take it for granted.
[43:49]
And I'm immensely grateful that he allows me to do that.
[43:53]
My kids, you know, they celebrate.
[43:54]
We do vegetable cakes.
[43:57]
My daughter does that, like with really nice presentations,
[44:01]
you know, whenever there's a milestone that we want to celebrate.
[44:04]
And they're super involved.
[44:05]
They ask a lot of questions and they really care
[44:09]
because, you know, they have a mom
[44:10]
and they care that other moms can be there for their children.
[44:13]
Sometimes at the dinner table, I'll explain a story
[44:16]
or they see, you know, they could see in the past,
[44:19]
they could see the flowers moving on on the board of,
[44:22]
you know, women that were doing better
[44:23]
and they were, you know, really doing better
[44:26]
and then with no more migraines
[44:28]
and empowered to sustain the life like that.
[44:33]
Yeah, and so it's still today.
[44:34]
It's still me, still without investors.
[44:39]
And the reason for that is an investor, yes,
[44:41]
has the obligation to make more money.
[44:43]
And my sole obligation is to make women feel better.
[44:47]
And that's the only thing I'm trying to do.
[44:50]
And so as, you know, it's generating more revenues,
[44:54]
it's reinvesting into making things affordable.
[44:57]
I think affordability is an obsession for me.
[45:00]
You know, migraines doesn't have socioeconomic or, you know, whatever considerations that can touch anyone.
[45:09]
And so there's lots of single mums and single mums with, you know, jobs where they struggle.
[45:16]
And so my love goes to you and that quest of saying, OK, can I make things more systematic and more automated for these women
[45:26]
so that if they can't afford, quote unquote, to have me or Hélène by their side,
[45:32]
can they still be navigated and achieve the results that they're after?
[45:37]
Yeah, so if you look, sharing is caring.
[45:41]
If you like these episodes, share it with women.
[45:45]
Women feel incredibly vulnerable.
[45:48]
We also take care of children and men.
[45:52]
And I think it's only through these podcasts that they might see the light at the end of the tunnel.
[45:59]
Thank you for listening.
[46:02]
Remember, sharing is caring.
[46:05]
Share your story with me.
[46:07]
Take my free test and let's connect to help you gain a deeper understanding of your migraine profile.
[46:14]
Learn about the underlying imbalances that could be contributing to your genetic predisposition for migraines.
[46:21]
Join our community of migraine heroes.
[46:24]
All the links in the description below.
