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Ever noticed your migraines getting worse during pollen season?
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What if those just-allergies days are quietly triggering your head pain too?
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Welcome to Migraine Heroes, a podcast for people living with chronic migraines with
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years of pain, misunderstanding and lack of answers.
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I'm Diane Ducarme.
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I've helped more than a thousand people reduce the burden of migraines and feel more in control.
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My mission in life?
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To help a million people.
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Each episode brings you grounded insight into what your body might be asking for and what
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Just to keep you fully supported, this podcast is educational.
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For diagnosis or medication, always work with your doctor.
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Now take a breath and let's dive in.
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In this episode, you will learn why pollen allergies can quietly trigger migraines, even
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if you think you just have hay fever,
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what happens inside your body during allergy season that can push your nervous system towards
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and one simple daily action you can start today to reduce this inflammatory load that
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pollen puts on your system.
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Stay with me till the end because by the end of this episode, you will understand why allergy
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season can overload your nervous system and what you can do today to protect your brain
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during those high pollen days.
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I often have people come to me who initially think they simply have or used to have allergies.
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Every spring, they would start getting what they call sinus headaches or sinus migraines.
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The pressure in the head, the congestion, the pain around the eyes.
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It felt very much like a sinus problem initially.
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But then something curious happened.
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Those sinus migraines kept on coming back and they became stronger and they started
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to appear in more seasons and the symptoms became more complex.
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Eventually, someone told them, actually, this isn't just allergies, you have migraines.
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And in many cases, that's true.
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But what's confusing is that the person who thought they had allergies at the beginning
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was not entirely wrong either.
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And the doctor who later diagnosed migraine is not wrong either.
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Both can be right.
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Because for many people, seasonal pollen allergies and migraines are closely connected and one
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can easily trigger or amplify the other.
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So today, I want to shed some light on that connection, how seasonal pollen can interact
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with the migraine brain and why some people see their migraine spike in spring or early
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Let's first explore what science tells us.
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So what are those pollen allergies?
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Pollen allergies, often called allergic rhinitis, occur when the immune system is going to react
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excessively to pollen from trees, grasses or weeds.
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And the immune system mistakenly treats pollen as a dangerous invader and releases inflammatory
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chemicals to fight it.
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The main chemical released during this response is histamine, which triggers symptoms such
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as nasal congestion, sneezing, itchy eyes, sinus pressure and fatigue.
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But what many people do not realize is that histamine and inflammation also influence
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migraine pathways.
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So what's the link between those allergies and migraines?
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Multiple studies show that migraine is significantly more common in people with allergic conditions.
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A large population study published in the Journal of Headache and Pain found that individuals
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with allergic rhinitis had a significantly higher prevalence of migraines compared to
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those without allergies.
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Note that I always put the links to those scientific articles in the show notes.
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Similarly, research in cephalalgia reported people with allergic rhinitis were up to one
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and a half times more likely to suffer from migraine.
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Histamine plays a huge role here.
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Histamine does several things that are highly relevant for migraine.
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And if it's not your first time listening to one of my podcasts, you will know about
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Histamine dilates blood vessels in the brain, activates the trigeminal nerve, which is essential
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to migraine pain, and increases inflammation in surrounding tissues.
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Research published in the Journal of Headache and Pain explains that histamine can activate
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trigeminal nerve endings and promote the release of neuropeptides involved in migraine attacks.
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Another factor is sinus inflammation.
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During allergy season, swollen sinus tissues increase pressure in the face and head.
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This inflammation can stimulate nearby pain pathways that overlap with migraine circuits.
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There is also a broader concept of total inflammatory load.
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And migraine is increasingly understood as a neuroinflammatory disorder involving the
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trigeminovascular system.
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A review in Nature Reviews Neurology describes migraine as involving activation of inflammatory
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signaling molecules and nerve pathways in the brain.
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During the pollen season, your body may already be producing histamine, cytokines, and inflammatory
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This additional inflammatory burden may lower your threshold for a migraine attack.
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In other words, your brain becomes more easily triggered.
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Now, pollen season can also overlap with other migraine triggers, like changing barometric
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pressure, increased sunlight exposure, disrupted sleep due to nasal congestion,
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and fatigue from immune activation.
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And when these factors combine, the migraine threshold can drop even further.
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So if you feel like springtime equals migraine season, your experience is not imaginary at
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This is why I would biologically and increasingly support my research.
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Now, Western medicine focuses on histamine and inflammation.
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Traditional Chinese medicine looks at this pattern differently, but in a surprisingly
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complementary way.
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In traditional Chinese medicine, the seasonal allergies are often associated with wind invasion,
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particularly wind heat or wind damp.
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And I know those nouns sound terrible.
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But wind is considered a pathogenic factor, something that enters the body through the
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head and the nose, disturbing the delicate balance of energy in the upper body.
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Just think of it creating chaos.
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Interestingly, migraines are also commonly linked to what is called liver wind or liver
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yang rising migraines.
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When these patterns combine, you may see symptoms such as headaches, sinus congestion, eye irritability,
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sensitivity to light, dizziness.
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There's an old Chinese saying that states when wind enters, the head suffers first.
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And I'm conscious some of these concepts, if you're not familiar, are very esoteric.
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However, they translate so brilliantly in a migraine context because they explain the
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interdependency of why, when you have pollen-triggered migraines, can they evolve into so much more
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For example, here, another key organ that's going to be involved is going to be
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That lung system is going to govern your nose and your body's protective energy called Wei Qi.
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And so this is going to act like an energetic field that's going to protect you from environmental
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influences such as wind pollen and pathogens, but it also changes in barometric pressure.
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When your Wei Qi is weakened, the body becomes more vulnerable to seasonal irritants or
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And the results can be symptoms like sneezing, congestion, headaches, fatigue.
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So from this perspective, pollen allergies and migraines do not two separate problems.
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They are signals that the body's defense and regulatory systems are out of balance.
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And so I want to illustrate for a little bit that domino effect that traditional Chinese
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medicine is so good with.
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Western science would provide us with incredible frameworks and data.
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Here it's more not about the precision, but about the big picture, that domino effect
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So if you have seasonal allergies, you're going to impact part of your body and you're
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going to start to produce mucus.
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That mucus is going to start to steer wind and to start to create chaos because different
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fluids are not going to go in the right direction.
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Now, the more you're going to have mucus, the more you're going to have a more damp
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So a body that is a lot more invaded by heavy fluids and can start to present different
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symptoms such as skin rash, redness on the skin, urinary tract infections, endometriosis,
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weight in the lower midsection, cellulitis, brain fog.
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And the more you're going to have dampness, the more your stomach spin is going to be
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The more you're going to have dampness and the more you're going to have that dampness,
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the more your allergy field is going to expand and you're going to start to develop intolerances
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vis-a-vis sugar, vis-a-vis gluten.
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Your digestion is going to be weaker and weaker.
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And the more that's going to happen, the more the vagus nerve that is tramping its roots
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inside of your biome is going to have a weak form of nutrition that's going to weakly nourish
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the leaves of your vagus nerve, if you imagine there's a tree, to your brain.
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And so that whole interdependence and how you solve it is, in my opinion, really, really
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nicely explained in traditional Chinese medicine in a way that I see in my work is incredibly
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powerful and gives us frameworks and references that allow to change them.
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But you have to combine, when it comes to migraine, you really have to combine East
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and West because it's so complicated.
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And so this has become complicated because it's going to remind us that the migraine
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is not just a neurological event like is moment in the West, but it's a reflection of how
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your body is going to start to respond to its environment.
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With pollen to start with, but barometric pressure changes next, et cetera, et cetera,
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creating a complete maze where it's really hard to find your way back home.
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I hope that makes sense and that resonates.
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And that's why there's so many podcasts, you know, feel free to search the keywords of
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what's relevant to you so you can start to piece together all of the puzzle of your migraine
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profile because they can be so unique.
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Now let's get to action.
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Here's something simple that you can try today in your home.
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During pollen season, rinse your nasal passages with a saline solution in the evening.
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This really simple practice, commonly called as a saline nasal rinse or netty rinse, helps
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remove pollen particles that accumulate in the nose and sinuses throughout the day by
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reducing that pollen exposure inside of your nasal passages.
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You may reduce that local inflammation, that histamine release, that sinus pressure, all
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of which can help lower the inflammatory load that contributes to your migraine triggers.
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After rinsing, take a few slow breaths and gently massage the two points on either side
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of the nose, right next to the nostrils.
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These points are traditionally used to support sinus drainage and open the nasal passages.
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Small daily rituals like this can gradually reduce the pressure your body carries during
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Now, this is a small thing you can do today because being able to be action-orientated
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However, if you have sinus allergies and migraine, I just want to acknowledge how complex the
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situation might be and I hope that the knowledge that I've shared with you helps you understand
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the bigger picture.
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And remember, every small step you take moves you closer to freedom, you are powerful, you
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are resilient, and you are not alone.
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Keep rising, Migraine Hero.
