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Welcome to the Migraine Heroes podcast, a podcast where we share real stories from real
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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 migraine disease.
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If you are listening to this podcast, chances are your spouse suffers from migraines.
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In this podcast, you will find an overview on migraine disease, migraine treatments,
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how I personally work, who I am and why I do what I do.
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But first, let me acknowledge what you carry for two or more at home.
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Having a spouse that suffers from migraines can be very intense, very frustrating as well
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and adds a lot of logistical and emotional burden on you.
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Frustration and guilt are two emotions that we've heard about.
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It is a lot for your spouse and maybe more than they actually express verbally, but it
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is also a lot for you and for the loved ones around both of you.
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So this needs to stop and I'm glad that you're involved.
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Spouses can sometimes medicate more and more without fully realizing how much worse it's
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You see the movie and you might think, rightfully so, that they are headed into a war, that
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unless something fundamentally changes, life is going to be and stay a lot more difficult
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than it needs to be.
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Chances are you know a lot about migraine disease already.
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So I'm going to go over migraine facts really fast to make sure that you know it all.
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So as you know, migraine is a genetic disease.
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There's only one to 40 genes, lucky, responsible to giving migraines that have been identified
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in Western science.
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A migraine attack is a full body experience that is going to last on paper between four
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hours and three days, but honestly sometimes a lot longer.
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Someone can start to be in pain and that pain basically never leaves them.
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A migraine is a full body experience that usually involves head pain, but not always.
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Some migraines can be silent and will involve a lot of other symptoms such as aura, sensitivity
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to light, seeing dots, prisms or losing complete eyesight.
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It can involve paralysis of the whole body or parts of the body and can involve numbness
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in the arms and the legs, can involve tingling sensations, cramps, spasms, can involve vomiting
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It can involve feeling dizzy or having the brain feel foggy, having vertigo.
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It may start gradually, initially early in life as headaches and then transform into
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migraines or they may start very abruptly with, for example, a traumatic brain injury,
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a concussion, a whiplash, a burnout, be intense from day one and potentially never stop.
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Because it's genetic, 5% of boys and girls have them, but as of puberty, the incidence
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is going to triple to quadruple for women, leaving 18% of women with migraines.
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For some, pregnancy and breastfeeding will be heaven.
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For others, a complete cascade of intense migraines.
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For some, it will slow down at menopause, but for others, it will accelerate in that timeframe.
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If one of the parents has migraines, they will likely be very empathetic.
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If siblings do not have them, they may lack a bit of empathy.
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It's not their fault, but it's difficult for them to truly understand.
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Note that I've done a podcast for them too, so they can understand the big picture a lot
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You can find it on the Migraine Heroes podcast.
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It's possible that your spouse had to stop university or work because of their migraines
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and that the disease is starting to put financial pressure on your family unit as a result.
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It's possible that even you have to move and change home as a result.
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By now, you've probably seen a lot of doctors in search of answers.
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You've probably accompanied your spouse to do a couple of MRI and blood tests and other
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tests and those are all useful to really exclude other problems and confirm that what we're
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seeing is migraines, but it's also possible that you've driven them to emergency services
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on one or multiple occasions just to be told that they are migraines.
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In allopathic medicine, so Western medicine as we know it, doctors will aim at silencing
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the pain using more than a few painkillers and ending up making what is called medication
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Note that very few medications were actually developed for migraines themselves.
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Many have been borrowed from other diseases and applied to migraines.
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For example, tryptamines, like a sumatriptamine, which is very well used and quite effective
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or one of the more effective started as a cardiovascular medication that turned out
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to be useful for migraines as well.
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Same for antiplepsy or antidepressants.
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So that's very common.
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The challenge with those is that over time, as is mentioned in widely public press, those
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medications will give what is called rebound migraines or medication overuse headaches.
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And so you might see your spouse taking more and more medication, sneaking out of the house
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with medication in their bag and starting to have them in a hidden fashion away from
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your eyes more and more while you feel that their situation is getting worse and worse.
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And if that's the case, that's not normal, but unfortunately very usual.
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The pain is simply unbearable.
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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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See all of that though would assume that the migraines are a useless message from the brain
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that does not mean anything, that your spouse's body would be in pain without reason.
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And if you think of it, that does not make sense.
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If your leg hurts, you will try to find why until it no longer hurts.
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So why would that be any different for your brain?
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The way I work on migraine is very different to having painkillers.
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I'm going to do the exact opposite.
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I'm going to listen to that pain and to all other symptoms.
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You may have heard about the gut-brain axis,
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so the ability of your brain to communicate with your gut and your gut to communicate
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with your brain as well.
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And you may have heard of the vagus nerve, that massive, massive nerves that wanders
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and that is the chief of orchestra of the 100 billion nerve cells in your body.
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And so through that nerve, I have come to find using Western science and traditional
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Chinese medicine that it was possible to map why the person was having migraines and what
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are the symptoms it was related to.
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And therefore, what were the root causes of their migraines?
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Solve for that and therefore solve for the migraines.
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You may at this stage wonder if other symptoms are going and the answer is yes. Ask your loved ones,
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therefore it can mitigate less
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and the answer to that is yes as well.
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Usually doctors seeing results in their patient will proactively advise to reduce the medication
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dosage or to remove it altogether.
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In order to know about this, I'm asking about 97 questions in a questionnaire test, not
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only about their migraines, but about all of their symptoms along the gut-brain axis,
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along the vagus nerve.
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Once that is done, we meet on Zoom.
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During that conversation, I explain to your spouse why they have migraines, what those
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migraines mean, how they are interrelated with their other symptoms and form root causes
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that sit at the root of their migraines.
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Know that more and more of you are joining that call.
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Understanding where the pain comes from is really the first step in getting better
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and knowing this is so warm heartening. You're most welcome to join and listen in that session
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and ask as many questions as you'd like.
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What I then do is put an app together for your spouse.
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You can download it too if you'd like and follow the progress.
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I'm going to identify a number of foods that will actually solve those imbalances and then
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track daily, just as you would do a clinical trial and see that the intensity of the migraines
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and their frequency is going to decrease over time
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and it's going to decrease alongside the symptoms.
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And so while we cannot claim this, there is no clinical trials having been done, we are
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quite certain that over time we'll be able to have our results audited.
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And so what we're going to do is just to add foods, add foods the way you'd find them in
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the supermarket really.
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You have a database of about 700 foods we work with, the way nature intended it, lots
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of teas, infusions.
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We're not talking over your spouse's diet, we're just going to add to that diet.
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When your spouse is done, we meet again and it's for me the opportunity to actually meet
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them for the very first time.
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They are a lot more lively, they will have changed physically. You will have noticed
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people in their entourage will have noticed.
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They will be back at work, slightly promoted for many, a lot more active in the family
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and in the community.
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So a few words about me, I'm not a doctor, I have not been trained like everyone else
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and that's why I do what I do and I do it out of the ordinary.
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Of all places, I studied at Harvard, at Harvard Business School to be more precise.
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My undergraduate studies degree is in what is called STEM, so science, technology, engineering
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I speak seven languages, one of them is Mandarin and I have studied traditional Chinese medicine
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with Dr. Yifang Zhang, with whom I still work today, has written eight books and taught
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about a thousand students worldwide.
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I have also studied at the Academy of Healing Nutrition and now I am with a Harvard ex to
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study the fundamentals of neuroscience.
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I'm keen to be able to explain more and more in a Western language what we do and help
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universities to advance neuroscience and learn from them on the phenomenon we observe
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I rely on a network of neurologists, ophthalmologists and other doctors that we have to do a proper
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diagnostic and once that proper diagnostic has been put together and that medications
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are not working for your spas, then I work with foods to try to rebalance their body
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to have that beautiful alarm signal that migraine is to be turned off.
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It is important to get tested and to follow your doctor diagnosis and get that proper
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It doesn't mean when we work that their genes change, but it does mean that all of their
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symptoms change and go away and that their pain changes and that's the quality of life
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drastically increases.
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A lot of people will see different type of results in their bodies and blood tests and
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when they go back to the doctor and that's a wonderful thing.
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Alongside the way I work, your spas can continue to have medication if they need to.
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Their job is to manage their pain.
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My job is that there is no more pain in the first place.
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So now why do I do this?
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I'm a Belgian and when I was 17, I had a skiing accident in France.
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I broke my femur, lost half of my blood and shrunk a kidney.
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And for the following next 12 years, my body completely limped, had chronic fatigue. I
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would nap from 2 p.m. to 8 a.m. the next day. I would be sick very often. I gained a lot of
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weight. I would feel bloated, start to have painful and irregular, very irregular menstruation.
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When I went to China for work in Shanghai, I met Dr. Zhang and she transformed my life
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using only food in three weeks.
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I wanted to bring that knowledge and ability back to the West.
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You might say I do acupuncture, does that all work the same?
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Acupuncture is terrific and I completely recommend it.
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However, a lot of migraines are chemical and they need a chemical solution with food.
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So even if you do acupuncture, that's not quite the same as what I do.
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If you have any questions, please let me know.
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I look forward to that journey together.
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And quite frankly, I look forward to completely transforming your life as well as your spouse's.
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If you feel keen, we have more and more spouses that are coming to testify because once they're
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done, you have two emotions.
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They have an emotion of gratitude and a second emotion that we're going to call really, you
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know, not to mention a bit of resentment that things had to be so hard for so long.
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And so they come with us and they do a podcast together and that's really helpful to others
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Thank you very much
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and I look forward to meeting you indirectly.
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The content in this podcast should not be considered a substitute for medical professional
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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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Remember, sharing is caring.
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Share your story with me.
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Take my free test and let's connect to help you gain a deeper understanding of your migraine
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Learn about the underlying imbalances that could be contributing to your genetic predisposition
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Join our community of migraine heroes.
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All the links in the description below.
