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You are listening to The Ultimate Pregnancy Prep Podcast, episode number 136.
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In today's episode, I interview Diane Ducarme, who shares her expertise on migraines, including
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a holistic approach that combines Western science and Eastern medicine to understand
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and treat this very complex condition.
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She explores the intricate connection between hormones, stress, gut health, and migraines,
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recognizing the body's logical nature and its ability to heal when given the right support.
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Through personalized nutrition and comprehensive tracking, Diane helped numerous women not
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only manage their migraines, but also improve their overall health and fertility.
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Her approach highlights the importance of listening to one's body and addressing root
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causes rather than just treating symptoms.
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Welcome to The Ultimate Pregnancy Prep Podcast.
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I'm Nora, a Preconception Health Coach, Holistic Nutritionist, and Fertility Awareness Practitioner
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who's on a mission to help and empower you to get pregnant.
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My goal is to normalize conversations on the menstrual cycle, women's hormones, and how
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you can optimize fertility naturally.
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This show will encourage you to become the healthiest version of yourself, to help you
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become body literate, learn how to advocate for yourself, and improve your fertility outcomes
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no matter where you are on the trying-to-conceive journey.
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By tuning into this podcast with interviews from holistic practitioners, fertility doctors,
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spiritual teachers, and pregnancy success stories, you're getting one step closer to
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Hello, my friends.
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Today, we have Diane Ducarmes on the show.
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She is the CEO of Nectar Health, which leads groundbreaking migraine research combining
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Eastern medicine, Western science, and advanced tech to reveal migraine's origins.
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With an MBA from Harvard, a background in science and in engineering, and fluency in
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seven languages, this is a smart cookie, my friends, Diane's journey spans from engineering
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to Chinese medicine and neuroscience at HarvardX.
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Her unique approach promotes adding functional foods to nourish rather than restrict.
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As a host of her own podcast, the Migraine Heroes Podcast, she shares insight that resonates
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with migraine sufferers globally.
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Through Nectar Health, Diane transforms lives, offering a holistic, empowering path to migraine
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relief and wellness.
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Today, we have Diane on the show, and she's going to talk all about the migraine and fertility
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I know a lot of my clients, a lot of you listening, a lot of us out there suffer from chronic
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And a huge, huge part of that, and we're going to dive into this today, has to do with
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our hormones and our hormone health.
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So I can't wait to get into today's interview.
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But first, I want to make a very special announcement.
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If you've been listening to the podcast over the last couple of interviews, or over the
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last couple of episodes, I should say, you probably already know that the bronze package
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And I am currently accepting applicants on the waitlist for my March 6th, that's next
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But it's only open for a limited time.
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If you are new here, I have three packages that I offer for my one-on-one fertility coaching,
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the bronze, the silver, and the gold packages.
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And the bronze is only available three times per year, March, June, and September.
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So you might be wondering what's so special about the bronze package that it only gets
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offered three times a year.
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Well, this is the smallest fertility coaching package that I do offer.
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And because of this, I've gotten feedback that it fits better into your budget.
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I know a lot of you are looking for personalized coaching and support on your fertility journey,
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but you aren't financially able to invest in the silver and gold packages at this particular
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And you're still looking for my support.
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Since my client roster keeps growing every month, and let me remind you, we are getting
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tons of pregnant success stories every passing month, I only have a limited number of spots
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available for my bronze package clients.
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Because it seems to be the most popular.
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So in a nutshell, just as a quick reminder, here is what you get in the bronze package.
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Three and a half hours of fertility coaching with me.
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So this includes your 75-minute intake, your 75-minute follow-up session, which gives you
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your personalized protocols, plus two additional 30-minute follow-up sessions, which we spend
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over a period of about three to four months.
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And when we start working together, you get an in-depth analysis of you and your partner's
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blood labs, semen analysis, cycle charts, food diaries, intake forms, and much more
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so that you can finally have one practitioner look at the full picture of your health and
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fertility to see how all the components in your life come together in understanding your
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reproductive health.
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You also get access to functional lab testing, include in-depth hormone testing through the
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You also get comprehensive stool analysis to understand your gut microbiome and your
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And you also get access to vaginal microbiome testing to help you finally get some answers
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that your doctor cannot provide you with.
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In addition to all of this, you also get personalized protocols that take into account your personal
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preferences, your hormone health, your health history, and your lab results.
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And in addition to this as well, you also get lifetime access to the Get Pregnant program,
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which is valued at $600, which is your one-stop shop, including your online portal for all
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the things that you need to know on how to optimally prepare you and your partner's body
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This online Get Pregnant program is an incredible resource that my clients love because it helps
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them stay accountable and motivated throughout our entire coaching together, especially outside
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of our one-on-one coaching sessions.
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When you work one-on-one with me, I promise you the game changes tremendously.
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You finally begin to start understanding your body, your hormones, and fertility in a much
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more in-depth and empowered way, helping you advocate for yourself at your doctor's office,
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at your fertility clinic, or any other practitioner who you might be working with alongside myself.
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With an 80% success rate of helping clients conceive within one year of working with me,
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I am thrilled to let you know that I am now accepting applicants for the March Bronze
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Package enrollment.
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So if this is something that you are interested in, I highly recommend you head down to the
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link in the show notes and make sure that you apply for the Bronze Package at your earliest
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convenience, as I only have a limited number of spots available, and they go quickly.
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All right, so the enrollment opens up March 6th.
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That's this coming Thursday, so again, head down to the link in the show notes to apply
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All right, it is finally time to hear from our guests.
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Without further ado, big warm welcome to you, Diane.
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How are you doing today?
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Thank you so much for having me, Nora.
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Now, I always ask my guests when they come on before we kind of get into the goodness
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of the topic of migraine and fertility today.
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I always just like to get a little bit of a sense of who you are and how did you come
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I mean, you've got quite an incredible background and obviously a lot of education, so I'm curious
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what sparked your curiosity about migraines and how you fell into this profession.
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So probably the fact of becoming a mom.
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I think when my daughter landed on my stomach, I kind of received a slap from the universe
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thinking, what are you doing with your brain?
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Promoting more consumption in China at the time.
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I think more fundamentally, I had a skiing accident when I was 17 and I broke my femur,
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I lost half of my blood.
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I shrunk a kidney and I got a ski in my forehead and I was never transfused.
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And the reason why I wasn't transfused was very legitimate, there were contaminated blood
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issues in France at the time.
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And so there were not enough blood in the bank.
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And because I was 17, they thought, well, even if she's borderline, like it's really,
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really little that she has left, it's borderline, we're going to leave her like that and she
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will make up her, you know, her own blood.
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But the problem was I was chronically anemic and so I was left like that.
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And so for 12 subsequent years, my body was out of whack.
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I was, I gained a lot of weight overnight.
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My hormones completely went through the roof.
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Then I went on the pill.
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I stopped the pill after a couple of years.
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I did not have my menstruation for a whole seven months, which freaked me out.
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And when I had my menstruation again, there were cycles that were 46 days and 53 and 38
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and all over the place.
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And so with the method of temperature and stopping the pill and finding my intuition
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back in 2011, I found my way.
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But these 12 years, my body was not functioning.
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I would nap from 2 p.m. to 8 a.m. the next day.
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And so you'd see me and you'd think I'm just fine, but I wasn't.
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Until for work, I went to live in China and there I met a doctor and she was my teacher.
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I was taking, you know, classes on weekends.
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I'm a bit of a nerd.
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Class on weekends about traditional Chinese medicine.
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And I wasn't sure.
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I was like, what's this deal?
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I'm not sure if I like it or if I don't like it.
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There's always never a straightforward answer.
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And so I went to see my doctor and I thought, you know, I'm just going to test this thing
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And if it works, great.
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And if it doesn't, I'm just going to let that thing to rest.
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And she transformed my body back to where it was when I was 17.
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In three weeks, just with food.
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So yours, how old were you?
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Were you 27 at this point, you said, or 12?
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So you had suffered for all those 12 years.
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And then here you go and you meet this wonderful person.
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And then you're educating, you're learning, and then implement her recommendation.
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And in three weeks, everything turns around.
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Everything turns around.
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And at that time, bizarrely enough, I was pregnant.
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And so my had been scolded by my doctor that, you know, I was eating too much sugar and
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I was going to, I was really tired.
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But anyway, she corrected me within three months being pregnant.
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And I thought, the test is still, do my cycles come in order because all of the other symptoms
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But, you know, my cycles, no way she can pull that off.
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And she pulled it off.
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And I was like, wow.
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I guess you would have.
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Yeah, you would have had to wait till you gave birth to then afterwards, get your cycle
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That's an incredible story.
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So from then till now, that was kind of like the catalyst that was like, what is this magic?
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I need to learn more about it.
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And I love that you say, I need to learn more about it because that's what happened.
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I started to learn, continue to learn on weekends.
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I started to also take a lot of my friends to see her.
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And she'd always look at the person with a very different angle, come up with a very
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different idea and diagnostic, yet nail one case after the other until I had my sister.
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My sister had migraines and she had done three MRI without answers and she helped her.
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And then remotely, because I was then in New Zealand, fast forward, my neighbor tells
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me Diana have a lot of migraines and I say, oh, I'm really sorry to hear that.
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My sister used to have them.
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And she says, well, my father is telling me that I need to get medicated for life, including
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having injections.
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What do you mean for life?
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Surely no one does that.
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And you need to put yourself in my shoes.
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Me not knowing, being complete ignorant of the massive pain and the massive suffering
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that people go through.
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Not being a normal human or, quote unquote, one of those, one of those that if you say
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I have a migraine, I was not evil, I was very kind and empathetic, but I would think you
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meant I have a headache.
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I would not hear it fully.
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And so here, when my friends say that, I hear it partially because I've seen my sister.
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I said to her, 36, like you're going to medicate for 50 years.
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Surely no one does that.
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That's a weird idea.
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It turns out everyone does.
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But I didn't know.
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I said, that sounds unreasonable and understands that you don't want to do that.
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You know, let me help you out.
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I'll be in touch with Dr.
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Zhang. I'll ask you a couple of questions through WhatsApp, WeChat.
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Anyway, I tell her what to eat, just like for my sister.
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She eats it four months later.
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She no longer has migraines.
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And then we talk about, you know, why did your dad say 50 years of medication?
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And she tells me, my dad is a renowned neurologist based in New York.
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And I thought, oh, that doesn't make sense.
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Why did her dad not tell her?
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And so this is how I started to discover this incredible world of sufferance.
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This entire massive number of women who are battling days in and days out, who are migraine
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sufferers, meaning they fall and they stand up again and fall and stand up again.
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They're praised to a lot of advertising, a lot of medications, a lot of solutions.
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They're praised to people's misunderstanding because it's an invisible disease.
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You see, your friends might have a migraine and you might not even notice.
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And when they share it with their friends and family, the family or the friends,
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they don't really understand what they mean.
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So there's this gigantic deaf dialogue where the woman is just in massive,
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ununderstandable pain.
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And it can go anywhere from dizziness, vertigo,
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fogginess, all the way to half paralysis of the body, etc.
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And so I started to discover that world.
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And for me, I had discovered something and I had almost a moral obligation to do something
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That's how you see the shift of Diane just suddenly shifting and saying, you know what?
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This is actually not OK.
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So do you coach clients now on like, do you work one-on-one with clients to help them
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with their migraine?
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Or do you have a team that does that?
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Personally, I've done that non-stop for the last five years.
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Non-stop for the last five years.
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Yeah, I love that.
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Can we start with basic understanding about migraines?
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Because when we hear migraines, I think different people have different experiences of maybe
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what migraines are.
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People have different pain in different parts of their head, maybe behind their eyes, maybe
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in the back of their head by kind of like their cervical spine, or maybe they have it
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Maybe they feel pressure under their sinuses, right?
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Like, I mean, if we're thinking about kind of like the map of the human brain and where
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people may experience pain, or maybe they just have it, you know, at the top of their
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Can you just as a general overview, just give and just let us know a little bit more
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information about migraines, what that entails and what that looks like for people?
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Yeah, so migraine, a migraine attack, what is called a migraine attack is an episode
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that is going to last on paper anywhere between three hours and four days.
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But that's on paper.
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In practice, it can start one day and never end, never leave the person.
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So the person is going to live in a constant state of pain, or it may happen sporadically,
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always before the menstruation, or the first day of menstruation, or after the menstruation,
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or during ovulation, or sometimes ovulation and stress, or sometimes during the stress,
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sometimes after the stress phase.
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And so it can last anywhere between three days to three hours to four days.
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And it's going to occur exactly like you mentioned in different parts of the brain.
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It may occur, and you cited a lot, which are completely relevant and absolutely accurate,
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may occur behind the head, on the temples, can be always the right temple or the left temple,
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above the ears, so upper sort of upper temple, top of the head, across the eyebrows, on the forehead,
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in the sinuses, and it can be otherwise just a full right side or a full left side.
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And then it can also move from the back of the brain to the front of the brain,
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or it can be in any combinations of these locations at the same time.
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Now, in addition to that, and I think this is really important to say,
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in addition to that, the woman is going to experience a full body experience,
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meaning she's going to have a myriad of other sensations, such as trembling sensation,
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cramps, she may have a half paralysis of her body,
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and her migraine is more going to look like a stroke,
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and she's going to finish in the emergency room.
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It can be that she has nausea, vomiting, dizziness,
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vertigo, fogginess.
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She can also have a lot of aura, so visual disturbances.
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She might see dots, prisms in the vision.
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She might lose her peripheral vision.
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She might see sort of rainbows or foggy parts.
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She might see blurry or blurry just at night.
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She might have sensitivity to light, sensitivity to screens.
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And so all of these symptoms that come with it are part of the migraine attack.
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And the migraine attack is going to happen in three phases.
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A prodrome, which is a phase where she's going to know it's coming,
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which can be incredibly anxious.
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She knows the pain is going to come a little bit before labor.
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Like, you know, you're like, oh, this is not going to be pleasant.
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Except there's no happy ending.
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So you go through that phase where, for some people, it's aura.
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For some people, it's trembling sensation.
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For some people, it can be constant yawning.
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For some people, it can be a lot of sighing.
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For some people, it can be extreme fatigue.
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And they know it's coming.
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Or paralysis or tingling sensations in one part of the body.
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And they know it's coming.
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And they know it's coming.
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It's going to hit really hard.
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So that's maybe the time at which they start to contact their loved ones, etc.
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Start to cancel a lot of meetings.
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Then they go in the migraine attack itself,
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which can be excruciatingly long and excruciatingly painful.
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We're talking about labor painful.
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And then the post-traum where she may have what is called a hangover.
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And where she's not in pain, but she's also not functional.
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And so it's really, it's a very, very hard thing.
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Because initially, they're going to explain to their entourage what's happening.
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And they're going to complain about it.
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But little by little, they're going to close on themselves.
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And start to really realize that the external world does not understand.
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The external world does not provide the empathy that she needs.
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And that unless she opens up too much, I mean, or if she opens up too much,
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she will be, it's going to make her very vulnerable.
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So she's going to start to learn to fake it.
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To fake that she's fine.
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No, no, it's really, it's really, it's really hard.
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And so she's going to be a bit more depressed.
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And so when going to the doctors, it's going to be put on increased medication.
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And sometimes depression medication.
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Now, that being said, in between parentheses, going to the doctor, doing an MRI, a CT scan,
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a blood test are absolutely indispensable to get a proper migraine diagnostic.
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Now, having the doctor recommend antidepressants is another topic.
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But, you know, getting a beautiful diagnostic is really important.
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So that can show up on a seat, I guess, depending, do you, I mean.
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It's like process of elimination.
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Let's do all these tests and then figure out, okay, this is not a tumor growth.
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This is not a lesion.
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This is not this, that and the other.
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And then from there, this must be migraine.
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So for purposes of this podcast and the listeners who are listening, we are obviously on the
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Ultimate Pregnancy Prep Podcast talking about fertility and preconception and how, I mean,
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as we know, we have the same philosophy, Diane, you and I were kind of having a little chit
[20:22]
chat before we pressed record and align on a lot of our ways of thinking and our holistic
[20:28]
health principles and so on and so forth.
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And so I want to dive into kind of three main topics today when we're talking about migraine
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and the connection to fertility, because with it being connected to fertility, the
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three kind of prongs or pillars that I want to get into is first is kind of the hormone
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So the hormone imbalance.
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Then I want to talk a little bit more about stress and cortisol, which is also a hormone,
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but we'll get there.
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And then the gut, because these are three topics that I talk about on the podcast a
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And I know, as you mentioned, when we're talking about the different ways that a migraine
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can potentially manifest in an individual, you had mentioned it can be cyclical, right,
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depending on where you are in your cycle.
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So let's start with the hormone component and talk about fluctuating hormones, probably
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mainly estrogen and progesterone and how they can trigger migraines or how and why they
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can trigger migraines.
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Let's just kind of start there.
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That's a huge, huge element.
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And the proof is that when you look at the stats, because migraines are genetic, it's
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five percent of boys and girls.
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However, the incidence is going to triple to quadruple for women at puberty.
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So the moment the woman starts to become fertile, her chance to have migraine is one in five.
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Yeah, one in five.
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That's like one in five.
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Did you know that's the stat for infertility?
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One in five couples struggle with infertility as well.
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I didn't know that.
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Well, it's quite similar, quite similar.
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And the amazing news is that while everything's really hard when having a migraine, migraine
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is your best tool, your best radar to troubleshoot, your best troubleshoot radar for fertility.
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And so hormones do play a really important component in migraine.
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And so you have when you look at the cycles with different types of migraines, you have
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the ones that are just really premenstruation, right?
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And so at that moment, we have a very specific time when the estrogen drops.
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Now, you can look at it two ways.
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You can look at it with a western lens or an eastern lens.
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And I love to blend both because I find it really interesting.
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So in the western lens, we're going to see the estrogen drops.
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With the eastern lens, you look at the time when your liver system, and I really want to
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talk about that, your liver system is the most loaded with toxins, which is your scorecard of
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have you been naughty or really good this month, right?
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In a lot of your podcasts, you talk about the scorecard and what you've done, and you
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talk about some foods and you say, maybe avoid alcohol.
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Avoid the oil vegetables.
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They're full of toxins.
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Avoid the refined sugar.
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All of these will load your liver.
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So now let's imagine we have been really naughty and not like Nora recommended.
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We've been not 80-20, but 20-80, and we've been very bad.
[23:33]
OK, let's imagine for a moment.
[23:35]
Although I have to say that women who suffer from migraine disease will usually be very,
[23:41]
OK, so of course, this is not for everyone.
[23:46]
However, let's imagine we've been just a bit naughty.
[23:49]
It was a busy month.
[23:50]
What's going to happen is that the liver system is going to have more toxins that month.
[23:56]
Now, the menstruation is an opportunity to also release some of these toxins.
[24:01]
And so the body before the menstruation is going to come together and triage all of that
[24:06]
And inside the liver is going to gather a lot of the toxins that can go and be flushed
[24:11]
in the menstruation.
[24:12]
And so through the vagus nerve, through the gut brain axis, if my liver has more inflammation,
[24:18]
my brain is also going to indicate more pain.
[24:22]
So when we look, we go back to the West.
[24:25]
What does the West say about the liver and the brain?
[24:27]
Well, we know that if we drink too much alcohol, anyone can have a hangover.
[24:32]
OK, and then it gives me sort of a pain, a headache that's going to be, it feels spread
[24:37]
out throughout the head.
[24:38]
But for example, you mentioned, like behind the head, you don't have really a hangover
[24:43]
It's more across the temple, the eyebrows, the top of the head, more like the casque
[24:48]
feeling of the hangover.
[24:49]
And so from a Western folklore perspective, we know that the liver is connected to the
[24:55]
From a sleep science perspective, we also know that during the deep sleep, the brain
[24:59]
is going to detox at the same time as the liver.
[25:02]
We see those two connected while the basal temperature decreases.
[25:06]
So kind of everyone sleeps except those two that work hand in hand.
[25:09]
So from that perspective, we are conscious in the West as well of the importance of that
[25:15]
And so before my menstruation, I'm going to gather all of these toxins.
[25:18]
So if I've had too much of these foods that you mentioned in some of your podcasts, then
[25:24]
my liver is going to be like, OK, gather, gather, gather flush.
[25:28]
And so that's going to come accompanied by potentially if you have a genetic predisposition
[25:35]
And if you think of it more like a fire alarm, the fire alarm is going to kick in and say
[25:40]
maybe, maybe, you know, can you please pay more attention and be kinder to us?
[25:48]
Now, the toxins may come from there.
[25:50]
They may come also from a lot of different places.
[25:53]
They may come from medication.
[25:55]
They may come from toxins associated with external factors such as, you know, recently
[26:02]
I had a woman, she realized she was next to an uranium factory.
[26:05]
And while she was a nutritionist that she had a lot of toxins and heavy metals inside
[26:10]
So it can be of any nature.
[26:12]
Yeah, invariably so.
[26:14]
So this is going to be one part.
[26:15]
And so indeed, the estrogen and the sort of anti-inflammatory response of the body can
[26:21]
help with some of those toxins.
[26:22]
And it may drop too much if there are too many toxins.
[26:26]
Does that make sense?
[26:28]
And so it's two reads of a similar situation.
[26:32]
And it's really interesting to look at both perspectives because it gives us ideas about
[26:37]
how we can use some levers to help out.
[26:39]
And indeed, we have the ability of the levers to remove bad foods in an 80-20 fashion and
[26:45]
to add some really good ones that are going to stimulate the liver and detox it.
[26:51]
Big family of migraines.
[26:52]
If you have those migraines, you are likely to be more irritated at that time.
[26:57]
You are more likely to have numbness in the limbs, more sometimes trembling sensation,
[27:03]
possibly aura from time to time.
[27:06]
Also sore breasts, for example, because the body is going to put the toxins wherever it
[27:12]
It can also, and that's going to lead to the subsequent type of migraine.
[27:15]
You could also have the liver have so many toxins that over time, these toxins may form
[27:21]
cysts that gravitate around your ovaries.
[27:25]
If you have those, you are guaranteed to have massive migraines during menstruation.
[27:34]
So the liver can generate the liver.
[27:37]
If you have an overload of toxins in the body, the liver can.
[27:41]
So sorry, you're saying that you can actually generate cysts in your ovaries from the abundance
[27:45]
of toxins, which can then make the menstruation very painful.
[27:50]
Or sorry, migraine around menstruation.
[27:53]
So in a very Eastern way to think about it.
[27:56]
So in the East, when you see liver, so I speak like you mentioned quite a lot of languages.
[28:01]
When you see liver in French, in English, in Italian, in Spanish, you always designate
[28:05]
the piece of flesh at the right bottom right of your rib cage.
[28:10]
But if you see liver in Chinese, which is gun, when you see gun, you mean liver and
[28:15]
gallbladder and ability to detox and a lot of your brain and your breast, your uterus,
[28:21]
your mood hormones and all of your gallbladder, right?
[28:28]
And so it's a pathway.
[28:31]
So for them, if the liver has too many toxins on the pathway, it can load off some of it.
[28:41]
And what people really misunderstand in the West is how the body is completely logical.
[28:48]
It's very, very logical.
[28:49]
If you remember anything from this podcast is my body is a beautiful machine, which is
[28:54]
And what it's trying to do is self-protect.
[28:57]
And so put away the toxins in different places in small batches.
[29:02]
So they're inoffensive.
[29:05]
And so one result from the liver system being loaded are cysts in the ovaries.
[29:12]
Now, if you read it very literally in Western science, it may not translate exactly.
[29:18]
But that's the idea.
[29:19]
And so the cysts on the ovaries will themselves create a very acute, very, very strong migraines
[29:26]
during menstruation.
[29:28]
Can be cysts, can be blood clots, fibroids.
[29:31]
If you've gone through trauma, for example, in your childhood, it's very possible that
[29:36]
your body kept the score and formed some tissues that ended up in your uterus or that's a very
[29:42]
Eastern way of looking at life and that those are the ones causing these massive migraines
[29:48]
during menstruation.
[29:51]
And so that way, what we have to do, what we do is we remove them.
[29:55]
We help people eat certain foods to expel whatever is in their uterus that we have identified.
[30:04]
And then for blood clots, they'll see them.
[30:06]
They will see physically.
[30:07]
Oh, I had migraines.
[30:08]
I had blood clots.
[30:10]
I no longer do have migraines.
[30:11]
Really fascinating for people who had cysts.
[30:14]
I just had a woman who just texted me today and she said, my cysts I've seen in the ultrasound
[30:18]
is massively reduced in size.
[30:20]
I feel I'm on the right trajectory.
[30:22]
Or another woman who had three cysts on her ovaries needed a hysterectomy and no longer
[30:27]
Now that's going to massively increase fertility.
[30:29]
If you see your uterus as a temple of love, again, embrace the beautiful signal of your
[30:35]
brain saying, maybe, maybe we have a problem.
[30:38]
There's a blockage inside the uterus.
[30:42]
So you are able to actually tune into your body and say, look, if I fall and I hurt my
[30:49]
knee and I break it, I go to the doctor.
[30:53]
He's not going to give me painkillers over and over again until the pain goes.
[30:57]
He might give me that, but he might also fix the problem and repair the knee or put me
[31:02]
a plaster or cast and ask me not to move anymore or do a bit of a surgery or an operation.
[31:07]
Why would your brain indicate massive pain during your menstruation aimlessly?
[31:14]
It's a smart part of your body.
[31:16]
Your body is a smart system.
[31:18]
And so that's a second family of migraines that are in many ways also hormone related
[31:24]
because the cysts come from that imbalance, then yet end up in a physical form inside
[31:33]
And so when we're talking about cysts, you're not necessarily talking about polycystic
[31:38]
These can be like other cysts that form, but not PCOS.
[31:47]
But I'm talking exactly, you're right, about the actual cysts.
[31:52]
The actual, you know, when you do an ultrasound, you see a couple of cysts.
[31:55]
And so in the east, it's interesting in the east, we want to keep the uterus really clean
[32:00]
for fertility and beyond, always keeping the uterus clean.
[32:03]
So spring cleaning it.
[32:07]
Which is part of also like the spring and the fall, like liver cleanse is part of it,
[32:11]
You can kind of clean the liver.
[32:13]
So my question now is, I mean, that was a beautiful explanation of kind of explaining,
[32:18]
I love how you kind of merge the east and the west in there as well.
[32:22]
So if we were going to just kind of take that bird's eye view and look at the menstrual cycle
[32:26]
and say, if you have migraines during menstruation, if you have it during ovulation, and if you
[32:31]
have it, you know, luteal phase close to when you're about to menstruate, either one of those,
[32:38]
look at the liver?
[32:40]
Or look at the liver system?
[32:43]
So for before menstruation, look at the liver system.
[32:45]
During ovulation, we'll look at the kidney system.
[32:48]
The kidney system.
[32:50]
The kidney system.
[32:51]
And then during menstruation, again, look at the liver system.
[32:54]
And then the menstruation, yes.
[32:55]
And the uterus specifically, like, you know, what's going on there?
[32:59]
And yes, these are beautiful notions and really thinking about the body holistically.
[33:05]
What is really hard for a woman is that when she has triggers, so sometimes a woman is
[33:11]
going to say, oh, I stopped drinking alcohol because alcohol is a trigger.
[33:14]
But sometimes she might say, I'm not sure alcohol is a trigger because sometimes I'm
[33:18]
certain that, you know, alcohol is triggering my migraine.
[33:22]
So I stopped drinking and I can feel it doesn't suit me.
[33:25]
But sometimes I will drink and I still don't get a migraine.
[33:30]
And I don't understand.
[33:32]
Is this a trigger or is it not?
[33:34]
And so when she looks at her data and she collects her data, her data doesn't stack
[33:39]
up or she's going to track her migraines and say it's always cyclical.
[33:43]
It's always before menstruation.
[33:44]
Well, you know, sometimes actually not.
[33:46]
And sometimes it's not at ovulation.
[33:47]
Sometimes before, sometimes after.
[33:49]
And it's just that how much that scorecard within a day, how much did I abuse within
[33:56]
a month or how much did my body not necessarily abuse, but how much was my body overloaded
[34:02]
during this month versus what it can tolerate?
[34:05]
And I think the versus is really important.
[34:08]
And there's a bit of a scorecard if you have migraines on a daily basis, taking your cycle
[34:17]
And when you say a system is overloaded, it's not necessarily just that you're eating processed
[34:23]
Overloaded could be emotional stress, mental stress.
[34:28]
It's not just like the food that you're putting in.
[34:30]
It's just you have to think about all the areas of your life like, right.
[34:34]
We know that stress, most mental and emotional stress is perceived stress mainly, right?
[34:40]
Like what is my perception of the situation?
[34:42]
Is it going to be stressful or not?
[34:44]
Diane, you and I can be both be in the same situation, yet I can be so stressed out and
[34:52]
And that's just that's my perception.
[34:54]
So the stress, your perceived stress about your life, about your fight with your boss
[34:58]
the other day or your argument with your partner or the overload of list of things that you
[35:03]
have to do on your to do list.
[35:05]
That is also an overload on the system.
[35:07]
It's not necessarily just the foods.
[35:13]
I would even add something that I've noticed is sometimes I had a woman, for example, she
[35:19]
expelled a blood clot the size of a baseball.
[35:22]
So I'm quickly interrupting this episode to invite you if you are ready to start or continue
[35:27]
your fertility journey with the Master Your Cycle to Get Pregnant program.
[35:31]
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[35:37]
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[35:41]
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[35:46]
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[35:51]
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[35:53]
I believe this is possible for you and have helped countless couples bring home their
[35:58]
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[36:01]
You create a healthy environment for conception to occur.
[36:05]
Head down to the link in the show notes to check out packages and pricing options and
[36:10]
apply for the program today.
[36:12]
OK, now back to the episode.
[36:17]
And I had to Google baseball to really think, you know, is it my French?
[36:21]
Not, you know, my English not good enough or did I understand that?
[36:26]
And she says, well, obviously, the migraines went away instantly.
[36:30]
And so we always sort of warn for fertility.
[36:33]
We're like, OK, careful moving forward.
[36:35]
Your fertility massively increases because now your body wants to reproduce, right?
[36:39]
She says the second thing that really came is my stress level really decreased.
[36:45]
And sometimes the stress is even one layer deeper, which is inside my body.
[36:51]
There was a Latin stress, a Latin threat.
[36:58]
I find that quite fascinating observation from that woman who says, oh, wow, my stress
[37:03]
level is massively dropped.
[37:05]
When she expelled that baseball size of a blood clot, too.
[37:12]
Sometimes women might say, you know, I have migraines during menstruation and I really
[37:16]
have labor pain like and well, if you feel labor pain like menstruation cramps accompanied
[37:23]
by massive migraines, it is highly likely your body's trying to expel something.
[37:28]
And so trust your intuition and taking a painkiller to mask that pain, like you mentioned
[37:34]
in some of your podcasts, you take you know, you can't take a Tylenol and pop it every
[37:38]
single day and think everything's going to be OK.
[37:42]
You know, think about what is my body trying to do or trying to express and really use
[37:47]
your intuition and trust it.
[37:49]
Trust it a lot, which leads me to another point that you mentioned is, you know, you
[37:53]
can't just pop a Tylenol every single day and be OK.
[37:58]
That when you take medication, what you do is you take a painkiller.
[38:02]
And again, if you're in massive pain, these are important steps to take and you have to
[38:07]
respect the protocol from your doctor.
[38:09]
However, if you also think for yourself and do a bit of research online, you will realize
[38:14]
that taking some of these medication will cause what is called rebound migraines or
[38:19]
medication overuse headaches.
[38:21]
What it concretely means is when you have, for example, a PMS migraine, you know, pre
[38:27]
migraine and you take a medication, you take an instant painkiller, but then you're adding
[38:33]
a toxin that now your liver needs to process on top of everything else.
[38:38]
And so this is going to damage your fertility, which is a topic that you cover quite a bit
[38:45]
You know, like just that constant medication, chronically medication, medicating to address
[38:51]
things will impact your fertility, because if you start to mess up with your liver system,
[38:56]
you are messing up with your hormonal system, too.
[39:01]
And so, like you said, also, when somebody is in so much pain, sometimes at the end of
[39:05]
the day, like they just need some sort of reprieve or relief because they are in so
[39:10]
So in the process, so that is, yes, part of the process.
[39:14]
I always say, so our app is called Migraine Heroes.
[39:19]
My job, your job is you manage your pain.
[39:21]
My job is you have no more pain.
[39:22]
Very different jobs, very different ways to get there.
[39:27]
So there's a perfect segue to the next one, which is stress and cortisol, because we
[39:31]
were kind of I know they all they're all going to kind of merge in together.
[39:33]
But so we kind of have a little, not a little, we got a lot of information on the hormone
[39:37]
piece, cyclical piece, the connection to the liver system and how the body is really trying
[39:42]
to speak to us and tell us what it needs, which is really at the end of the day, what
[39:47]
we should always be thinking about any discomfort, any symptoms that are getting our
[39:53]
Then it's like, what is the body trying to tell us?
[39:56]
We need to become more aware, understand more about the body so that we can learn how to
[40:00]
read the beautiful map that is our own body to help us thrive as opposed to just living
[40:08]
So the stress side of things.
[40:10]
So I talk about cortisol on the podcast a lot.
[40:13]
It is something that I test with a lot of my clients through functional hormone tests
[40:17]
like the Dutch test.
[40:18]
And I'm seeing everybody's diurnal cortisol slope.
[40:21]
It's, you know, I have yet to see somebody with a beautiful cortisol slope over a 24
[40:26]
Most of us are all zigzagged and too high and too low and flipped on its head and so
[40:32]
But we definitely know the cortisol relationship with even the blood sugar, also with how it
[40:39]
is going to impact progesterone as well, quite a bit.
[40:44]
So let's talk about migraines, stress induced migraines.
[40:49]
So we have like the cyclical based migraines.
[40:51]
And now let's dive into that stress based migraine and the connection between cortisol
[40:58]
And then again, I mean, it all ties back to the fertility component, but let's hear your
[41:02]
take on the stress induced migraines first.
[41:06]
And you're nailing it because stress is really the second biggest factor for migraines.
[41:13]
I think people will see usually, you know, there's not two people exactly the same, but
[41:17]
they will see their hormone related and their stress related and stress related.
[41:23]
For some people, they will experience migraines during the moment of stress, where some people
[41:30]
will see the moment I hit Friday or Saturday morning and I can finally relax, I get hit
[41:37]
massively by a migraine.
[41:38]
When they can finally relax?
[41:40]
Oh, when they can finally.
[41:42]
It does, it does, it really does.
[41:46]
Or they say it's time I go on holidays.
[41:49]
And so for my family, it's very painful.
[41:51]
For my partner, it's just really, really hard.
[41:54]
And so it can lead to heartbreaking situations professionally or family wise.
[42:01]
And so you really have two different ways.
[42:05]
So two different types of families.
[42:07]
So during and after.
[42:09]
And when you have stress related migraines, usually you might notice that you have a tendency
[42:15]
to have also ovulation migraines or migraines at the time of ovulation, because as you mentioned,
[42:21]
the cortisol and the cortisol and the progesterone, those two are more related to the kidney system
[42:28]
alongside the ovulation.
[42:30]
And so this is how I tend to look at it.
[42:35]
And so with the stress induced migraine, I guess, you know, I'm trying to decide,
[42:44]
do I want to wait for like some tips towards the end after we talk?
[42:48]
Yeah, let's do that.
[42:49]
Can we move to the gut component and the connection between the migraine and the gut?
[42:52]
Because you did talk about the vagus nerve a little bit earlier.
[42:56]
Before we even keep going there, can you just talk, tell people,
[42:59]
just in case they don't know, what is the vagus nerve?
[43:02]
So the vagus nerve is a, imagine a massive tree in your body and the foliage is in your brain.
[43:10]
And then you have a big trunk in your neck and you have really deep roots that go
[43:15]
in all of your organs and limbs.
[43:19]
And so the vagus nerve is going to connect the hundred billion nerve cells of all of your body.
[43:24]
He's the commander.
[43:25]
He's the chief of orchestra of your body.
[43:28]
Incredibly important nerve that has been found in the West about 200 years ago,
[43:34]
in the East about 5,000.
[43:37]
It's the ancestor, a part ancestor of acupuncture.
[43:44]
And so the amazing, amazing circuits of electricity is taking place in your body.
[43:52]
And so it's through that vagus nerve that some of the pain is conducted, is driven, is sent.
[43:57]
And so when I'm stressed, I'm going to have that, yeah, a fright, flight or fight response.
[44:06]
And that's going to also trigger that vagus nerve.
[44:08]
So you have the vagus nerve, which is on the nervous system front,
[44:11]
and then you have the gut brain axis a lot more in the chemical aspect of things.
[44:16]
Like really think of your biome and the mushiness of the inside of your brain.
[44:21]
More, less of the electric currents, but more of the sort of chemical components that
[44:27]
the matter that is inside of your brain and inside of your gut, your gut being defined,
[44:32]
anything that starts from the mouth all the way to the bowel movement.
[44:38]
So we have, so again, I mean, the gut distress and the hormones, we know they are all connected.
[44:43]
So you've done a really beautiful job of kind of like breaking down each component of that.
[44:47]
So, so when, would you say even maybe somebody with chronic digestive issues like,
[44:55]
you know, IBS or IBD or any, you know,
[45:00]
bacteria in their microbiome is this this can also be connected to the
[45:05]
migraine component as well through one brain access absolutely absolutely so if
[45:11]
you have for example a really bad biome and you have what would be called in the
[45:16]
West SIBO or MCAS or candida all of this would in the East be called dampness so
[45:26]
forms of humidity inside the biome which can sometimes correlate with endometriosis
[45:32]
so think a lot of mucus formed around the endometrium because it leaks from
[45:39]
the bowels itself then the brain is going to have a tendency to be a lot
[45:43]
more foggy a lot less mental clarity so these might be women that say not only
[45:49]
do I have massive pain during migraine attack in between attacks I also feel
[45:55]
extremely foggy extremely dizzy I just don't feel a hundred percent I really
[46:01]
struggle to work it would be very difficult and can put people in
[46:05]
financial distress and yeah and just a very very sad like happiness is composed
[46:12]
of a few pillars like friends family purpose in life and some form of you
[46:19]
know thought that your life is bigger than what it seems and a faith and so
[46:24]
the migraine disease can really take over each pillar and so if you start to
[46:29]
be dizzy or foggy 24-7 preventing you from working and engaging meaningfully
[46:35]
in relationships it's just really hard so that's gonna connect like that so the
[46:40]
gut is completely connected to the brain for example from that perspective I love
[46:45]
that and even when you said that I was just thinking about like what it's like
[46:49]
to have you know it's kind of overcast and a little bit foggy and a little bit
[46:54]
drizzly and rainy today if we just think about what it's like outside when it's
[46:59]
clouds are low it's heavy and foggy versus that clear beautiful sky which
[47:05]
was blue exactly not shining through exactly I feel you just feel so much
[47:09]
more vitality at that point absolutely and I love that you mentioned that
[47:13]
because I took me a while to put trackers together because to help people
[47:18]
globally I had to put trackers together and so now I put all of that it's called
[47:23]
the migraine heroes app and I call them heroes because for me these are people
[47:27]
who try stride tried failed failed failed and then succeed and that's exactly the
[47:32]
way you describe is exactly how we track is with like blue sky or a thunderstorm
[47:36]
or a really cloudy day or a semi cloudy day or a rainbow day you know to really
[47:42]
help illustrate what's going on inside their body another idea that comes to
[47:47]
mind when it comes to guts gut brain axis is if you take the polar opposite
[47:51]
which would be chronic constipation if someone has a lot of constipation think
[47:56]
of it just with pure logic right if you're really constipate means there's a
[48:01]
lot of dryness inside your bowels and that dryness is going to convert into
[48:05]
dryness an absence of moisture in the brain now the brain we know from Western
[48:10]
science is 74% water yeah and so when my bowel movements are dry my brain can
[48:18]
also be dry and that's kind of leads to vertigo dizziness if I'm trying to be a
[48:23]
mom and to conceive those liquids speed will be prerequisite in order to form
[48:28]
amniotic fluids now in the East things are not as segmented they're more
[48:34]
melting into each other and so being paying attention to okay what is the
[48:39]
dizziness signaling oh interesting I also have very dry bowel movement
[48:45]
constipation that I really struggle to get rid of in spite of having fiber and
[48:49]
vegetables etc and I struggle to be pregnant well you could actually hit
[48:55]
three birds one stone because this is actually from an Eastern perspective it
[48:59]
is the same problem interesting I am so fascinated more about the at one point I
[49:05]
was like I'm like you Diana if we lived in the same city I'm sure we'd be great
[49:09]
I love learning and every time I interview somebody else on the podcast
[49:16]
and I'm learning about their area of expertise or their niche or what
[49:20]
certification they've done I'm like I want to do that next I get so excited so
[49:24]
I actually thought one time maybe I'll be an acupuncturist and learn more about
[49:27]
traditional Chinese medicine and all that and every time I learned I mean
[49:30]
I've read books but every time I talk to somebody and learn more about it it's
[49:33]
just I love the way that you are able to take both the Western and the Eastern
[49:38]
concepts you're doing a great job by the way and kind of pulling them together
[49:41]
and being able to explain both sides and you know on the Western side this is the
[49:46]
picture on the Eastern side this is the picture while they're different you can
[49:49]
see how they come together it really helps pull the picture together so I
[49:53]
just I commend you on being able to articulate yourself nicely thank you
[49:57]
thank you that means a lot I think it's dumb you know sometimes we see them as
[50:03]
saying different things or they're polar opposite or they disagree and the
[50:07]
more I go into all of this the more I see how fundamentally they converge and
[50:12]
we don't like to really admit it but they do converge a lot so recently you
[50:19]
mentioned in the value I took a class of neuroscience at the Harvard X and there's
[50:24]
just so many things that really stroke me where I'm like wow this is the West
[50:27]
eat really really proving the East for example they have this beautiful
[50:31]
equation to measure the speed of a neuron in the brain and it released to
[50:35]
temperature and the Chinese will always see and I always ask in the app to have
[50:39]
a lot of teas and I'm making people drink warm not necessarily always eats
[50:43]
but sometimes just drink and how it changes their brain so I find quite
[50:48]
fascinating that the West then comes back and says oh actually the the more
[50:53]
you eat warm the faster your neurons are interesting especially in the winter my
[51:00]
friends especially if you live in a cold place like myself it's like get
[51:04]
those warming foods have that warm tea it's not about eating clean and having
[51:09]
salads every day no if you're in a cold place you need to eat warm foods with
[51:14]
lots of hearty fats and vegetables and get like you can feel the difference
[51:19]
when you eat something cool something warm in in one of your podcast you
[51:24]
mentioned that you know like when the when the eggs there the temperature of
[51:30]
the uterus rises slightly to keep the the fertilized and the fertilized egg
[51:35]
warm in the luteal phase yes exactly and so the Chinese it will obsess about you
[51:41]
know keeping the uterus warm yes where songs yeah where's the bed all of those
[51:47]
things yes I love it love it so as we as we can I know we can probably talk
[51:54]
forever but we've gone quite we've gone quite deep and understanding the kind of
[51:59]
nuances and theory behind this I'm curious to know what if you can give
[52:04]
some okay so I know you said that your business or your your company uses
[52:10]
essentially food you'll be able to heal so I mean I'm sure there's different
[52:18]
protocols depending on the individual depending on the type of migraine and
[52:21]
all of these things what can you share with regards to food if you can if you're
[52:26]
thinking of you know your elevator pitch or your your five-minute
[52:30]
explanation on how to use food to support your body with minimizing
[52:38]
migraines and then also improving fertility what would you share or even
[52:43]
kind of like the process that you go through with clients to figure out what
[52:46]
foods are going to be best for them based to really help them mitigate these
[52:53]
migraines and heal themselves like you said three weeks yeah you you changed
[52:57]
your food and all of a sudden so I'm sure everyone's wondering like how did
[53:01]
you do that what would I recommend yeah so so I'll start by answering your last
[53:06]
question is like how do you do it and look I I pushed it to boundaries I never
[53:12]
thought I would have to the the complexity of these individuals I've met
[53:17]
and the commitment I've made to them and to solving every single case has been
[53:21]
huge and so the results today is that I ask about a hundred questions on all of
[53:27]
the things happening inside the body and I ask people to feel a tracker and now
[53:31]
there's a you can download the migraine heroes app and you can start to track
[53:35]
your migraines and we can start to explain them them to you very fast and
[53:40]
so and so by doing that you start to understand yes Oh what is going on
[53:46]
inside this body what's what's what's going on with this I'm gonna call it
[53:51]
delayed fertility why is this body not fertile yet what is the condition that
[53:57]
the body's putting forward saying to the human if you don't fix this I don't I
[54:02]
can't I can't proceed for nine months yeah and so and so I asked question I
[54:08]
mean there's a lot of listening you know a lot of questions a tracker and I also
[54:12]
ask a picture of the tongue which is very common in traditional Chinese
[54:16]
medicine are you vid as well used to be also quite part of the West not as
[54:20]
developed but you know quite a bit just to seize the white coating is it yellow
[54:23]
do we go for antibiotics or is it you know bacteria virus like just to have a
[54:28]
sense and so I have about 15,000 images and so there's a proper AI that just is
[54:33]
gonna read the tongue I can do that in a split second and it's an incredible
[54:38]
piece of information it allows us to not only know where we start but also know
[54:43]
how we progress and so with all of that information we have a really acute sense
[54:48]
of what's going on to the body and then we're going to define in what order we
[54:52]
remove problems by adding foods and and also then we can observe at what speed
[54:59]
is the body you know solving it so what the beauty with migraine and fertility
[55:05]
is that you can say did you fix it yet well if the migraine is gone you fixed
[55:09]
it mmm and then and it's what is really fascinating is that oftentimes I have
[55:14]
women I welcome them and I say okay I'm just please ask you not to get pregnant
[55:18]
immediately I'm just want to clean your uterus I want to do a few things before
[55:21]
we go for it but when I tell you to go for it usually women are pregnant that
[55:25]
month so I might say okay can you hold off for two or three months yes and then
[55:31]
I'm like okay now we're ready and when we're ready she tells me by the way
[55:35]
amazing I thought I was gonna have my menstruation delayed I had no PM no no
[55:41]
PMS I really thought my menstruation was gonna be late no sore breasts no
[55:45]
moods etc and also my last menstruation Wow like bright blood you know bright
[55:53]
red blood incredible and so the woman feeds her body's completely novel and
[55:58]
I'm like okay now go for it this is yes this is your time and they're pregnant
[56:03]
and it really shows how the body is not a coincidence it really shows that when
[56:09]
you do your work 80-20 consistency beats perfection I'm completely with you on
[56:13]
that yes that when you do your work the body as a logical machine all it wants
[56:18]
it is to reproduce yes that's what we're designed to do yeah and so I've welcomed
[56:24]
people they had had you know they were coming for their migraines but they had
[56:29]
had IVF I'm like oh you can pose that just relax like you're just putting so
[56:35]
much stress on your body D migraine and then boom they're pregnant after you know
[56:40]
I have people they announce their pregnancy at six months because like I
[56:43]
cannot believe I'm pregnant I've had four miscarriages and I keep on thinking
[56:47]
I'm gonna lose the baby and yes I see six months yes yes yeah like I just don't
[56:54]
dare saying it I'm like okay now you need to make new friends yes I know go
[56:59]
out there and be able to say it and so it's um like it's really a beautiful
[57:05]
machine and so that's how that's how we work is really by removing these layers
[57:10]
so think of it like onions peas so you remove them one at a time and so
[57:16]
something that can apply to all there's a beautiful food that I quite like is
[57:20]
goji berries but but in the right way so goji berries they have a lot of ability
[57:25]
they have ability to stimulate and detox the liver they have the ability to
[57:29]
nourish the kidney system they have the ability to increase blood volume
[57:32]
increasing and so they're incredible food now because they're so potent you
[57:37]
need a very very little amount so eight to ten a day is plenty and to absorb a
[57:43]
maximum nutrients if you put them as an infusion and you let them infuse for 10
[57:48]
15 minutes they release their nutrients in the water and then become highly
[57:51]
absorbable and so just having that from time to time is really really nice
[57:55]
because it's going to solve a lot of you know a lot of underlying problems in
[58:00]
parallel however do not have goji berries if you have an appropriate IBS
[58:06]
irritable bowel syndrome and that you're on a FODMAP diet and you don't like
[58:10]
just oligosaccharides goji berries do contain fructans so again use your
[58:14]
intuition if you hear me say that on podcast but it makes you bloated trust
[58:19]
your body first yes your body is always right always always right that's funny
[58:25]
that you say that because I was gonna say I so when I went to school for
[58:28]
holistic nutrition over a decade ago and I learned everything that I could
[58:32]
start learning about food and all the beneficial properties of food and all
[58:35]
these new foods like at least 10 years ago you know cacao nibs weren't as
[58:39]
popular as they are now or like chia seeds were were popular but not as
[58:43]
popular or known as they were now and I learned about goji berries I you learn
[58:46]
about kombu there's so many foods that you learn about that you don't really
[58:50]
kind of find think about buying in your traditional grocery store but the goji
[58:54]
berries oh I don't have IBS I don't need to follow a flow FODMAPs diet but
[58:59]
goji berries always may always make my they do not agree with my tummy and I
[59:04]
would always try and I'm like I know they're so good for me they're called in
[59:08]
so many wonderful recipes I'm gonna try it again and try it again every time I
[59:10]
have it no doesn't work with me so I'm like okay but I'm curious to know sorry
[59:15]
you mentioned this and I just want to clarify for those listening you said so
[59:20]
eight to ten goji berries per day is all you need a little bit goes a long
[59:23]
way and you said to soak it in a little bit of water is this room temperature
[59:27]
water and then you eat the goji berries after you're just soaking it and what
[59:31]
can you just explain that a little bit my question make it like an infusion so
[59:37]
you actually put hot water like almost boiling water on top of them and then
[59:43]
you drink the you drink the drink of the water got it and then you leave the goji
[59:47]
berries you don't eat the goji after I mean by the time if you've if they have
[59:51]
been you know infusing for a while they will be a bit mushy and not very good in
[59:56]
neither taste or texture they've given everything they could give you can
[60:00]
compost them probably or you can eat them there's nothing wrong with eating
[60:06]
them okay maybe you know what this was many years ago I haven't touched goji
[60:10]
berries for many years because when I did back in the day I was my tummy was
[60:14]
upset but maybe I'll just I think my mom has some goji berries I'll just see if I
[60:17]
can infuse them and maybe it will be a different experience for me or like
[60:21]
you're said now I'm not listening to my body because my body's like no Nora we
[60:24]
told you we don't like exactly a little experiment just for fun okay and so with
[60:32]
the nutrition plans that you give to your clients then so you do all this
[60:35]
data collection up front this is precisely what I would do with my
[60:37]
clients as well I collect the data with regards to their blood labs their
[60:40]
menstrual cycle parameters we do some more in-depth testing through functional
[60:43]
lab testing I always say the first month at least at least the first month
[60:47]
is data collection time we need to collect data to really understand so
[60:51]
we're not just throwing spaghetti spaghetti at the wall and just trying a
[60:54]
thousand things and then seeing what sticks so after the data collection is
[60:58]
done you do all your process then you're saying from that each individual gets a
[61:03]
specific nutrition plan based on the data and then from and then they
[61:08]
implement that and then over time depending on the individual that could
[61:13]
be maybe like a two-month plan or a protocol and then from there you're
[61:16]
like okay now the doors are open and you're ready to try to conceive again
[61:20]
just to understand yeah okay yeah absolutely correct and so the the foods
[61:25]
are gonna change about every three to four weeks sometimes you're like wow
[61:29]
this list is just impeccable you're nailing it your energy is increasing you
[61:33]
have to if you're in migraines your bowel movements are a lot better formed
[61:37]
you have much less symptoms such as less sore breasts less numbness less
[61:42]
aura etc and your sentiment your mood is also a lot improved then you might keep
[61:50]
them longer and sometimes you're like okay this one's we're going to do a
[61:53]
quickie because it's not a big imbalance sometimes you might come back on
[61:56]
something and sometimes you might also add and remove at the same time so for
[62:02]
example on the biome you might do things in parallel and so we do that it's
[62:07]
completely custom made and if suddenly COVID hits you we're gonna pose and
[62:12]
focus on repairing the damage caused by the COVID because this is what is most
[62:17]
acute and top of mind for the body sometimes we might also notice through
[62:21]
the tongue image this person is having you know really strong emotions and
[62:26]
we're gonna talk about it and say hey do you think there's something going on in
[62:29]
your life they're like oh this is a bit spooky how do you know yeah your body
[62:33]
gives the score so I'm gonna give you a few foods and you can eat them and and
[62:38]
your thoughts are gonna be more balanced you can also just share it with us so
[62:43]
there's a chat inside the app it's quite luxurious like if you were trying to
[62:47]
make money you would not create an app with a chat inside with real humans
[62:52]
that's not how you do business but if you're trying to solve people's body
[62:56]
it's a great it's probably you know a great idea so so there's like real
[63:01]
people chatting to you and and helping you solve that yeah and so that's how we
[63:07]
find we also want to know like if you if you're passing quite a lot of clouds we
[63:12]
we like to know that and we like to see you know how is your menstruation so the
[63:16]
whole app is gonna collect that and we can monitor that as humans on a daily
[63:21]
basis beautiful beautiful so Diane if you can just let us know where people can
[63:27]
find you I will make sure to have these links in the show notes below but I know
[63:31]
you've got quite extensive social handles available once you've got your
[63:36]
app you've got your podcast and your website if there's I'm assuming maybe
[63:39]
the website it can give us like the centralized place for someone to go to
[63:43]
be able to find yeah yeah so I would so the website is my nectar health calm and
[63:51]
but the app is really called migrant heroes and so this is where we're
[63:55]
converging this is a beautiful name and we like it a lot so go for the migrant
[64:01]
heroes app this is also the migrant heroes podcast and so and my name Diane
[64:06]
Ducarme and so you will find these beautiful resources to your due diligence
[64:11]
you know reads listen to people you will hear they're very different to you
[64:16]
however they share love similarities they're also coming to you for an hour
[64:20]
to explain their story not because they're paid or incentivized but because
[64:25]
they say look what has been going on in my life for 5 10 20 30 years has been
[64:31]
very difficult and I don't wish it on anyone let alone my enemy or anyone like
[64:36]
that and so I wish you know someone else can benefit from from from hearing my
[64:42]
journey beautiful absolutely I I mean I learned a lot today from you so I'm sure
[64:46]
those listening are either learning something taking a little nugget home
[64:50]
with them or sharing this podcast episode or resources with somebody else
[64:54]
are utilizing it themselves so thank you so much Diane for taking the time to
[64:59]
share your knowledge explain and and also for putting together this wonderful
[65:05]
sounds like an incredible app so yes for those who are looking to connect with
[65:09]
Diane or learn a little bit more about if you're suffering suffering from
[65:13]
chronic migraines sounds like Diane would be the person to go to so head
[65:17]
down to the link in the show notes to check her out otherwise thank you so
[65:21]
much Diane thank you thank you thank you Nora thank you for having me thanks
[65:27]
if you're looking for more information on how to prepare your body for
[65:31]
pregnancy download my free eat to get pregnant guide this is a one-page PDF
[65:37]
that guides you on how to eat for your menstrual cycle to support your hormones
[65:41]
and overall fertility once you download the guide you'll receive free fertility
[65:45]
boosting recipes to support you on each week of your cycle you can find this at
[65:50]
www.naturallynora.ca backslash eat this link is also provided for you in the
[65:57]
show notes below see you next week