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Could your migraines be less about what's happening in your head and more about what's happening inside your blood vessels?
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Today, we explore the hidden connection between high blood pressure and migraine attacks that many people never suspect.
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Welcome to Migraine Heroes, a podcast for people living with chronic migraines with years of pain, misunderstanding and lack of answers.
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I'm Diane Ducarme. I've helped more than a thousand people reduce the burden of migraines and feel more in control.
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My mission in life? To help a million people.
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Each episode brings you grounded insight into what your body might be asking for and what can truly help.
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Just to keep you fully supported, this podcast is educational.
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For diagnosis or medication, always work with your doctor.
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Now, take a breath and let's dive in.
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In this episode, you will learn why high blood pressure can quietly affect the same systems involved in migraine attacks, even when you feel completely fine.
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Why your migraines may be a sign of deeper circulation and nervous system imbalances rather than an isolated brain problem.
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And what practical steps can help support healthier blood pressure while potentially reducing migraine frequency and intensity.
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Stay with me till the end, because at the end of this episode, you're going to discover how a 72-year-old woman with high blood pressure stopped having migraines very fast.
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If you have migraines, you've probably spent years looking for triggers.
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Maybe you've tracked foods, hormones, weather changes, sleep patterns, stress level and supplements.
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And yet, despite all of these efforts, migraines may still seem completely unpredictable.
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And what many people don't realize is that high blood pressure can influence several of the biological systems involved in migraine attacks.
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Even more surprising, high blood pressure often causes no symptoms at all, earning its reputation as a silent condition.
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This means you could be living with elevated blood pressure for years without realizing that it is quietly increasing the burden of your nervous system and blood vessels.
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So let's understand together what high blood pressure is.
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So blood pressure measures the force of blood pushing against the artery walls.
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And when that pressure remains consistently elevated, the cardiovascular system must work harder.
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So over time, blood vessels become less flexible.
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They become inflammation prone and the body's ability to regulate blood flow becomes impaired.
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Traditionally, migraine was considered primarily a neurological condition.
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And today, scientists recognize that migraine is also deeply connected to the vascular system.
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Research published in the Journal of Headache and Pain highlights growing evidence that arterial hypertension and migraine share several underlying mechanisms,
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including endothelial dysfunction, oxidative stress, inflammation, autonomic nervous system dysregulation and altered vascular signaling.
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So in other words, the same processes that contribute to high blood pressure may also create conditions that make migraines more likely.
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So one of the most important discoveries that has been made recently involves the endothelium, the thin layer of cells lining every blood vessel.
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The endothelium acts like a traffic controller.
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It helps regulate blood flow, blood vessel relaxation, inflammation, clotting, oxygen delivery.
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And when blood pressure remains elevated, that endothelium can become damaged.
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And scientists have found that endothelial dysfunction is common in both hypertension and migraine sufferers.
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So when blood vessels lose their ability to respond appropriately, the brain may become more vulnerable to migraine-triggering changes in circulation and inflammation.
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Now, another key player is going to be the autonomic nervous system.
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And the system is controlling automatic functions such as your heart rate, your blood pressure, your breathing, your digestion, your stress responses.
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And many migraine sufferers already live with a nervous system that is highly reactive.
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So when high blood pressure is added to the picture, the body may become stuck in a state of increased sympathetic activation, often referred to as the fight-or-flight response.
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This can increase muscle tension, inflammatory signaling, vascular instability, and therefore migraine susceptibility.
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Researchers have also identified chronic low-grade inflammation as a common denominator.
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High blood pressure is associated with increased production of inflammatory molecules and oxidative stress.
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And oxidative stress occurs when free radicals overwhelm the body's antioxidant defences, damaging tissues and blood vessels.
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And several studies suggest that migraine sufferers may experience elevated oxidative stress as well.
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So when inflammation and oxidative stress accumulate, the threshold for triggering a migraine attack may become lower.
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So why you may not notice that connection?
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So one of the reasons this relationship goes sometimes unnoticed is that hypertension usually develops gradually.
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You may not feel dizzy or unwell or sick or different.
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Meanwhile, your migraines may slowly become more frequent, more intense, more difficult to recover from.
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There was a large Finnish population study that found that migraine sufferers have a significantly increased likelihood of developing hypertension over time.
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This suggests that the relationship may work in both directions.
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Rather than separate conditions, migraine and hypertension may be part of a larger picture involving vascular health, inflammation, and nervous system regulation.
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And I have to say that migraine heroes, when we see that, when I see that, this is something we have to act upon immediately, just using and adding foods.
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Now modern science increasingly views migraine not simply as a headache disorder,
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but as a condition that involves communication between the brain, blood vessels, immune system, hormones, and the nervous system.
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That's wonderful that we're starting to see it this way.
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When blood pressure is elevated, those communication networks may become less stable.
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And for some people, addressing blood pressure may become an overlooked piece of the migraine puzzle.
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I want to share with you a personal story.
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Recently, one of my high school teachers reached out to me.
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She had started experiencing migraine for the very first time,
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okay, this is going to be rare, okay, at age 72.
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And she had been told that they were likely to be genetic, and that there was little she could do about them,
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that she should need to simply accept and learn to live with them.
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So for the context, this is one of my strong teachers, like, you know, super hyped on energy and always keen to go to the next mile.
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And as she aged, trust me, she had not changed a bit.
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She was just wonderful and a delight to speak with.
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And as we spoke, one detail stood out.
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The migraines appeared to have started around the same time that she began taking medication for high blood pressure.
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Interestingly, her blood pressure since then had improved, and yet the medication had remained part of her routine.
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And I encouraged her to go back to her doctor and to review whether that medication was still necessary.
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And after reassessment, her doctor conceded that she could discontinue it.
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And not only did her blood pressure remain stable, but the migraines also disappeared.
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Now, every case is different.
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She was delighted.
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She could go back to playing tennis.
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A lot of her friends said, oh, it's because you're aging and you should be more reasonable and you should stop, you know, being so active,
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which I completely disagree with.
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She was full of life, and it was wonderful to see her full of life.
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Now, every case is different.
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This is one person, one story, and it should not be taken as medical advice.
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But it's a true story, and it's not an entirely uncommon one.
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For me, the lesson is not that blood pressure medication is bad.
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These medications can be life-saving and absolutely necessary.
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The lesson is that health is rarely static.
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Our needs change over time, and what is appropriate at one stage of life may deserve to be revisited at another.
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Sometimes the answer is adding a treatment, and sometimes it's adjusting one.
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And sometimes it's just simply asking the question.
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I hope this story inspires you to be curious and to stay curious and to continue seeking the balance that is right for you.
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And I see we've seen more than a thousand cases.
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And so it's sometimes easy to be in such a conversation and to be able, within an hour, to find the root cause and solve it just so suddenly and so fast.
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There's a saying that says, sometimes when you're in the mountain, it's hard to see the mountain.
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So at Migrant Heroes, we help you see the mountain.
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And the app is built with such integrity to help you see the mountain, help you climb your own mountain, help you know where you are in your mountain.
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Now let's go east. One way
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traditional Chinese medicine might look at migraines and elevated blood pressure is through a surprisingly simple idea.
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The head has become too crowded.
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So think about everything that can accumulate above the neck.
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Your thoughts, your worries, the planning, the pressure, the deadlines, frustrations left unspoken, stress that never fully resolves, and toxins.
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Yes, recreational and non-recreational toxins that will load your liver.
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And your liver has a very privileged relationship with your head and your brain and therefore invade your brain.
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In traditional Chinese medicine, the problem is often not that there's too little happening.
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It's that too much has risen upward and nowhere else for it to go.
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The head has become the crowded room of the body.
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And when the room becomes too crowded, people begin to experience symptoms.
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Headaches, migraines, dizziness, neck tension, poor sleep, irritability, restlessness, mental overwhelm, and sometimes elevated blood pressure too.
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What's interesting is that traditional Chinese medicine doesn't immediately ask, how do we suppress the pressure?
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Instead it asks, why is so much ending up in the head?
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Why are the thoughts not settling?
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Why is the tension not releasing?
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Why is the body not recovering?
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Why does everything seem to be moving upward but nothing seems to be moving down?
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The goal is not simply to reduce pressure.
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The goal is to create more space.
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More space in the nervous system, more space in the breath, more space in the day, more space in life.
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Because when there's more room below, less has to accumulate above.
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And from that perspective, migraines and elevated blood pressure can sometimes be viewed as different expressions of the same underlying story.
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Too much life has collected in the head for far too long.
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Now, of course, sometimes elevated pressure, and oftentimes, is not simply a reflection of stress, thoughts, or the complexity of existence.
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Sometimes it is linked to very tangible, very physical things that can place a burden on the body.
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And from a traditional Chinese medicine perspective, anything the body must constantly process, transform, or clear can contribute to that burden.
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This may include alcohol, smoking, recreational drugs, excessive processed foods, environmental toxins.
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Those can be a big deal and unseen.
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In some cases, even, you know, medicational toxins that are no longer necessary or no longer optimally suited to the individual.
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Just like in the case of my teacher.
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This does not mean that things are always the cause.
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It means they're worth investigating.
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Rather than assuming there's a single culprit, we become curious.
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We look at what has changed.
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We examine timelines.
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We ask what entered the picture before the symptoms appeared.
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We ask what happens when something is removed, adjusted, or reduced.
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Sometimes the answer lies in emotion.
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Sometimes it lies in recovery and rest.
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Sometimes it lies in what is physically moving through the bloodstream every day.
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The art is not in jumping to conclusions.
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The art is in patiently gathering clues until the picture becomes clear.
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And by now, I hope when you listen to the podcast, you feel the integrity of the work that we bring to the world.
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You know, sometimes you have to figure out what does life want from me.
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And for me, life is to help a million people.
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And I really, really, really believe in that fundamentally.
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I've seen people change firsthand and transform.
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And it fuels my soul and brings me so much joy.
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Nowadays, I'm super proud of that.
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If you download the app for the first time, you're going to be able to ask, to be asked a couple of questions and understand and receive insights instantaneously.
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The app's going to start to read what's happening at the roots instantaneously.
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And I feel so proud.
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This is the result of discussing and getting to know more than a thousand people since 2019.
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And really solving that hand in hand.
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And it's been just a labor of love.
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And so, those few questions, they're going to take just a few minutes of your life.
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You've taken, you know, more than six years of mine.
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And it's with a great pleasure that I feel just incredibly proud that we were able to put this together.
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And it feels like it flows.
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It invites you to reflection.
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And then, the app is geared towards enabling you from your home to regain your power.
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From your home to add the right foods that will specifically suit your brain in this very moment.
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It does the detective work with you.
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So, today's invitation is simple.
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I want you to take five, ten minutes and become a detective of your own health.
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So, if you were not using the app, write down three things.
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What has entered my life in the last 12 months?
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What has left my life in the last 12 months?
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And what changed around the time my symptoms became worse?
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You can also do that exercise taking the time of the start of your migraine.
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From experience, you need to sometimes add up to two years, right?
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Because sometimes things can really build up.
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So, for example, if a whiplash or a concussion led to terrible migraine for many, many years,
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think of how it built up before.
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What was happening before that led to that gigantic collapse?
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If you change contraception, give it a little bit of time for the contraception to have impacted your brain.
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So, give or take definitely plus minus two years.
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Don't judge the answers.
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Don't try to solve everything in one day.
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Simply look for clues.
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Sometimes the body leaves breadcrumbs long before it gives us answers.
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And healing often begins not with finding the perfect treatment but asking a better question.
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That's what the app does.
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It starts by listening.
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Listening is the biggest, biggest thing that we try to do first.
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First, you talk and we listen.
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And remember, every small step you take moves you closer to freedom.
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You are resilient.
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And you are not alone.
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We're fighting every day for that one.
