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Are you starting to doubt yourself, wondering if your brain's no longer logical, and maybe
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you'll just never get better?
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Migraine Heroes is a podcast for chronic migraine sufferers who've seen countless doctors with
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Learn how to reduce your migraine attacks without endless medications or constant sacrifices.
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Hello, I'm Diane Ducarme.
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I've helped over 500 people break free from migraine, even after suffering for up to 60
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My mission in life?
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To bring this relief to a million people using a unique blend of Eastern medicine and Western
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In this episode, you will learn why migraine patterns often change even when you track
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them religiously, how neuroscience explains your self-doubt, and how it takes you in a
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vicious cycle of pain, and what traditional Chinese medicine reveals about your liver's
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hidden role in migraine predictability.
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Stay with me till the end, because once you understand why migraine patterns often change,
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you'll begin to see why you've been making more sense than what you think.
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If you're living with chronic migraines, you often behave as a controlling detective, writing
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down every meal, every mood, weather change, and menstrual cycle, thinking you may find
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Maybe you thought your migraine came right before your period, or always when having
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that glass of wine, or when a storm is about to hit, until the day they hit the first day
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of your menstruation instead of before.
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That glass of wine is just bizarrely okay, and you had more migraines during that hot
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summer than in all of the storms combined.
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You have your diary, and maybe you share it with your doctor.
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If you're lucky, they will actually read it, pay attention to it.
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But somehow, when you alone or you both look together brutally at the data, it just does
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not fully line up.
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Your confidence drops a solid notch.
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What if you were wrong?
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What if there was no pattern?
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In that moment of weakness and self-doubt, some doctors might suggest antidepressants.
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Maybe just for your migraines.
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Maybe because you think you're depressed.
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Maybe because they think you're depressed.
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And while being depressed is absolutely okay, deep down, you know this isn't you, this isn't
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about a mood disorder, it's about something much more deep and much more complicated.
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But the doubts start to invade you, doubts that you will ever be well, that you will
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ever be free of pain, that you will ever be a reliable person going to social events and
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saying yes to your family and yes to your life.
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A 2019 study published in Headache found that when migraine patterns remain elusive, women
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with chronic migraine are more likely to be told that their symptoms are psychological.
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For many, that single word, psychological, is just going to land like this missile, as
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if you invented your own pain.
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But this is no excuse for poor care.
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It's a reflection of the system's complexity, the inability of the medical system to understand
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it and turning into doubt and inflicting you self-doubt.
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If you live with migraine, you know what those doubts feel like.
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You've had days where you've tracked everything, what you ate, how you slept, the weather,
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your stress, only to have an attack blindside your way.
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You've thought, maybe I'm making this up, maybe it's not as bad as I think, maybe it's
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When I onboard people, people talk about feeling gaslit, by doctors, by family, by their colleagues.
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They describe losing the ability to trust themselves, because every time they think
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they've spotted a trigger, it disappears.
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And that hurts more than just your head, it erodes your confidence, the confidence that
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you have in your body.
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Cognitive science shows that when you can't find a pattern, the mind's default is to
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turn inward and blame the self.
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A foundational model published in Headache explains how your locus of control, the belief
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that you can manage migraines versus the belief that nothing will help, shapes your experience.
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When you feel powerless, your body doesn't recover as well.
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You feel anxiety rising, and that tension can prime the next attack.
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And when you add migraine's natural unpredictability to that, your own tracking can start to look
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like a string of failures instead of a map towards healing.
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But the science is quite clear, shifting patterns are not the proof that you're failing, that's
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the proof that migraines are complex.
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This doubt you feel is a signal of that complexity, not a verdict of your worth or of your effort.
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You're not failing because your patterns change.
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You're succeeding because you're still listening, still searching for that message, even when
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it comes through in fragments.
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And that persistence, that refusal to stop paying attention and to stop trying to solve,
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is exactly where your healing will begin.
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Now, as you know, in the West, you pay your doctor as long as you're sick.
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In the East, at least in the older traditions, you'd pay your doctor only while you were healthy.
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The day you felt ill, that day was the last day you stopped paying them, until your balance was restored.
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So no room for God's lighting here, the doctor's role is to listen.
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In traditional Chinese medicine, self-doubt in the context of chronic illness isn't framed
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as a flaw in your thinking, it is seen as an echo of how your body's vital systems are interacting.
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From this perspective, the liver isn't just an organ that detoxifies, it's a central hub
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for flow, flow of blood, hormones, emotions, and the subtle energy called qi in traditional
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Chinese medicine, or prana in Ayurveda.
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The liver's job is to keep its flow smooth, coordinated, and in harmony with the other
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And here's where it gets fascinating.
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The liver is deeply connected to your eyes and vision, to your temples, right and left,
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to your gallbladder, to your uterus, to your breast, to your female hormones, and mood
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hormones, hence to the irrigation of your tendons.
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It's also your detox powerhouse.
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In traditional Chinese medicine theory, when the liver is overburdened, whether by physical
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toxins, emotional stress, or hormonal fluctuations, it has to choose what to prioritize.
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On some days, it might focus on hormone regulation, supporting your menstrual cycle.
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On others, it might direct energy towards detoxification after you've eaten rich food
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or got angry at something.
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Or maybe it's helping repair tissues after a hard workout or a week of tears.
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If your liver is waking up every single day with 20 things to do, on some days it can't
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do all things equally.
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Sometimes, let's say it can only handle 16.
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And those missing 4?
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Well, they might be the ones that tip your margarine threshold.
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This explains why your triggers seem to move or vanish.
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If your liver is focusing its resources on hormone balance, maybe that glass of wine
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you have for dinner becomes a bigger problem than usual.
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If it's occupied with clearing emotional stress, maybe a sudden weather change that
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normally wouldn't bother you suddenly lights the margarine fuse.
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In Ayurveda, the liver is associated with the pitta dosha, which governs metabolism,
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digestion and transformation.
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Excess pitta, often fueled by stress, heat, spicy food or anger, can inflame the system,
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creating headaches, eye strain and a restless, irritable mind.
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If that fire isn't cooled, it can burn up your resilience, leading not just to migraines,
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but also to feelings of frustration, hopelessness and yes, self-doubt.
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Now what's fascinating is that according to the West, a woman in perimenopause, the
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liver organ is going to lose up to 44% of its volume.
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So all of these beautiful physical abilities are reduced and that's a time when margarines
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can really kick in or increase in intensity and frequency.
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Now, from an Eastern perspective, self-doubt during chronic margarine isn't just emotional.
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It's the mind interpreting the noise coming from a body whose internal priorities keep
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That uncertainty, the I can't figure this out, is the mind's mirror of the body's own
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resource juggling.
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So instead of asking, why can't I find the pattern, Eastern medicine would encourage
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you to ask, what is my body working on today that I can't see?
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That simple shift transforms self-doubt into curiosity, and curiosity and understanding
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If Western science says your thresholds shift, Eastern medicine adds, and here's how to help
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your body shift them in your favor.
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So the next time you're tracking up makes you feel like patterns have vanished.
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Remember your brain and body are playing a dynamic, invisible balancing act.
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You're not losing control, you're adapting in real time.
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And that adaptation is the hallmark of resilience.
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If you start tracking in the Margarine Heroes app, we will teach you about your own patterns.
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When I do the onboarding call, I go all the way back in time to that first margarine attack,
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to today, explaining how and why your patterns of margarines have changed.
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There are often tears in that call, and it goes both ways,
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Hearing your decades of suffering, that is really quite something.
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The one thing I will say is that I'm always grateful to you.
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It's never too late, and it's never too early, meaning the earlier you come, the more we
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can change the course of history.
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And if you feel you're coming too late, I also needed to surround myself with a very
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learn what I learned to come to you today.
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I remember Wendy and Patrick full of gratitude in a podcast, and they said, we prayed for
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so many years that we would finally find you.
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And I replied, I needed all of those prayers to find myself, to find what life wanted from
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When we help someone, and they get the energy and the time they have always desired, I watch
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them from the sidelines with a big smile at how beautifully they decided to spend that
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And remember, every small step you take moves you closer to freedom.
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You are powerful, you are resilient, and you are no longer alone.
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Keep rising, margarine hero.
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You are powerful, you are resilient, and you are no longer alone.
