Why Women Get More Migraines: The Hidden Hormone Connection

What if I were to tell you that hormones and migraines and headaches are absolutely tied together? And specifically, you know, women suffer from headaches and migraines at a much greater level than men. And it's not just due to your hormones. It's not just due to your stress. There's a lot more at play. And so Today's guest is Dr. Meg Mill, and she is a leading women's health expert, a doctor of clinical pharmacy, and a fellow certified functional medicine practitioner with over two decades of clinical experience. And she really helps women resolve chronic systems and symptoms like fatigue, digestive issues, and particularly migraine and headache. And today we really dug into some very, very important topics around the incidence of migraine and headache and specifically how things like histamine and your diet and lifestyle and, and the changes in your hormones throughout pregnancy, fertility, perimenopause, and menopause may impact your actual symptoms and exactly what you need to do with that. And we even cover some very important things that you can do at home without spending a dime to help reset your energy and particularly your risk for migraines and headache. And so join me today on Menopause Mastery, where I'm talking to Dr. Meg Mill about, about how to get rid of those headaches and migraines. All right, Dr. Meg, I'm so, I'm excited to have this conversation because I don't think we have enough information that's really being shared out there for women, particularly around migraines and headaches. And, you know, we statistically suffer from headaches, migraines, environmental, chemical sensitivity, all these things so much more than men. And either clinicians don't understand it at all or they're really highly dismissive of it. And so your expertise around this is so, so very important. So very important. So I'm excited to have that conversation today.

Me too. Thank you for having me today.

So I would love for you to kind of give some background, you know, how you got into this, because, you know, almost all of us have a really interesting story how we sort of ended up particularly in the functional medicine world. But I think your story in particular might ring true for a lot of people that maybe aren't getting answers.

Yeah. And it was actually kind of have this two pronged way that I ended up in the functional medicine space. So I graduated with a doctorate in pharmacy, and then I went on to do a residency and practice as a clinical pharmacist. So it's a big flip for me, really, in the way I look at things now. So I was working as a clinical pharmacist in hospital settings, and, and we're putting people on more and more medications. We know the protocols, we know why we're doing it, but people are really, we hear a lot surviving rather than thriving. And I felt like this just isn't what I was passionate about doing. I mean, I know here we are, there are statistics, data, you know, all the studies on why we're adding these medications, but people aren't getting better. And I kept seeing that. Now, at the same time, I was having my own personal health issues, so I was having a lot of GI issues. I was getting anxious, I was starting to react to everything, having terrible allergies, all of these things. And I would jump around the different gastroenterologist, a gastroenterologist, different doctors, and say, like, think, okay, this person is finally going to, you know, figure out what's wrong with me. And I'd hear, you're young, you're healthy, you know, everything looks great. And, and even, you know, they would. Even some people did the endoscopy or the colonoscopy. And I remember going into a gastroenterologist one time, and he's like, you just need to take Celexa, which is an antidepressant medication. And we know there's a gut brain connection, but, like, no, I'm not here for that. I'm here because I can't eat anything. Like, I never know what's going to set me off. My stomach, you know, is upset all the time, and all of these things were compounding, and I just couldn't get answers. So I'm a researcher by nature, so, you know, I'm going to dive into what's going on. And this is really more in the early 2000. So data is emerging at that time. We're learning a lot more about the microbiome and all of that as this is progressing. And I really dove into researching about it and I finally went, was able to heal myself. I felt amazing. I felt better than I ever had. And I was like, I need to actually switch careers and go back and, and get certified in functional medicine. So I, that's what I did. I. I went back to school and education and got a functional medicine certification, and then I opened a practice. So I have a virtual practice where I see women all over the world with all, you know, putting these pieces together, really. We say root cause, I say root causes because usually it's. You and I both see it's more than one thing and generally. But when we really get the body back into balance and look at it from that way. We just see these huge health transformations.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think it's, your story is so true. I was having a conversation with somebody earlier today and just talking about like the stats, you know, three, you know, three out of four women will be diagnosed with IBS over their lifetime, you know, and, and the reality is, is they go to the doctor like, oh, you have ibs. Like, there's something like earth shattering about that diagnosis, which is a diagnosis of we don't know a damn thing why you have irritable bowel, you know, and, and that, you know, the reasons for it can be a lot of different things. And I think people often look for the magic bullet. They're like, I just need this one probiotic, or I just need to take this one enzyme. And, you know, I'm sure for you there was a bunch of things. So you, you probably had to eliminate foods for a period of time and all those pieces. So tell us kind of, because I'm sure the people that were listening are like, she got better. How'd she get better? Which is different for every person. Right. Which I think is really important. You know, release has to eat.

So gut healing is probiotics, bone broth, fermented. Like, you go on this protocol and you're doing things that maybe someone else in that group is okay.

It's because they're not individualized to what's really going on. And there's a deeper dive that really needs to happen because your gut health is the, is the baseline for all of your health. But chances are what's going on with you is not the same as your girlfriend.

Yes.

You know, and, and I would add to that whatever was happening when you're 30 is not the same as when you're 50, because when your hormones change, your microbes change. So it's a whole nother game there too.

Exactly, exactly.

Well, you brought up histamine, so we talked a little bit. You said, you know, kind of your microbes. So different microbes in your gut can make and degrade histamine. We've got, you know, leaky gut and all those other pieces. So give, give my listeners a little bit of a rundown of how can they possibly tell that maybe histamine is part of their gut problem. Right. Because it's, it can look like a lot of other things, you know, and, and I think a lot of, a lot of well meaning practitioners overlook the role of histamine in gut symptoms. And instead, it gets labeled as other stuff.

It's. And it can be confusing because when. So when we're looking at histamine symptoms, they're overlapping with a lot of other symptoms because we actually have four types of histamine receptors. So when people hear the word histamine, they think of antihistamine and they think of allergies. So you think of. That's our typical opinion when we think of histamine. But. And that's your H1 receptor. So, yes, you can have that. So you can have the runny nose, the congestion, the asthma symptoms, rashes, hives, all of those regular allergy, typical symptoms. We also can see migraine headaches and migraines. We can see GI symptoms. So ear infections as a child. So really build the healthy population of bacteria and, you know, improve digestive functions. So it was. There was a lot of pieces that were going on there, but, you know, it's really like looking at each piece and really putting all of them back together. Not that one thing for you individually that can make a huge difference in your whole health. I mean, gut health. Can I see so many people who are like, but I don't have digestive issues. Well, you're. We're talking about some of the things we're talking about migraines, skin issues, acne, you know, eczema, anxiety. All of these things can actually be tied back.

Oh, absolutely. When I think it's so important, you know, because there are also a lot of people online out there sort of putting out their shingle, as I'm an expert, and here's my protocol, right? Here's my candy or cookie cutter protocol that everybody gets the exact same thing. And I'm like, okay, nobody's. No two people's guts are the same. And actually, any gastroenterologist that always pushes back on stool testing, that's one of their arguments. Because they need, like, in their heads, they need a black and white. Like, this is what it's supposed to be, Right? But no two guts are the same. Right? But we know what a healthy gut looks like in general, and we know what an unhealthy gut looks like. But the, like you said, the order in which you do something or the activities that it takes to sort of bring it back into balance need to be individualized. And I think so many women struggle because they're, you know, they're looking for the perfect bullet. Or then they, you know, read a book and they're like, I'm gonna do that one for a while. That doesn't work. Now I'm going to do this other protocol. And, you know, and you know, I think as an industry, we do some wonderful things and we do some very poor things because we make it sound like it's 60 days and you're gonna have a perfect gut. Maybe, maybe not. We can make a lot of inroads in 60 days, but.

Well, I think you're bringing up a wonderful point. And I, because so many of those people end up with me that have done those programs, and a lot of times, unfortunately, feel worse because you're being promised, okay, yeah, like 60 days. Everyone does this. And you're given protocol that everybody does the exact same thing, and that's not necessarily the right thing for you. And I'll give you an example here, because we're going to talk a little bit about histamine, I think, coming up. When we're. And when we're looking at histamine in your body, you do need to heal your gut in order to help with your histamine, because diamine oxidase breaks down histamine in the gut. Bacterial overgrowth, Candida H. Pylori, can activate the immune system, which can cause mast cells to release histamine. So gut healing is important. Probiotics, bone broth, fermented foods, all of these standardized protocols, they are going to make you feel worse. They are. They are not your friend if histamine's an issue. And we know there's specific histamine producing mast cell activating microbes. So that's the problem. It's like you go on this protocol and you're doing things that maybe someone else in that group is okay with, but it's not okay for you because your situation's different.

Oh, yeah. And sulfation and oxalate problems. It's like there's all these compounding things. So for everybody that's listening, if you've done other protocols and you're not better, it's because they're not individualized to what's really going on. And there's a deeper dive that really needs to happen because your gut health is the. Is the baseline for all of your health. But chances are, what's going on with you is not the same as your girlfriend.

Yes.

You know, and. And I would add to that whatever was happening when you're 30 is not the same as when you're 50, because when your hormones change, your microbes change. So it's a whole nother game there, too.

Exactly, Exactly.

Well, you brought up histamine so we talked a little bit. You said kind of your microbes. So different microbes in your gut can make and degrade histamine. We've got leaky gut and all those other pieces. So give my listeners a little bit of a rundown of how can they possibly tell that maybe histamine is part of their gut problem. Right. Because it can look like a lot of other things, you know, and, and I think a lot of, a lot of well meaning practitioners overlook the role of histamine in gut symptoms and instead it gets labeled as other stuff.

It's, and it can be confusing because when, so when we're looking at histamine symptoms, they're overlapping with a lot of other symptoms because we actually have four types of histamine receptors. So when people hear the word histamine, they think of antihistamine and they think of allergies. So you think of, that's our typical opinion when we think of histamine. But. And that's your H1 receptor. So yes, you can have that. So you can have the runny nose, the congestion, the asthma symptoms, rashes, hives, all of those regular allergy, typical symptoms. We also can see migraine, headaches and migraines. We can see GI symptoms. So you can see reflux, the IBS type symptoms, diarrhea, you know, mobility issues, things like that. When we're looking at gi, we also see anxiety. We can see there's really strong connection with anxiety that I see often with people. You can have sleep disturbances, you can have fatigue, we can have, you know, so it's really looking at the whole body. So that's, I think, where it gets confusing because when I'm naming some of these things, you could say, okay, well, some of those could be thyroid symptoms, some of those could be gi, like where you're, it's really getting almost that practitioner who can pick out the symptoms. And so one of these things, like if you think, okay, well, I've, I do have congestion sometimes I also get headaches, I also will have GI symptoms. It's like sometimes you're seeing multiple systems, but then I also have people that people are getting so in tune with their body that they'll even come to me saying I have a histamine issue. And the only thing is that's happening is I'm getting anxiety in the middle of the night because we can get histamine dumping in the night. And they've done enough research, they've been able to figure out the connection. But I think it can, I Think from what you're, you're saying it can be hard to figure out because it's all of these multiple issues.

Yeah, yeah. And we don't have the best of testing for that. You know, it's more of a, it's more of a really good intake and sort of an order of elimination to try and figure it out, you know, because it's just, we just don't. And you know, and I just think, I think a lot of, a lot of women out there, you know, struggle with that and they aren't getting good answers. Now I think there's also an important part, and you and I talked a little bit before we got on the call today or the podcast interview about the role of hormones, particularly the shifting levels of estrogen and its interplay as well. Right. I'd love to talk about that. And then we can kind of move into the headache migraine world. But particularly estrogen and mast cell and histamine.

Yes. So estrogen actually has, they're actually has receptors on mast cells. So there's, there's estrogen receptors on mast cells. So, you know, your audience is very well educated. They know this. But as we're moving into perimenopause into menopause, we often will see a decrease in progesterone before we see a decrease in estrogen. And estrogen can go up and down and, you know, be erratic in this time. And so we often see more mast cell issues, more histamine type issues with, with like if you're still menstruating with ovulation and in that PMS window right before your period, because that's when estrogen's higher, this compounds and gets worse during perimenopause because we'll start to see this decrease in progesterone. So you're leaving people with estrogen dominance. So we're seeing kind of a twofold thing happen here. So we're seeing estrogen is stimulating the mast cells to release histamine. It all estrogen also inhibits the breakdown of histamine, so it impairs diamine oxidase and you can't break histamine down as much. So you start to see estrogen promoting histamine promoting estrogen promoting histamine. And we can kind of get in this cycle. At the same time, we're seeing this lower level of progesterone, which is actually histamine protective because progesterone is actually going to support diamine oxidase and the breakdown of histamine. So we're having both of those things happen at the same time. But, and that's why women, as they're entering this phase of life, can often start to see symptoms that they never saw before. Because we're getting a dysregulation in the hormones.

Yeah, yeah. And I think that's so, so very common. And you know, and women think they're going crazy because all of a sudden they're like, oh, I, you know, I wake up in the middle of the night and I'm anxious and I can't figure out why. And it's like, well, you know, is it your cortisol, is it your blood sugar, is it a hot flash or is it histamine?

I know, I know. And they can look similar. So it's really. Yes. Getting to the, to the root. And one of the things that listeners can do, I just actually had someone I was on with earlier that I was like, okay, just for me, take two weeks and pull out high histamine foods. I think I can share. I have a 25 page guide that I can share with you and with the audience that we can link that will just actually tell you foods that are high in histamine. And so if you pull Those out for 20 for two weeks and you're like, hmm, you know, maybe my hot flashes are, are a little, it's not gonna solve your problem. We don't want you on a low histamine diet. Long term, we actually wanna expand your food. We wanna get to the root and fix what's going on. But it can give you a little indication of, okay, you know, do I have less headaches, maybe, do I have less hot flashes? Am I less anxious? Am I, am I less congested? Are some of the symptoms just improving even slightly to indicate that this could be a histamine? You know, that there could be a histamine component here because many of the healthy foods, strawberries, tomatoes, avocados, all these like wonderful foods that we're encouraging are high in histamine.

Yeah, yeah. And I think it's, I'm glad you also said, you know, that our goal is to not make the diet more restrictive because that's a guarantee to become more restrictive.

Yes.

You know, but therapeutically, like I, you know, I always try and tell people like a therapeutic diet might be to achieve a particular outcome in a short period of time, but it is not the long term side of, you know, the long term goals to stay on this really restricted diet. Because I'm sure you also see a lot of people that Come in that have been on a fodmap diet or histamine, you know, reduced diet for years.

Oh, yes.

And now they're so darn reactive that, you know, it's, it's like added its own level of kind of complexity.

It's worse. And then they get food veer and then cortisol, you know, then we could get into like the cortisol. Well, if you're, you're anxious about what you eat, then that can actually create another dynamic. So you can, yeah. Start to get in this cycle. So we're always trying to expand. You know, my goal is like you're saying always to expand the diet, but sometimes you can use it as a tool therapeutically that can start to give you insights. We see, we, we're like health detectives. We're our detectives of our own body. And what I love to see is I really like to educate people as I'm working with them. And I love to also see how people become so you can become so in tune with and really understand your patterns that you're like, I never even realized these things before, but now I can see and can like live in a way that I can be symptom free because of choices I make and understand. And then it's so empowering.

Yeah, so, so empowering. I, yeah, I love that over the last 20 years, it's like, oh, you know, it's so fun to see that. But I think, you know, a lot of times when people are getting those sort of cookie cutter experiences, they're not, you know, they're not, they're not getting to that final answer where they really see resolution of a lot of those problems. So, so now I'd like to shift gears because you've got a massive specialty in headaches and migraines, which, you know, again, men go through. But statistically, women are significantly more likely to be impaired by significant headaches and migraines. And so let's, let's talk about those. So let's first talk about what's the difference between a headache and a migraine. And I know there's like different forms and things like that, and one can kind of become another. And let's talk about those.

Yeah, so attention headache, which is most of the, you know, when we're thinking, oh, headache, we're mostly thinking of attention headache. So that's generally like a band or a dull pain. And it's often across the forehead, the back of the neck. It can affect both sides. It typically doesn't involve nausea or vomiting. It Generally doesn't get worse with movement and it doesn't really have necessarily a typical pattern. It can last a few minutes, a few hours. Where migraines are going to have more characteristic patterns. You're going to see a prodrome often where you feel like vague early warning signs, like you can see it coming on. Some people will have auras which is a visual disturbance. Then you'll have the headache which is often more of a. It can appear differently for people but, but a lot of times an intense, throbbing, debilitating pain. It can last four to 48 hours, usually even up to 72 hours. It's usually more sensitive to light, noise and movement. So you know, like we're saying, it has some of these other potential blurred vision, nausea and vomiting, other effects. So we're seeing a lot more of, you know, a lot of the tension Headaches can be either we'll get from sinus pressure, we'll get from like muscle tension, things like that dehydration where. And actually that migraines can, Dehydration can contribute there too. But we're seeing a, a neurovascular imbalance where we're often seeing a constriction and then a dilation of blood vessels which is going to be triggered by hyper excited neural activity. So it, they're, they come from different dynamics.

Yeah, yeah. And, and like you said, you know, migraines often follow, you know, particular patterns. Sometimes it could be related like things in foods like MSG or whatever. But a lot of times like for women, they get hormone related migraines, you know, it's based on their cycle. So let's talk about that sort of interplay. Ladies. If you're noticing more fine lines and wrinkles, it's not just about aging. It's about the loss of estrogen and that affects our skin structure, making it drier, thinner, less firm. But here's the great news. I've created Biased Mastery Cream to help. This luxurious bioidentical estrogen cream supports your natural hydration and elasticity. It's packed with nourishing oils like olive jojoba, aloe and coconut. So it feels amazing and helps soften those lines and bring back that healthy glow. I've been using it and let me tell you, my skin has never looked or felt better. It's smoother, more radiant and those little cracks increases are way less noticeable. If you're ready to give your skin some extra love, check out Bi Est Mastery on the Metabolic Blueprint website. And that's metabolicblueprint.com biest mastery that's B I E S T mastery M A S T E R Y and your face will. Thank you.

The most common types, there's three patterns, but the, the that I see generally. But the most common ones are a rapid or decrease in estrogen. So that's why like, we'll sometimes, you know, in ovulation, when estrogen is going up and down or in the luteal phase, we'll see that when we're seeing a big change in estrogen, we'll also see it when we're estrogen dominant. So a lot of times when we have, you know, more like we're talking about the dynamic. That's why even in perimenopause it can become worse as our hormones change into menopause. And then we'll see an estrogen dominance. And then sometimes we also will see them with actually with low estrogen. So sometimes even into menopause, some women will actually get better with their migraines through menopause because estrogen is going to be more stable. But we can, some women will get them from low estrogen. And, you know, you and I both use the Dutch test. I think it's a very valuable test. And I think that not, you know, not all practitioners are using this and. And what. One of the reasons that I love the Dutch test is because I can see the metabolites and I can see how you're actually metabolizing estrogen. So we want to use it and lose it. We want to have estrogen, but we want it to clear. And a very common thing that I see is that actually estrogens will get elevated in the 16 with migraines. Because I work with hundreds and hundreds of women with migraines. The 16OH metabolite is elevated. That's a very common pattern. Sometimes when I can like actually say, before now, I've done it so many times before I even look at the test, I'm like, I'm as, I'm. This is probably what I'm going to see. And it's often right because I start to see these same patterns. So it's, it's just very interesting after looking at. So we just need to sometimes shift the way hormones are metabolized. But what is going to happen if you just get a blood test and you don't get a test like that, your estrogen, you could have low estradiol. So you can get a blood test and it can say, oh yeah, you're fine. You don't, you know, your estradiol is low, but you're not metabolizing it the right way. And it's still getting caught in these other metabolites that are actually causing the problem.

Yeah, I think that's so important. You probably already know this, but that was like my entire dissertation PhD research was in hormone metabolites and its interaction in the gut, you know, and there's still so, so much that has yet to be researched. And, you know, it's. And it's even funnier to me because, you know, I am a little further down the rabbit hole than what even the Dutch test or any of the other labs can get. And there's. Because there's missing pieces even there. There's a sulfation pathway that's missing. And I'll get, You know, people will be really dismissive. Oh, that's good enough. And I was like, really? You think so? You know, I was like, you know, 30 to 70% of your estrone will go through the sulfation pathway, which means it's somewhere stuck between 4 hydroxy 16 and the sulfate pathway, you know, and we don't, we don't quite understand that. And, and we just don't have great reliable ways to get this in anything else other than urine, you know, and, and I just don't think there's enough people out there, you know, really helping women understand this, because all of your hormones, like you said, they could be low, they could be low with the blood and biologically low, but you could still have excess. I like to call it funky estrogens.

Yeah.

For everybody that wants to be non technical, funky estrogens that are out there hitting receptors and doing crap in our body and we just don't know because no one's bothered to look. I'll tell you about this story. So, you know, I'm building this technology platform and, and I, I was at a conference with a previous president of the Menopause Society.

Okay.

So I was like, I'm gonna try one, I'm gonna try one for the team and go to a conventional doctor and ask what she thinks. So I was telling her what we were building from the technology platform. And part of our paradigm was to look at these hormone pathways because we know these have indications for migraines, we know these have indications for breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and a bunch of other things, whether you have hormones or not. And she was like, yes, I think so. And she goes. And then, very haughtily Meg, she goes, we only do evidence based medicine. And I go, that's Funny, I have a PhD where I actually did evidence. Okay, just checking. And so I tried again to have the conversation, well, we're capturing this data and we'll actually see it when somebody does it. And she goes, well, we wouldn't do it until there's placebo controlled. And I was like, well, you knew drugs go through this pathway. That actually makes it worth it worse. And I said, so you want to go ahead and let the perimenopause menopausal women, the baby boomers and the Gen Xers and probably the millennials behind us suffer and, or die before you get your data because you want to go 20 more years until some way we find a way to have a placebo controlled test here. Yeah, good thing I. Good thing I. My opinion has now been confirmed.

Yeah, right. I know.

And I was like, it's amazing. If you don't go look for the evidence, it'll never be there, will it? She just looked. I was just like, I, I was just like, oh my gosh, I'm so angry because. Because we have so many women that are paying the price because conventional medicine just doesn't want to bother to look.

Exactly. And you know, we can even go a step further and say, who's funding the tests? I mean, that the, the big pharma has the pockets to fund the placebo controlled studies that they're using. You know, and there's just unfortunately, so many terrible dynamics there that.

Yeah, yeah.

So we have to be advocates and you know, as, as women, as people, we just, we have to be advocates for our own health. Today that I think the days of just saying, okay, I'm going to my doctor and I try. I mean, I don't know whether those were ever good days, but you know, those in the old days, that was kind of like, I'm going to my doctor and I'm just going to trust what they say. And it's like, no, we need to advocate for ourselves and our health and, you know, really understand our bodies in order to get answers and feel better and, and not in preventative.

Yeah, absolutely. And, and you know, you're right. The pharmaceutical companies, they're going to put things in those pathways that make them worse. Never better.

No. Right.

You know, because that's also a black box. Like what other things are going into that 16 hydroxy pathway? Because so many drugs get metabolized through that pathway. So.

Yeah, so you have to be really careful even when you're, sometimes when people are on Medicaid, a lot of medications, like, even you and I, when we're manipulating pathways that you have to. There's a lot to think about.

Yeah. There's so much to think about it, which I think, you know, you probably have seen with all the women that you're working with is, particularly with migraines, that it may not be just their estrogen, it might be three or four other combinations of drugs that are sitting in that pathway that are driving a bunch of it. And then when their hormones start to fluctuate around their cycle, then that's like, okay, we filled the bucket, now it's overflowing. Right. I would bet they.

That's a great point.

Yeah.

And I think that's even a great point when you're looking at it. I think that's a very confusing thing for people because it, it's not the same all the time. And you really start to get the symptoms until you get, you, like you said, fill the bucket, where you get overflow, where your body can't handle the amounts of, let's say the hormone or the histamine or whatever is being produced. But because it's fluctuating, you could do the same thing on two different days. And, and it's like, well, I was fine eating those foods and doing these things and on that day, but I'm not today. And that's because your metabolism, your hormone levels, like all of these different. Your load, all of these things can be different at different times. And, and I think that's. It's very hard for people to figure that out.

Yeah, well, and it doesn't fit into a box easily because it's like, oh, you know, I would love, I would love for it to always be the same because then the answer becomes really simple. It's. And then it's a one for one relationship. But it, but it, but health doesn't work that way. Our body is, to me, it's an extraordinary instrument in the fact that it can. I mean, we are like the cockroach of the planet. We can actually live in every environment. There are very few other things other than a cockroach that can do that. Right. Cold, wet, hot, whatever. But that means the body is super resilient. But that also means it can adapt to lots of different things. And it's not. Nothing's going to stay consistent and static like things are going to. So what worked when you were 30 and you could go out and have brunch with your girlfriends and have cheap champagne all day, eat a bunch of crap. You can't do that when you're 45 and you're perimenopausal, and you have one glass of champagne, you turn bright red, your nose starts running, and you get a migraine. Yes. Like, sorry. Now that load is radically different. It does for all of those that are alcohol intolerant and cannot figure out why.

Yes, exactly.

I know.

Well, that's the thing. I can have. I can't. It's not the wine. Because some days I can have a glass of wine and other days I can't. You're like, yeah, but you know, it. Depending on if you're where your hormones are at that time and what else you've eaten with that wine, you know, all the things add up.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. All right, so we talked a little bit about hormones and migraines. What do you find to be the most challenging outside of, like, figuring out, you know, from a migraine standpoint? What do you think is the most challenging lifestyle piece that women really struggle with? Because it's not just the food and the diet and the supplementation and the hormones, all that stuff. There's a big lifestyle piece with that too. You know, what do you. What would you say is the thing? You're like, ladies, you. You're gonna. You're not gonna fix this until you orally work on X. Yeah.

Some people don't wanna eat.

I. I think I know which one's coming, but I just wanna check.

I want. I'm gonna say nervous system regulation, because I think that's something. Everyone, we're busy. We wanna do like, we're empowered. We wanna do it all like, we're. We wanna be potentially work, potentially be the mom, be the, you know, child to your parents that need help. Look, we're just pulled all of these different ways, and we want to. We live in a world where we have medication, so we. I see a lot of people want to supplement. So it's like, I want to be natural, I want to be healthy, so I want supplements. And so we want to supplement our way out of the. The issue. You know, maybe we're. We're willing to change our diet. We can see that. But are we willing to do those things that really bring our body back into the parasympathetic nervous system? You know, we're talking about this in so many ways. When we're talking about cortisol with our hormones, we're talking about, you know, the gut brain connection, the nervous system, immune system interaction. So what do you do to actually actively regulate your nervous system? And I don't mean that you have to meditate for 40 minutes a day or that you have to. But it's, it's just that consistency.

Yeah, I think that's so important because I don't, I think, you know, I was sitting here thinking about it and like I'm sure some women are going, what does she mean, nervous system? You know, like so if we are stressed, right. And running around in, in kind of in doing mode, you are in sympathetic drive, right. That means your cortisol's up, adrenaline's up, you're responding to your external stimuli, right. Digestion, non conscious kind of activities sort of shift to respond to the stressor when you're in. I'm going to make words up and run them all together. Rest and relax time, right. Your body then turns its focus inward and says, hey, I'm going to like digest and heart rate goes down, adrenaline goes down, cortisol goes down and all the body can recover and rebuild. And most of us don't even, I think so many women don't even realize they're in like gas down, pedal to the metal, no oil left in the engine anymore because we've been doing it for so many decades, you know, and we're unable to understand our own like, level of stress. I was, I'm. I like I, I was talking to Kevin, you know, Kevin, yes. And he was like, do you feel like maybe you're anesthetized to your stress? Because you don't, Because I don't get like people are like, you stressed? I'm like, I don't know if I would call it stress. And I, and he's like, do you feel like it might be. And I was like, yeah, after 40 years, I think yeah, it might be, you know, because, because you know, it's like, you know, everybody has a different threshold again. Their bucket might be larger than somebody else's, but I think most women can't recognize their own.

I agree. So you're like, I'm willing to do all these things, but am I willing to just stop a minute? Am I willing to do the things that I need to just calm my body down and, and like I said, it doesn't have to be. I don't want it to be break up your lifestyle, but we just need to get repetitive habits and because it actually is feeding into all of the other things.

Yeah, yeah. I mean like for me, because I'm a type A, people find that shocking. I'm a type A and, and I, I have to do, you know, box breathe. I box breathe For a minute or two before I start eating. You know, I go outside in the morning and put my feet in the grass and, you know, look up at the sun and take a few moments for circadian rhythms. Like, I do very small things. But over the course of the day, those little five, ten minute things add up to a regulated cns. Right. My central nervous system is very calm compared to what it was, you know, 10, 15 years ago when the wheels came off the bus.

Yes, me too. I'll even, like in between appointments, you just. Okay, let's just sit there, ground ourselves, take a. Take deep breath, do some box breathing, something like that. And just get it in those microhabits through the day to regulate and you learn to. You can actually feel it in your body, which is nice too.

Yeah. Again. And I think, you know, there's. Again, there's a lot of messages out there that you sort of. No, you have to detach yourself from your reality and like go, you know, like, that's cool if you can go, like, do a spa thing, that's fabulous. But the reality is you gotta reenter your world and all the stuff that you ran away from is still there.

Yes. And I think that's the. Some of the misconception of this has. This is. Has to be hard. It has to be a big lift. And, And I, I think that's even just a point when we're saying, you know what some of these things. I think people get afraid to work with functional practitioners because it's like, oh, can I do all of these things? They don't all need to be these giant things. All of the things you're doing. I mean, hydration, sleep, like all these little things add. I was just saying that to someone earlier. I said all the little micro things you do add up to big results. So you don't always have to feel, even movement, walk around the block, like, do something to get yourself in the habits. And then they can build on more habits and more habits. And it can build. It doesn't have to be this monumental thing because I don't think people stick with it as much.

No, no, it can't be. It can't be so disruptive or so exacting that you can't, like little things can't come up because it will. That's like the 100%. I'm either 100% on something or 100% off of something. And I think that's, you know, like you said, it's the small things that we do on a regular basis that Add up to huge outcomes. And yeah, that kind of fear around.

I got to do all this stuff.

And it's got to be perfect. So if you were to tell my listeners, like, you know, that maybe struggle with histamine, struggle with migraines, you know, give them maybe obviously central nervous system, you know, regulation definitely need to do. And then you said the histamine piece, like, take some.

Yeah.

Would you say try histamine free foods?

Yeah, so I would say just like, look at your histamine foods and see. Okay, am I noticing a difference? Another thing I have people do, print out a blank calendar and just write if you like, when you have symptoms. Because I know it's hard to track your food all the time, but take it, take a calendar and when you have symptoms, write down everything that day and potentially the day before. So like, let's say you're getting a headache or a migraine and that comes on, well, what did you eat that day and the day before? And you can start to look for, you know, how much, how much did you drink? Did you get enough sleep? Were you more stressed?

What did you eat?

Like, what time of year? If you're still mentioning what time of the cycle, like, were you exposed to something in the environment, like, what all happened that day to make that the day that you have symptoms? It's harder if you have symptoms every day. We need to get through some of the layers before we can do that. But that's something you can do at home that starts to see your own patterns. Because that's what we want to do. We want to see. Okay, you know, when we're looking at migraines, there is a. If I like wrote them out one time, I mean, there's 50 different things that can be in different combinations for you. So it's hard to navigate. Like, each person's very individual. It's. It's sometimes hard to navigate. But when we start to look at our own patterns, that's when we can get clues. And then you'll start to see, oh, yeah, I did have, you know, have this. I did like, so it start there. That's something that you can do easily.

Yeah. Because I think, yeah, so many women get stuck here. And then, you know, the conventional wisdom is here, take a, you know, take a migraine medication, a preventative or, you know, a something that's just to stop it, or a painkiller, which doesn't really correct any vandaline problems.

No, definitely. And that's like the unfortunate thing is that's the way we're told to treat things and that's not what we need to do. That's not actually going to get to the root and have it actually go away. Like what we need.

Yeah, yeah. And like you said, we'll have your, your 25 page histamine, histamine handout so everybody can go grab that from the show notes and be able to, to know what things to do. Because the other thing I would say is there's. If they go online and just randomly pick a histamine, you know, list, it probably may not be correct.

It's not. Yeah, there's a lot of inaccurate ones out there.

Yes, I would agree with that. I would agree with that. Okay, so awesome. So I would love for you to tell our, my listeners how they can find you. And you've got a podcast as well. It comes out every week, which is awesome. We were just talking about that.

Yes. So I have a podcast called A Little Bit Healthier and we are talking about all the things that you can do in your life to be a little bit healthier. And I think that's the message like that I, I love to share because I think that, like, one thing each day can lead up to big differences. So, yes, come over and join us. Love to connect with listeners. Message me on Instagram. It's Dr. Megmill. It's just D R M E G M I L L. And my website is megmill.com. we have a lot of resources over there. And you know, I, I love to connect with people. I love to hear your story. So feel free. I do actually answer messages too. Yes, yes.

You know, this has been really a wonderful conversation because I know it's going to be really helpful to so many of my listeners and people watching on YouTube. And so if you're on YouTube, I would love for you to leave a comment and let us know what you thought. And thank you, Dr. Meg, for being on Menopause Mastery. This has been great.

Thank you so much for having me.

Yes. Thank you, everybody. Thank you for watching and listening to Menopause Mastery. If you're watching it on YouTube, don't forget to subscribe and leave a little message and let me know what you thought and we'll be back with you next week.