Getting Relief from Migraines and Chronic Headaches: A Natural Approach

Hi and welcome to how humans heal. I'm Dr. Donny Wilson and in today's episode, I'm excited to introduce you to Dr. Tanya Painter. She is a naturopathic doctor like me and we both went to Bastyr University in the Seattle area. And today we're going to be talking about migraines and everything that we can do to help those of you who are experiencing migraines and wanting to solve them once and for all and get them to stop happening so that you don't have to be constantly in pain or searching for ways to get out of pain. And this is a really, really important topic close to me because I also suffered from migraines for many years and am so grateful now to have solved them and how much I learned from solving migraines. And I'm again really happy to have this conversation with Dr. Tanya. So thanks again so much for joining me today.

Absolutely. It's a pleasure to be here.

So tell us a little bit about you and how is it that you decided to specialize in helping people with migraines.

So When I was 16, I was rear ended in a car accident and that was kind of the start of my migraine journey. From that point on, I started having fairly regular headaches, but we all figured it was just a product of that. And as I went through the last year of high school, um, they just kind of kept coming intermittently. And when I went to college, it seemed like it was happening more and more often. Um, that came with some depression and some other symptoms, things that I was struggling with through my undergrad. And when I graduated and came back from undergrad and, and went into the, the workforce, it actually started happening more frequently and more frequently to the point where I would. I didn't realize they were migraines at the time. Right. They were just really bad headaches. And then I was starting to have really bad headaches all the time. And then I'd really bad headaches when, you know, my cycle would hit certain points. And I just figured, you know, this is just kind of life. This is what, what it is. My doctor told me, you know, take some Advil. And it's, you know, everybody gets headaches. It's like, okay. And it wasn't until I went back to medical school that I realized it's not normal to have headaches every day and exactly what they were. And so I spent the, those, those years in medical school really paying attention to what can I do for my body to help me not feel like this any and by the time I graduated, my. My migraines were gone and my chronic headaches were still there, but they weren't at least migraines anymore. And then it took another couple of years after that to really work on stress management and understand how that was an impact and working on hormone balancing and working on dietary things and stuff that you don't really have a ton of control with when you're in medical school. That's maybe an excuse, but yeah. And so then I. By the time I figured out my own migraine situation and how to treat myself, I. I loved having patients come in with headaches because I knew exactly what to do with them. And so then I would just kind of start down my questions and narrow things down and help them focus on the right areas. And I was always extremely successful with treating headaches and migraines. And so that kind of led me down the path of specializing in it. And yeah, it can get really complex, but it can be really rewarding too.

Yeah.

When a person's been dealing with these severe headaches or migraines for a long time and they find, even if they reduce in frequency, it's a huge. I think that we don't realize how many people, maybe you have some of that information, how many people are experiencing headaches or migraines. And like, you mentioned, like, to me as well, I didn't call them migraines. It wasn't necessarily a diagnosis of a migraine at first, until I learned how to diagnose migraines and then was able to diagnose it for myself. But it's like, I think a lot of people have pretty severe headaches and maybe don't realize they're having migraines.

Yeah, I think that's actually pretty common, that people are undiagnosed. They just know they've got bad headaches. And, you know, one in four in the United States is. Is dealing with migraine in some regard, whether it's because they know someone, a loved one, or a close friend, or they have them themselves. About 43% of women are actually have. Have had or experience migraines fairly regularly. So it's a. It's an insanely high number. And I think that those numbers are probably lower than they re are in reality because there is some misdiagnoses. Or like in my case with my doctor, she didn't diagnose migraine. She's just like, oh, well, everybody gets headaches. So here, take some Advil. And I think it's really important that people understand that There is a difference. And, and to make sure that they're getting properly assessed so that you can either rule it in or rule it out. And I think that's really important because if you know that you're dealing with migraines, Adil is not going to cut it. So you can get some, some of the help and support that you need from the right people.

So how would you like, if someone's wondering, hey, as when I'm experiencing a migraine, what would you be looking for?

Yeah, so there's specific diagnostic criteria.

Really what we're looking for are those neurological symptoms that come along with it, right. So very commonly you can have vision disturbances, you have issues with your hearing or auditory. There can be some sensation issues going on to. And there's also a specific diagnosis for chronic migraine as well. So you might have them periodically, but then if you have them, you know, more than seven days out of the month and it's happening for more than three months, then we're looking more at a chronic picture. And so then understanding, you know, a lot of time, nausea and vomiting come with it. Maybe not the vomiting, but, but nausea is, is, is a piece of that, which I always thought was just like, that's what came with headaches. Like, I thought headaches made you feel sick to your stomach, but that is a symptom of migraine. So understanding that there are those extra pieces, it's not just your head hurts, you feel nauseous, you have light sensitivity, you have sound sensitivity, you have other neurological things. Maybe, you know, some people go blind on one half their face, right. Or one eye. If they're, you know, if they have drooping.

Mouth or facial muscles or if one half of their body doesn't work, those are all symptoms of, of migraine. Of course they need to be worked up for other reasons. But if they come back with everything else being okay, then they'd be diagnosed with, with, with migraine. So, and obviously if it's going to be that extreme, I'm sure they're going to be going to the doctor and being worked up for that. But it's more of the minor.

See, maybe at that point they might see a neurologist and then, right. Might say, okay, this is, this is a migraine. And then they might be like, and then, and then what is a common treatments out there? Like when say you go to a neurologist or you know, other pain specialists, you know, right. They, they're likely to recommend different types of medications to help with migraines, right?

So Most commonly, we're looking at being diagnosed, being prescribed triptans. It's usually the first go to. And then from there there are different. There are other options depending on whether that does or does not work. And so we can look at CGRP inhibitors, we can look at, you know, beta blockers and things like that. So it depends on whether or not it's going to be for prevention or acute treatment.

And, you know, just finding that right combination is how most neurologists approach things. But we do stuff differently.

Yes, because. And this is the key is like, we actually take a second to say, wait a minute, maybe we can actually get these migraines to stop happening instead of always just, you know, like taking. And I mean, yes, if you take a medication, you could prevent them, but you really haven't addressed the underlying cause. I guess that's the difference, really. Right. It's like, let's start opening up this possibility of maybe there's some underlying cause we could address so that it's not. And sometimes it's triggers. Right. A lot of times we say, what are the migraine triggers? And helping people to avoid triggers can be part of solving or preventing them, right?

It for sure can. But what I really like is to see, all right, what do the triggers tell us about how our body is working? And so it's not necessarily just a matter of, oh, well, I notice that when, you know, storms come in, you know, then I get a migraine every single time. Well, interestingly, when storm, when low, low pressure systems come in, that causes our physiologically, like our serotonin drops. Humans, humans serotonin drops with low, low, low pressure fronts, which is equivalent to storm, stormy weather. And so then we know, okay, there's a, there's a serotonin piece, so we can actually treat that. Understanding, oh, there's a storm coming in in the next five days. Let's do some treatment to help prevent that drop. And I can't tell you, you know, people, you can't control the weather. So they think, well, this just sucks. Like, this is what it is. But in reality, like, we can, we can treat these. And once you start balancing your serotonin and your hormones and all the other things that play a role in that serotonin pathway, then suddenly the weather doesn't trigger you anymore. So we can't, we can heal those things.

Yeah, it's interesting and I think it's a good point. Like, I think, like, I can't. It would annoy me sometimes when people would say, oh, just avoid These, you know, sort of like the classic triggers. Right. And I think those are important to know because, of course, then you have more awareness for like, I'm thinking of things like, you know, like, people will hear about, you know, aged cheese and red wine and yeah, like the weather changing. But what can you do about that? Like, and, you know, what are some of the others that are sort of like the classics that you're like, hey, thanks, but I don't. That doesn't help me much.

Yeah, stress, make sure that you drink enough water, make sure you get enough sleep. Yeah. I mean, and those are all extremely important. Like, we have to have those basics, but that's usually not enough because there's some sort of an imbalance, a chemical imbalance in our body that is contributing to those migraines happening. It's worsened by all these other things. And I always like to use the analogy of the bathtub. Right. We have so much that our body can tolerate, and then when, when our bathtub fills up, it overflows. And most chronic m. Migraineurs are living with a full bathtub all the time. So just the smallest thing will. Will set them over. And what we want to do is learn how can we drain the bathtub? So your tolerance is. Is much higher and you don't have to always avoid the, you know, the cheese or the, the glass of wine. You can enjoy it every once in a while and just, you know, just not overdoing it. Right. Understanding what our body limits are.

Yeah.

Because maybe if they, if we can help a person to. Yeah. Like, understand, like, how can they keep their blood sugar regulated during the day? Because I know blood sugar also was for me, a big piece of it. And then. And like, and then, yeah, getting better sleep and doing things to help with processing stress, then the bathtub goes down and then you have a little room, little wiggle room to, to live your life and not be always going into a migraine. So that can, that can definitely be helpful. And course, that's to some degree getting at an underlying cause of, of, you know, sort of like dehydration or lack of sleep. And at the same time, when we're talking about going after root causes, we're even taking it to another level. Like, I think of it like being detectives and like, you know, how do we even get this bathtub to go away completely? Like, like. Right. We don't even want even like a little bit of build up in the bathtub. How do we really. And it's. And for me, that was years of investigation and trial and error. And so I know that a lot of people likely, either they're either you're just dealing with the migraines and maybe taking one of the medications the neurologist prescribes or more than one medication, or you might be in the boat of like, okay, let me keep trying things. And it could take a lifetime of trying things to figure it all out. Right.

Because it's not just that one thing. Right. It's usually a combination. So unless you're trying the right combination in the right order, it can get really overwhelming. Yeah, yeah.

Because you're trying to still live your life, and there's these migraine hangovers. Even once the migraine's gone, you're recovering from the migraine.

Yeah, yeah.

Tell us more about that. Like, what do you see with these? What people? So if someone hasn't heard of that before, what do you see with a migraine hangover?

Yeah, so. So it's not just the migraine itself. Usually there's a prodrome. So you start getting telltale symptoms that, oh, migraines come, and I can feel it. And so those are really important to pay attention to, because if you can catch some of these and you start to understand your body and what is causing. So let me back up for a minute. I always like to explain there's more than one type of migraine.

Yeah, let's talk about that.

Yeah, let's talk about that, and then we can talk about the other pieces.

So the causes are a little bit. Or the types are a little bit connected with the different causes, right?

Absolutely, absolutely. And so typically, what I find is that in my clients, we have usually three or four different types of migraine. And they'll notice, like, when you're in a migraine and you don't know to look for it, it's just pain. You don't really notice anything different from one to the the next. But when you start actually paying attention to what your migraines feel like, you will notice differences. Like, maybe one migraine comes and you feel super nauseous. And then another migraine comes, and it just feels like your head's in a vise. And then the next migraine comes, and it's a stabby ice pick behind your eye. And those are all different types of migraines. The same thing is kind of happening, but they're all being caused by different underlying issues. So that can be really confusing. And one of the reasons why maybe a triptan works for this type of migraine, but then you Take it. And it doesn't seem like it works this time. Or if you go do a hot bath and go lay in a dark room for an hour, this one will take care, be taken care of. But this one, it won't work. And so understanding that we have different migraines and knowing how, what's causing them will allow us to treat them properly so that you know what tool to use in what situation.

So one person could have different kinds of migraines, different days or different times.

Yep. So usually hormonal migraines are completely different than a storm induced migraine. And when people start paying attention, they're like, oh, I get it. Like I have these symptoms with this, but I have these symptoms with that. And of course there's still the head pain and there's still all that, but it's, it's different, it's slightly different. You just have to pay attention to it if you can. It's hard to try to focus on your pain. When you're in pain, you don't want to think about it.

But if you just think about wanting to get out of pain.

No, I know. But if you can start recognizing that. And so that comes back to the prodrome and postdrome. Usually a prodrome will have different symptoms associated depending on the type of migraine you're having. So you might be able to feel like I'm starting to get really nauseous, what's going on? That might be a prodrome to one type of migraine versus you might notice that you get really short tempered. And that might be a prodrome to another type of migraine. And so paying attention to the symptoms leading up to when your migraine actually starts can give you a clue early on what kind of migraine you're going to be having. And once you figure that out, then you can treat it before it gets started. And in most cases, most cases you can abort it before it takes hold.

And then you don't have to deal with the migraine hangover, which is the after effects of what that imbalance that's happening neurochemically. We just feel hungover. It's a good explanation. You just are out of it. Your mental capacity isn't there. I was really tired afterwards. You know, your mood is different, you just are black, you just blah. And so that's kind of, that's how I describe the migraine hangover. And then you're usually dealing with that for a couple of days. And then in a lot of cases, then the next prodrome starts or in some kind, some cases, they blend all together. And it's this chronic cycle of acute pain and then hangover pain and then acute pain and hangover pain. And it's like you never feel good.

I remember that. And I was in that for a long time. And it. And actually what was interesting too is that once I. And again, it wasn't just solving one thing. We can talk about what are the things we need to look at. But it was as I kept working down the list, you know, we're going to go through the list of things, but for people to just have a sense of what should you be thinking about? As I work through that list over time, and I was figuring out like, this and this and this and this. And I started having. The frequency started decreasing, right? So it was like I had more space between them. And to me, that's already making progress. That's what we're going for. It's like we want the frequency to decrease so they're not like, instead of happening once a week, it's every two weeks or every four weeks or every eight weeks. And then you start. You go. I started to be like, almost kind of like. Because there's a fear, there's a fear factor, like fear of the next one. And I don't hear that talked about very much, but I know that I experienced that. And it took me, I think, like, probably at least two years of not having migraines to really forget about the possibility of a migraine. Is that. If you know what I mean.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. For me, it was like walking on eggshells. Like, I didn't want to ever do anything because I knew that one of the things that I did was going to make me have a migraine. And so then it's like you just kind of live this, this non life of like, you know, you don't want to go out with friends, you don't want to do anything, and then people stop inviting you after a while. And then you're just like this isolated, you know, sad person who's like, this sucks. And. And it did. It took a lot of work and a lot of. Of digging and really learning my body and paying attention. And. And then, yeah, I was the same way. And then finally it was. I realized, like, I don't have to be like that anymore. I haven't had a migraine in how long? Okay, maybe I can go out with my friends and let's go try it. And I would tentatively go out for like an hour. I'm like, I Feel okay. Yeah. Small steps. Small steps. Yeah. Yeah. Typically, what, what we end up seeing is that a really good kind of path to take where, you know you're on the right. Because everybody wants that less frequency. Right. That's our goal. But usually what happens first is much more minor changes than that. Like, we start noticing first, no changes in migraines, but we start noticing maybe we have a little bit more brain clarity or a little bit more energy, or maybe we've lost a little weight or our joints don't hurt quite as much, but our migraines haven't changed symptoms.

That are not exactly the migraine, but some other way the body's saying something's different.

Exactly. And then we start noticing, well, when I take my medication, it works better. And my migraine doesn't last as long now. So that. So we're looking at less, Less intense, better medication use and, and, and not. Not lasting as long. And so as soon as I start hearing someone telling me, oh, this one wasn't, you know, 48 hours this time. I only had a migraine for 12. I'm like, yes, we're on the right track. Okay. But they're like, well, I still have, you know, 25 migraine days a month. I'm like, I, I get that, but we're on the right track. And then, and then over time, as body, the body continues to heal, then we start seeing, oh, this month I only had 20. Oh, this month I only had 10. Now I'm only having one during my cycle. Because the hormonal ones seem to be the, the worst, the hardest ones to balance.

Yeah, we're all exposed to stress. Women, men and children are experiencing alarming rates of stress and burnout. It's not something that we can completely avoid or escape. But what we don't hear about is how to recover from all this stress that we're exposed to. This is what inspired my research and clinical work over the past two decades, where I've been looking to answer that question. What can help us as humans to recover from stress? And through that research and work, what I discovered is that we're not all affected by stress the same way. While we might assume that we all have high stress hormones of cortisol and adrenaline, it's simply not the case. When it comes down to it, and I measure the levels, what I found is that there are five stress types. This is how, as humans, we are most likely to be affected by stress. In terms of how that stress disrupts our stress hormones, cortisol and adrenaline. So this is what led me to develop the stress type quiz. And I made this quiz available online so you can do it right here on my website@drdani.com and in less than two minutes, you can know your stress time, which is how stress is affecting your body and your stress hormones at this point in your life. This is key information to now be able to recover from stress and reverse the effects of stress. Because to the degree that our cortisol and adrenaline is either too high or too low, we are constantly being affected by stress that happened in the past. Once we can re optimize our cortisol and adrenaline, we have eliminated the effects of stress and we can now go into the future with a clean slate with optimal hormone levels and our body functioning as if the stress never happened. So I would love for each and every one of you to know your stress type so then I can teach you the diet and lifestyle changes you can make as well as the nutrients and herbs that are specific to your stress type so that you can effectively reverse the effects of stress, recover from stress, and prevent future stress from negatively affecting your health. I can't wait for you to do.

This quiz, find out your stress type.

And go on this journey with me to mastering your stress and resetting your health.

I'll see you there.

Yeah. And so then it's just a very slow, you know, progression and it takes time. Especially, you know, the longer you've, you've dealt with it, the longer it takes to kind of come back from that. So we want people to be realistic in their expectations. It's not, you know, you do these things and in three months you're feeling amazing. Like it's, it's a process. Like for you. For me, it took about four years. I don't know, would you say the same for you, at least?

I don't even know how to measure it. I mean, because I was working on it and I was, it was, you know, I would like. And this is why I want to dig into. But I mean, let's touch on like, everything from dietary changes, right? That could be part of it. Where we go, okay, what else do we need to do for diet? The gut brain axis. What, what role does healing the gut have? I mean, these were things I'm just like, I went little by little, I was like, okay, I'm going to master my, my foods. I'm going to master leaky gut and gut bacteria. And then I would like, yes, I would work on the, like, estrogen progesterone, and then I would work on the ad, you know, like, okay, let me in the neurotransmitters, and then that. And it would get better. Like, you know, like you're saying little by little, like, less often, less severe, feeling better. But they would still be happening. And I'd be like, okay, I'm still after it. Then let me go to the next part of the list. You know, and it went into looking at toxicities and different, you know, even some of what solved a lot of it for me in that last percentage, right? That, like, I had reduced it this much, but it was like that bit left. And I'm like, I'm just determined to finally get the rest of this taken care of. And it was a couple things for me was one was related to toxins. I figured out the toxins I was getting exposed to and got that solved also. I.

Started to talk about it, and I'm curious if you see this a lot with the patients you work with, because I think for me, I felt really ashamed to talk about having migraines. I mean, one, as a doctor, I felt like I should have figured it out and I shouldn't be getting migraines. And so I. When I had migraines and I had to cancel my patients, I didn't say I'm canceling because I have a migraine. I would say I'm canceling because I don't feel well and I didn't tell anybody I was getting migraines. And I. And so very few people knew that I was experiencing them, even my friends. And so at a certain point, I said, I'm going to start talking about this. And I think like you said, a lot of people feel very isolated with migraines. And so it really, for me, was a turning point when I started really talking about it and saying, hey, this is what I'm experiencing. And I have to think that there's a psycho emotional aspect of letting go of whatever shame I had related to migraines that also helped my healing. The other thing is that I diagnosed myself with hypermobility, Ehlers Danlos syndrome. And this really opened. We can talk about this more too. But it really opened up for me such a better understanding. I already was essentially treating myself for hypermobility without realizing that that's what I had. And once I knew I had hypermobility, then I could treat it even more precisely and address my body as a body with hypermobility. And when I started doing that, that also made a huge shift for me. Like, again, it was that I Had done. And I think I would. And I'm curious what you say, but, like, where do you start on that list of things to address? You might not start at, you know, it depends on the person, right? Some people, okay, maybe the psycho emotional aspect is something where you start. Or some people, you might be starting with diet and you work your way through. But I'm just based on, I'm just sharing that, based on my story, but that took me years to work through all of that. But like, tell us, like, because I know you, you work with women one on one, and you have a, a group online program, right?

We've shifted just to the group online. But there are, there are very individualized aspects to, to that program because they're.

Gonna, they're gonna be. So in that program, how you. Because that way you've kind of created a curriculum that you're guiding people through. How do you go through these aspects to figure out their migraines as individuals? So talk us through that. Like when you, when people go through your program, how do you. What are those. Those underlying potential causes that you're helping them uncover?

Yeah, so we kind of start from the foundational things, right? So diet for sure. And, and then we kind of work up to the specific individual things. So there's actually quite a bit of research, especially over the last, say, five or ten years on, you know, things that contribute to an increased risk for or correlated with migraines. So it doesn't necessarily mean it's a cause because it's not just ever one thing. Right. But for example, one study showed that chronic migraineurs, the people who had migraines more than 15 days a month, had. Had 95%, no, 92% of them were deficient in their antioxidants, which are extremely important for our body to be able to detoxify and get rid of things that cause inflammation. And so when, you know, when I read that, I was like, oh, 95. Like, we need to be making sure that everybody's taking care of it because you can't really over antioxidant yourself.

Right? So, so we talk about the very first things that, foundational things that we do. We talk about hydration, but hydration isn't just drinking water. Hydration means how much electrolytes do we need as well, so that our body, our cells are actually absorbing the water we're drinking? Because I can't tell you how many people tell me, well, I drink like almost 2 gallons of water a day. I'm like, woman, your electrolytes are way low if you're drinking that much and you're not replenishing them. So we need to make sure that there's that good balance so that the cells are being hydrated. We need to make sure that we're starting to support the antioxidants. And that includes things like vitamin D, vitamin C, C, vitamin E, glutathione, alpha lipoic acid. All of those are really great tools. You don't necessarily need all of them, but those are all great antioxidants. And then we want to make sure that we're eating healthy. Right. Because our diet can either really work against us or really work for us. And so we want to use that working for us. So we want to try to, I call them swaps. I really don't like the term elimination diet because it so feels so restrictive. And I can't tell you how many people come to me with undiagnosed eating disorders because they're so fearful around food that they can't have that because it's going to trigger them. And I get it because I was there, I did that. Yeah. And there's so much fear around it. And that fear is not going to be helpful from a migraine standpoint. Right. So we want to think about swapping our food out instead of eating gluten all the time because gluten has been shown to increase migraine frequency. And a lot of people, people, we want to switch those out for non gluten grains. What does that look like? So let's learn how can we eat and substitute our wheat? And we've got five, six, seven other ancient grains that we can learn how to make and use so that we're expanding our diet instead of restricting it. Right. So but we, there are known inflammatory food triggers so we want to try to work our way away from those. But the biggest thing is just a whole foods diet. Just eat, you know, non processed. And that's hard to do sometimes when you feel like poo all the time. But it's really important that we are getting nutritional high nutrition into our bodies because otherwise we're using more nutrients than we're actually gaining by detoxifying our body from the processed foods and the additives and things like that. So, so those are kind of the foundational things we want to start with. And then we start moving into, let's evaluate stress like the very, you know, within the first month we're looking at stress management and meditation and, and you know, prayer and all of the other things that you can do to tell to help relax and, and lower our stress levels. And then working on adrenal support and detoxification, you know, doing some liver stuff in preparation for looking forward to hormone balancing and things. We want to make sure that our detox pathways are all open and working properly. And then after those pieces, we want to take a look at structure. Right. So there comes into the hypermobility app aspect. We want to be evaluated for that. And, and if somebody doesn't know what hypermobility is, it's essentially where your ligaments aren't holding things tightly enough. And so then there's a lot of play in those joints and that can throw out your neck and, and things can get misaligned very easily and that can be triggering. So we want to make sure none of that's going on. We want to be evaluated, make sure that our spine is in alignment, that there's no, you know, issues there. Working on our posture. I. One thing that no, not, not, not a lot of people know about is eye misalignment, which can be huge. So if somebody is triggered by close up work, reading or knitting or looking at the computer, I really encourage them to go talk to their eye doctor about being evaluated. And, and you can go to neurolens.com I have no affiliation, but they give you a little bit of information about this. It's a, it's an actual like a, there's only a, a, a couple hundred people in the country who do this testing. There's a special, you know, it's not just like the doctor looks at you. There's actually a special machine that you have to look into to evaluate where your eyes are actually focusing. And if they're not focusing properly, then your eye, your eye muscles have to do the work to bring it into focus, which is going to be triggering a migraine for a lot of people. So that's something I always like to say is like a little, hey, this happens to a lot of people and nobody screens for it. You know, so, and then I could go on you know, talking about, you know, then we want to assess neurotransmitters and we want to assess hormones. And so that's where we start getting into the more specific pieces because that doesn't apply to everybody. And so we want to now look at you as an individual and where are these things, you know, are you high on estrogen, are you deficient in testosterone, what's your DHEA looking like? And so we want to look at all these other things as well. So there's definitely a lot of pieces to the puzzle, but if you do it in a systematic way, you'll very quickly rule in or rule out. Right? We want to rule out any infections, any mold issues. We want to look at, you know, sleep. So there's a lot of stuff to be thinking about. But if you do it in a certain, you know, a specific order and you kind of have that laid out for you, it becomes much easier to work through all the things and really hone in on what your issues are as opposed to trying all the, you know, random things that you hear online.

Oh my gosh, it's, it's so great to have a systematic process to guide people through. And I'm sure what you just described would have sped up my healing process from, you know, if it had, if I had known or if you had been offering that, you know, way back when I was dealing with them still, I'm, I can tell like that's essentially the things I worked through. Like I just listed, like those are the things you work through. And then you, little by little you identify what is it for this individual that's, that's really, you know, getting them into that migraine space. On what, how amazing to be able to create freedom from migraines. What do you, what do people express to you when they, you know, experience that, that place where they, the migraines go away and, and they're seeing their life completely differently.

Yeah, they, I, you know, I, I very frequently get the, the response, the, you know, the posts that say, I, I didn't know you could feel this good. And those just make my day, you know, I mean, because it's been so long since they've had a good day, even their good days are not good and they forgot how good it feels to feel really good. So I remember there's a 26 year old that went through ours and she for the first time in her life was able to move out of her parents, parents house and have her full time job and take care of herself. And she's like, I actually get to be an adult and have a life now. And so it's just so amazing and so rewarding because it's a lot of work to try to figure everything out and when they, when they do it successfully and it's just so amazing to hear those stories and, and the migraines stay away, right? I mean, once you learn your body and you learn how to take care of it and what it needs, then they don't come back unless, you know, you kind of stop doing those things so well.

And I was going to say that like when we, the processes you, we were referring to, you know, say if it has to do with balancing neurotransmitters or balancing hormones like estrogen, progesterone.

These can these. As naturopathic doctors, we know how to balance those things using nutrients, herbs, homeopathy, you know, natural approaches. So our treatment is actually using substances that are non addictive, no withdrawal symptoms, you know, like usually no side effects or very low side effects from the risk. And so these are things that can actually, and not just, not just take them in order to treat a migraine, but use them to help your body heal. And like you're saying, you achieve a new optimal, that it's much easier to maintain optimal than it is to recover from. Yes, imbalances, right?

Yes, absolutely. And that, and that's really the thing that, you know, my main goal is, yeah, I want people to learn how to, you know, heal their migraines and move away from that. But really the, the ultimate goal is how to take care of your body so that way you don't develop autoimmune diseases, you don't have a, you know, bad menopause because your hormones are so out of whack. You don't have migraines. Right. It, all of the things will improve if we're learning how our body, my specific body has a unique makeup and I need to know how to take care of it. And so my goal at the end is that each person understands how their body's working, where their weaknesses are, either genetically or otherwise. And then being able to give them the tools that they need to help them, them through those so that they can again open their lives back up. Their diets back up. Their bathtubs are essentially drained so they can have fun and enjoy themselves as long as they don't take it to the extreme. I'll do that every now and then where it's like I forget that I have to do a good job and I'll kind of take it to the extreme of, you know, cakes and maybe some alcohol and staying up too late. And then suddenly my body's like, you know what? We're about to have a migraine on you, so you better stop. And I'll get this little telltale, you know, pain right here in the back of my neck. It's very small. I never noticed it until I paid attention. And when that thing starts to tweak on me a little bit, I'm like, that's my warning that if I don't behave myself in the next 48 hours, I'm going to have a headache. And it's probably going to progress. So now I know, okay, backing off. You know, go do some sauna work, go do some detoxing, eat some really healthy food, drink a lot of water, you know, and then it never manifests. So you can, you know, waver back and forth. Right. We don't always have to be super good, because who doesn't love, you know, the occasional ice cream or chocolate cake or cupcake or whatever? But once we learn how to recognize that we're pushing too far, then we can stop it before it becomes a problem again.

And that's. It's hard for us as humans to learn that. I think we were, you know, we're. We're used to pushing ourselves to the extreme, you know, you know, working longer and sleeping less and, and. And then, you know, wanting to, you know, do other things to then help counter that. That intense lifestyle, even exercising too much can be too, right? Like, when it comes to migraine, sometimes things that are theoretically good for us can be too much for the system. And so that's something to consider too, is just to notice, like, hey, am I. Am I going too extreme for my body? Learning to listen to your body, which I'm hearing you say, like, how do we actually pay attention to the signals our body's probably been giving us? But we didn't realize that was connected and that our body was trained to say, whoa, that was a little too intense of an exercise workout today, or that was a little too many things on your schedule the past week. We really need some downtime, you know, like, so it start. You start to see it. I remember one time I was in the middle of a migraine and it. And like you, like you said, like, when you're middle of the migraine, all you can think about is getting out of the migraine. But I was sitting there and I realized I had this. It seems so, like such an epiphany in the moment. I was like, oh, you mean my body just wanted to have some time in bed. Oh, so if I schedule some extra time by myself in my bedroom, when I don't, then I can potentially not have to have a migraine in order to get that.

That's a really great perspective. I never thought about it that before. It's either you're in your bedroom with pain or you choose to schedule it and do it on your own terms. That's really great. Yeah. But that's exactly right. I mean, your body is essentially telling you, I'm done, and it's forcing you to. To take that time out. And if it's done all the time, because they're still not getting, you know, it's not getting what it needs. And not necessarily necessarily through any fault of your own, because if you aren't taught what your body does need, like, I don't think medicine does a great job of teaching people how to care for themselves. And there's definitely stuff that we need to do for our bodies, which I didn't ever realize until I went to medical school. And then I was like, wow, I never realized why vegetables are so important. They are what provides our antioxidants that helps us to detoxify from everything and the fiber and the importance that that is in our gut health and the role that our gut plays in all of the above. And once I made that connection, it made sense to me why I had to actually start eating vegetables. And now vegetables are one of my favorite things. And conversely, we know sugar is bad for us, but why? I don't know. It tastes good, so who cares? But it really is very important to understand how it's affecting our cellular activity, activity our muscles, our brain, our neurotransmitters, what happens to our blood sugar and the impact that that has on all of the above. And when we really start to make these connections, we start to understand, like, there is a right and wrong way to take care of our body, which I think, intuitively we know. We just don't understand what that means because we're not taught that. And so as we learn more about that, then we can start doing the right things. And then we, instead of feeling like we're out of control, we have no control over our migraines or whatever symptom we have. Now we know, oh, I actually do have full control, and I know what to do about it. And then. And then you can just kind of live your life and you make the choices that you make.

Yeah, it's a really beautiful thing. At first, it may seem like, oh, why do I have to do this? Yeah, once you start heading in that direction, you realize, oh, my gosh, it feels so good. Like, it feels good to be connected with yourself. It feels. Feels good to be listening to your body. It feels good to be giving it what it needs. And it definitely feels good to be out of pain. So it's, like, so worth it, you know, to say, okay, let me go. Let go of what someone else Says I should do or shouldn't do and let me actually do what my body is trying to tell me.

Exactly.

Yeah. Right.

It makes a difference. So. And it's not something you have to do overnight, right? None of this. I don't hear like, like, you have to do all of this by tomorrow. It's about letting go of that perfection, right?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And. And one of the amazing things, too is that the better we treat our body and as we're giving the things that it needs, like, we stop. So, for example, my favorite candy ever was Reese's peanut butter cups. And I remember in med school, I was like, all right, I'm just gonna, I'm. I'm understanding how bad sugar really is. I'm gonna cut out sugar. I'm going to go on a sugar detox. Which, by the way, is one of the first things that we do in my program. We go on a sugar detox. And then, and then, and then I'm going to see kind of how I feel and what's going on. So I did like a 30 day sugar detox, zero added sugar. It was all just, you know, natural foods. And at the end of the 30 days, it's like, I don't really feel like having because I'd usually have, you know, a couple candies a day and some pop. And like, it was, it was bad and I felt really good and I had been having good energy and. And then a couple months later, I just got a craving for a Reese's peanut butter cup. I'm like, I'm gonna go get one. It's been like four months since I've had one. I'm really excited. And I took one bite of that first cup and I actually spit it out in the garbage. And I threw the rest of it away because it tasted like I was taking a bite of pure sugar. And it was disgusting. And I was sad. I had to grieve the fact that I didn't enjoy my favorite candy anymore. But it's like it, it just goes like that more than anything else. Showed me how when we eat the right things, our taste buds and our cravings change. And so then we don't want the same things that we had been addicted to before. And you know, you can say that for any of, in any of our vice foods or, you know, alcohol or whatever. The more that you kind of change and work on that healing, it becomes easier and easier because then you don't want the bad things because it really doesn't taste good anymore. Like most Processed foods to me. I have to spit it. Like, I can't. I can. I swear I can taste the chemicals. I don't know if it's true, if we can actually taste it or not, but I swear I can. So, yeah, it. It. But I think that's a blessing because then as we do make those changes, we. We get to see those rewards. And it's no longer a struggle. It's. It's actually what our body wants.

Wants. Beautiful. Oh, my gosh. Well, thank you so much for describing this and telling us about your program. Is there anything else? I'll definitely put the link so people can go check it out and connect with you. Is there anything else you'd want people to know while we're. While we're chatting?

You know, I think the biggest thing is to just hold on to hope, because I know that so many women that I talk to, they. They feel like they've tried everything their neurologist isn't able to offer them anymore. They. They've exhausted all the medication options, and they just. I. I can't tell you how many people have heard, I've heard say, you know, this is just my life. This is just what I get. And that's not true. We know a lot about migraines. Not as much as we need to, I don't think yet, but we're getting there. And unfortunately, conventional medicine approaches. Doesn't really look at things that way. So I just want to let anybody who's listening know that there is hope. It doesn't matter how bad you feel like your case is. I've seen. I've seen so many bad cases. Right. You're not alone, and there is hope out of it. So just hold on to that and don't give up because you don't have to continue living like this.

Yeah, it's so true. And that the nervous system can heal. Right. I think we're taught that somehow the nervous system is just set the way it is, and there's nothing. Nothing we can do about it. And that's really not true. You and I are proof that the.

Nervous system can heal.

Yeah, absolutely.

So it's a beautiful thing, so. Oh, wow. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, and thank you all for listening in to this episode of How Humans Heal. Please reach out if you have any other questions about how we can help with migraines. And please like and subscribe so that you don't miss the next episode of How Human. Thank you.

Thanks for listening to How Humans Heal. If you liked this episode. Leave a rating and a review, and for more resources, visit drdonnie.

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