Solving Migraines, Dr. Doni’s personal health story

The information provided in this podcast is educational and not intended to diagnose or treat medical conditions. Dr. Donnie Wilson struggled for decades to solve her numerous health issues and heal her body. But with focused determination, she healed herself and in doing so, she discovered the Dr. Donnie stress recovery Protocol. On this show, you're going to hear from doctors, nutritionists and Experts along with Dr. Donnie, who will give practical advice and wisdom to help heal your body.

This is how humans heal.

It Was happening again. The light from the movie screen felt like an assault on my eyes and I could feel my throat welling up and the inside of my cheeks beginning to salivate. I jumped from my seat where I was sitting next to my boyfriend without a word and sprung through the theater doors running for the bathroom. With.

Nausea washing over me, I stumbled in and pleaded with myself, please, no, not again. I knew exactly what was coming next. A migraine and vomiting. I felt this rush of pain coming up my neck and throbbing throughout my head. Not only would this pain last for hours on end, but the nausea would progress to vomiting, sometimes every 15 minutes for the next 24 hours, and it would take days for me to recover. This was started when I was about 21 years old, and it's lasted for over 20 years.

In fact, this sometimes would happen many times a year, or even sometimes every two weeks.

Migraines with Vomiting.

When I was in college, I had planned to follow in my father's footsteps and go to pharmacy school, but I wasn't exactly sure that's what I wanted to do, especially after studying nutrition and realizing that I was really very interested in learning more about use of food as medicine. And so I had been trying different medications for the migraines, but they either didn't work or made me feel worse. And yet I had this confidence that I had to and I could solve it myself. I hadn't solved heartburn for myself years before by changing my diet, so I thought I must be able to solve this too. So I decided not to go to pharmacy school and instead to go to naturopathic medical school where I could learn more about medicine and nutrition at the same time.

I changed my diet. I took herbs and nutrients. I went to the naturopathic clinic. I went to the acupuncture clinic. I tried everything I could think of, everything I learned about in school, and some of them would make a small change, maybe 10%, 20%. Maybe I could delay a migraine a bit, but other things actually sometimes made me feel worse, not better. So I just had to keep on searching throughout Training as a midwife, then graduating, doing a residency, and then moving and starting my own practice. I still was getting these migraines.

Sometimes I would be so frustrated in the midst of it and actually hoping that the next one wouldn't happen. But sure enough, even while I was growing my practice and had my daughter and I was also running a nonprofit and juggling all these different responsibilities, these migraine episodes would hit and just take over. I would have to call my assistant and say.

I can't talk to patients today. My mind would just be overrun by the pain of the migraine. And yet I was so shamed and ashamed and embarrassed about getting the migraines that I really didn't tell anyone other than my assistant that I was getting these vomiting migraines. I felt like I'm the naturopathic doctor. I'm supposed to know how to fix this. Here I am seeing patients, thousands of patients over years, decades, helping them with their health issues, and yet I still couldn't get these migraines to stop happening. I studied.

Diet and food sensitivities. I went gluten free, dairy free, worked on healing leaky gut, and that all helped to some degree. I researched cortisol and neurotransmitters and figured out how to rebalance cortisol and neurotransmitters. Again, that helped some, but the migraines were still happening.

So I just had to keep trying to figure it out, and yet feeling embarrassed that it was still happening. Sometimes I would be having to get physical therapy and massage therapy multiple times a week in acupuncture, and still the triggering would happen. Until one day. This is a couple years ago, I started really realizing I need to think differently, I need to understand my body differently. And I know that there's this thing called the gut brain axis that connects our gut to our nervous system. But what I realized is that there had to be something that continually was triggering this gut brain axis and causing the neurological pain. So finally, I figured out two things that I hadn't uncovered before. One is I figured out that I have a genetic variation. Well, I actually have a couple. One I had discovered previously was mthfr, which is related to folate metabolism, the vitamin folate mthfr, and is associated with migraines. So I had done all kinds of trainings and figured out how to address MTHFR and methylation. And again, that helped to some degree, but it didn't completely stop the migraines. So then I figured out that I have another gene variation that has to do with collagen. It makes my joints hypermobile, which means that very easily my ribs and my shoulders and my other joints in my body and my neck move out of position. And that can trigger muscle spasms. And I was like, that sounds like me. That's exactly what's been happening. And of course, it's made worse by sitting a lot. And I had been sitting at a desk talking to patients, or sitting in my car, driving to my offices. And so lo and behold, that had to be really triggering. And so I got a standing desk, which I'm standing at right now, and I stopped sitting all day long. And that made a huge difference. At the same time, or very similar time, I tested myself for toxins because I know that toxins can be a stress. And I see that in my patients. I had never done a toxin panel on myself. And I did a toxin panel and figured out that I was being exposed to flame retardant. And one of the main reasons that people are high in flame retardant is from a memory foam mattress. I was sleeping on a memory foam mattress for years. So I did not sleep on that bed ever again and.

Got a new bed that's organic and doesn't have flame retardant. And from that point, from the point of changing the flame retardant mattress and getting a standing desk, the migraines came to a halt. Not only that, but at that same time, I really realized that I had not been talking about the migraines and perhaps that was also perpetuating the same migraines. So I started talking to to people about it. I started telling my friends and colleagues, I even started telling other patients when I was actually experiencing these migraines. And I have to say, because it all happened at the similar time that talking about it and opening up and being willing to face that fear and feeling of what another person might think of me when they find out that I have migraines. Facing that fear made a difference. And so from now on, that's why I'm here sharing this with you, is because I now really believe that talking about my internal experience has helped my body shift. And it has now been two years since the last time I've had that vomiting, cyclic vomiting, migraines, which is amazing after decades of dealing with them.

So I share this story because I really want to help those of you who are also potentially experiencing migraines. I know how much of a struggle it can be to be trying different medications and trying different doctors and trying to figure it out.

And feeling like they just are going to overcome and throw off your schedule and throw off your life. And you're wondering where do you begin? What should you be thinking about? What I can do tell you is that this process of solving my migraines, what I realized is that this is the same process I used to successfully help patients with migraines, but also with many other health issues. So this same process of understanding your stress exposure and how it's affecting your body, are you exposed to toxins as stresses? Are you exposed to foods that are stresses? Are you exposed to posture in your day? To what are the various stresses you're exposed to and how are they affecting your body? Are they causing leaky gut? Are they causing imbalanced cortisol? Let's address those things and get them back in balance so that you can break this vicious cycle of the gut brain access triggering the migraines. The second piece is to look at your genetics and understand do you have mthfr? Do you have hypermobility like me? Do you have some other genetic predispositions that we can do something about? We can help your body to not be having to be stuck with this genetic tendency causing health issues. And by solving that, by solving your stress and by solving your genetics, we can actually solve your health issues. This same approach works for my patients with fertility issues. For example, with hpv, which is the virus that causes abnormal Pap smears for women, it works for other infections in the body, chronic infections, it works for chronic allergies, it helps with autoimmunity, it helps with so many other health issues that you may be experiencing even if you don't have migraines. So I really realized that I can be grateful for the experience of having the migraines and solving them because it's helped me to figure out how to help you with your health issues too.

Something a lot of people don't know is that too much stress can actually create an abundance of health problems like high blood pressure, high blood sugar, anxiety, migraines, insomnia, even fertility issues. This is because high stress puts your adrenal glands on overload. They release cortisol and adrenaline which controls your digestion, hormones, immune system, energy, focus and even your emotional response. So how can you beat stress when you don't know where to start? That's why we have a free seven day stress reset program. It's designed to help support weight loss, digestive healing and hormone balancing. It includes support for integrating self care. Daily tips come to you by email and video. Gluten free Dairy free meal plans as well as grocery shopping lists, journal pages, and more. This free program will help you beat stress and put you on the path to to wholeness in your body. Get your plan now for free@drdonnie.com.

And.

Again, one of the main things was to realize that having someone to share with others, to help guide me in the process, to help support me with the process, was also a key part of it. And so even if you may be feeling alone and hesitant to reach out and hesitant to really acknowledge what health issues might be going on for you, maybe it's fatigue, maybe it's sleep issues, maybe it's some other pain in your body, and maybe you feel overwhelmed and yet also ashamed by how you're feeling in your body. What I can tell you is that by actually accepting my body, by actually accepting that these are my genetics, this is my stress exposure, this is the body I'm living in, I need to learn what my body trying to tell me and give my body the support it needs to solve this, to stop having this. Recurrent pattern migraines are actually really quite common. And I think migraines as well as many other health issues. Many people experience the pain of migraine without feeling like they can tell other people very much because sometimes other people are less understanding of health issues we experience. But what I can tell you is that by talking this through together and by learning to be present with your body, we can solve this. We can figure it out. Because there's many different possible triggers for migraines, let alone many other health issues you might be experiencing. And we want to go through a process of figuring out what it is for you. The cause of your migraines could be very different than it was for me. It could be that you, you know, sometimes it's because of weather changes, sometimes it's because of certain foods, sometimes it's from blood sugar imbalances, sometimes it's from, we need to look at the thyroid and make sure your thyroid is functioning well. We need to look at different chemical exposures. I know this was big for me as well, is to understand, you know, exposures to perfumes or certain cleaning products. Literally, over the more than 20 years that I was experiencing these migraines, it forced me to lear about all these different possible triggers and to see how my body was relating to my environment. So again, I learned so much through the process of solving the migraines. I learned about how to get healthy filtered water and stay hydrated through the day, how to understand how to keep my body and my muscles strong so that my joints stay in place better, and what kind of exercise works best for my body? By the way, Pilates has been huge for me. If some of you also have hypermobile joints, what's called Ehlers Danlos syndrome, when maybe if you know that your joints dislocate easily or you have a lot of joint pains, it's something to consider. And I can help you with that too. Because really, even if you don't have migraines, some of these same. We look at the same factors. We're going to look at dietary factors. Do you have food sensitivities? Is there leaky gut? Are you sensitive to substances in your environment? What do we need to do to help your body stay balanced and healthy and get enough sleep during the day? Do you have bruxism, which is grinding your teeth and tight jaw muscles? Do you have allergies, like I did to pollen and dust? So all of these things I had to go through and solve. And finally, as I really learned about my body, I joke sometimes, if only our body came with an instruction manual, then we would just be able to read the instruction manual. But it doesn't come with an instruction manual. And so we live in these human bodies that are responsive to our environment. And if we're having symptoms like the migraine to me was just my body telling me that something wasn't fitting right. Something needed to be addressed, and I needed to go through a process of figuring out what was it, how could I address each thing until I really solved what was the underlying triggering factors. And to me, it really comes back to this, looking at how stress affects are cortisol, because then cortisol can affect the digestion, the immune system, the hormones, the nervous system. Cortisol is like this central manager. And if cortisol gets disrupted by stress, whether too high or too low, cortisol will throw off your digestion, making leaky gut more likely. It will throw off immune system, making inflammation and allergies more likely. It'll throw off your hormone balance. So we need to look at thyroid and. And ovarian hormones, men's hormones. We need to look at these levels and help rebalance them. And we need to look at the nervous system, which is where I look at neurotransmitter levels like serotonin and GABA and dopamine, and get them rebalanced. This can all be done with nutrients and herbs and natural approaches. Get these signals back on track again to get you out of stress mode. And if there are toxin exposures, Whether that's from a mattress like me, or from mold, or from some other toxin exposure. We need to help your body get rid of those toxins, which we can do in very safe and effective ways so that your body doesn't have the stress of a toxin holding you back. And if it's a matter of addressing MTHFR or other genes that influence your nutrients and your neurotransmitters, we can do that. It's a process of step by step getting out of stress mode, rebalancing, detoxifying, giving your body what it needs so that it can be healthy, so you don't have to have these symptoms showing up like migraines, like vomiting. For me, there's a nerve, by the way, called the vagal nerve. It's a nerve that connects our brain and our gut. It's one of the main nerve connections that is in the gut brain axis. And the thing about the vagal nerve is we used to think that it was just a top down communication, but now studies show that the vagal nerve communicates the gut back to the brain. So it's actually a two way communication. The vagal nerve comes through the neck and goes to the stomach. In my case, I would get super tight neck muscles, which would then cause super tight muscles around the diaphragm and it would trigger the vagal nerve. Also, communication between the gut and the brain happens with our immune system inflammatory cytokines, it happens with neurotransmitters like serotonin, it happens with other hormones. And so there's a constant communication between the gut and the brain. We have to solve that. I had to solve that in order to solve the migraines. And it's the same process that works for solving other health issues like autoimmunity, for example, anxiety, depression, neuropathy, and even many gut issues as well, like IBS and inflammatory bowel disease.

So what I'm saying is we can use this same approach to solve many health issues, but we can definitely solve migraines. I really want to help those of you who may be struggling with migraines and trying to figure out what to do. It can be an inflammatory process. And one of the other things about the gut is we have those healthy gut bacteria. We're used to thinking of probiotics, which is the lactobacillus and bifido that you might get from a probiotic supplement or in yogurt or fermented foods, but really we have trillions of bacteria living in our gut and if those bacteria get out of balance, if we have too much of some and not enough of others, and then there's other microbes that live in our gut, too. There can be yeast, there can be parasites. There's actually some also healthy microbes that should be living in the human gut. And if there's an imbalance of the guys who should be living in our gut, we tend to like to think that it's just us living in our bodies. But what we know now is that the bacteria living in our gut and on our bodies actually make up more cells than our actual cells of our body. And these bacteria can communicate from our gut to our immune system, our nervous system. It's huge. And there's other microbes called helminths that have been shown thousands of years ago to be living in humans. And now in modern times, humans are less likely to have these microbes living in our gut. And without them, we have a way increased risk of inflammation, allergies, and autoimmunity. So, again, solving the gut bacteria, which is, to me, not as simple as just flooding your system with probation probiotics and fermented foods, because now you're just flooding the system with more bacteria. That's not what we need. We don't need to flood the system, and we don't need an antibiotic to wipe it all out either. We need to actually help rebalance the gut microbiome. And there's ways to do that. My patients have proven to me that it's possible. I've done it for my own body, too. That's been also part of my healing process, is solving the gut bacteria. The thing to know is that the bacteria living in our gut are completely determined by what we eat. So when you're eating for yourself, also keep in mind that you're eating for your gut bacteria. And if, depending what you eat, you might be overfeeding or underfeeding certain bacteria. So we want to really solve that. We could do testing for all of these things I'm mentioning. We can test for food sensitivities, we can test for cortisol, neurotransmitters, hormones, and we can test for your gut bacteria to find out who's living in there, what kind of imbalance exists. And so we can start solving that. So you have the right bacteria and right organisms giving the right signals to your immune system and your nervous system from your gut. And solving that gut brain axis is huge.

So I just wanted to share that story with all of you and really say that I get it. I understand how frustrating it can be to have a health issue that's going on for a long time and feel like you can't you just having trouble solving it. Even as a naturopathic doctor, I had trouble solving my migraines. I just had to stay in it and stay focused on understanding my body and work through each layer that showed up in front of me until I can really see the steps clearly in terms of how to give my body what it needs and solve the pattern. So anyway, so I'm very glad that you're here and I'm glad to share this information with you. Please join me on my weekly newsletter if you'd like to receive future blog posts and podcasts from me. Also, I have a couple books that I'd love to share with you, including the Stress Warrior book, which you can read online, or you can have my office send you the hard copy. When you pay the shipping, we'll send you the book and this way you can really read more and understand more about this approach and how to solve your health issues once and for all by looking at it from this perspective. So anyway, thank you so much for joining me and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Thanks for listening to How Humans Heal. If you liked this episode, leave a rating and a review. And for more resources, visit drdani.com.