The Real Reason for Migraines and Constipation in Menopause

Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I have a little sleep secret I want to tell you about. Look, sleep is crucial for your fitness, but it's crucial for just plain old everyday life and function.

And I find I sleep great unless I have a migraine.

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What are you waiting for? Good night.

Definitely getting intimate today.

Do you experience migraines and constipation in menopause?

And yes, that was an and, not an or.

Did they begin with more frequency or more intensity during perimenopause?

Why does this happen?

And are these common or is it just me? Are you asking that? This is your episode.

Migraine and constipation can be symptoms of perimenopause and menopause, and these may get in the way of our daily lives and even affect our mood and behavior. Today, ladies, let's talk about why these happen, how we can prevent these issues, and what to do when or if they hit. We're going to talk about what's going on with our bodies in a very different way than you've ever heard.

And we've visited the topic of migraines many times before.

As you might know, I've actually suffered from migraines in the last 10 years more than ever before in my life, thinking at first it was altitude and living at altitude altitude after not forever in my life, but I no longer live in altitude and I'm still struggling with migraines from time to time. And let's face it, it always feels like it's been a long time since the last one until one hits, and then it feels like there's way too many. So in this episode, my guests will talk about whether or not you suffer from both things.

What the connection is between the two and what may be happening in your body that you've never considered.

My guest today is Diane DiCarma. She's a master in migraine investigation, combining Eastern medicine, Western science, and technology to uncover the root causes of migraines. With an MBA from Harvard, fluency in 7— yes, 7 languages—

and dual studies in TCM. She focuses on— and by the way, do you know what that is? Transcendental meditation. She focuses on the power of functional foods rather than eliminating.

Yeah, you're going to want to hear this one.

We're not talking about removing food.

Surprise, nice surprise. Diane hosts the Migraine Heroes podcast and leads Nectar Health in pioneering migraine relief and wellness.

And I will tell you that again, you're going to be pleasantly surprised by this podcast episode. And I encourage you to listen even if you're not someone who is plagued by migraines and/or constipation. And by the way, I wanted to find though constipation for all of us. If you're not having at least one healthy bowel movement every single day, you would be classified as constipated. So with that, let's dive in.

I'm Debra Atkinson. You're listening to Flipping 50. I started this podcast over a decade ago to answer questions about fitness in menopause and beyond before you knew to ask them. The goal: to help accelerate your results with science and the practical application of proven protocols while living your best life. There's no more powerful health influencer in the world than a midlife woman. And it's not just about you, but the 3 generations that you influence. My unique 40-year career, including being a university senior lecturer in kinesiology, an industry subject matter expert, and an international speaker, to founder of the first and the only exclusively made for menopause and beyond fitness membership in the world. Every week I interview experts behind the scenes and the science of optimal hormone balancing, fitness, and longevity, and share answers to our community's questions so you can have the vitality and the energy that you want, need, and deserve.

Diane, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you, Debra, for having me.

Well, and sometimes I do this selfishly, so many of our listeners know if they paid attention at all, I have on occasion in the last decade, probably more than prior to that, experienced some headaches. And I continually find myself with this line: I don't identify as somebody who has migraines. But every once in a while I think if it gets any worse in this. I don't know how anybody lives or survives with a migraine. So there may be, maybe that. Before we dive in and unpack that though, that I cannot wait to start doing, I want to ask you a little bit because that's a pretty intriguing bio. I would love to know, first of all, what 7 languages are you fluent in?

Oh, look, so my mother tongue's French. I'm a French speaker. I grew up in Belgium. In Belgium, you can't get away without not speaking Flemish, Dutch. So that's what you learn in school. Then when I was 14 years old, I moved with my family to London and I learned English. In London at the school, I couldn't take Dutch because that was just not an option. So I had to pivot to German, which I had quite a lot of catch-up to do. Then I went to Costa Rica to learn Spanish. That went really fast and I loved it. And I later went to Mexico to study in Spanish. Before working, I learned Italian in painting classes in Florence, which was absolutely gorgeous. And while I was working, I learned Mandarin, for which I had to stop working a few times. So about a full year in total. And I absolutely love that language. I think when it comes to health, it has gems to offer.

So I have a question. So like a good DJ can now do mashups, do you ever find yourself in the middle of a sentence, cross Languaging?

Oh yes, absolutely. Because there are some words you can't really translate. There are words that don't really, really translate. For example, I love this one in Spanish that says tengo flojera, which means you just really don't want to do anything, but in a negative connotation. Like, I just, I feel lazy right now. Just give me a break. I want to be on my sofa. Whereas in Italian, you'll say dolce fare niente, which is very positive and it means sweet do nothing. It means hang out at the cafe and watch the beautiful woman, you know, all pimped up with their fashion, outwear, and see what you want to wear next, which is a very positive. And so there's just some things that you can't always translate. Yeah.

How interesting. I can't even imagine. And I'm super envious of you. So clearly you love education. Your brain works very differently than mine does, which is why we bring on guests, right? I want to ask you, as we're talking, migraines. We're talking constipation. We're talking about all the things. Is there a reason that led you personally to want to unpack all of this that's going on? Is there personal history here with issues?

Yeah, absolutely. So basically, migraine is probably the 8th language, you know, I could say I speak. It all started with my godfather who died from a glioblastoma, which is a very terrible brain tumor in 2015, and it was very abrupt. It happened extremely fast. And after he passed away, one of my sisters said, I'm very stressed because I have a lot of migraines. I've had them for 3 years, and I think I have the same. And my godfather had 4 children and my sister had 3, and I could really empathize that this would make her freak out. And she had done lots of MRI, like most people with migraines will do, only to be told there's nothing. And so she was in pain. Yes, there was no explanation for her pain. So she says, I think I have that. And I told her, look, I'm not sure that's what you have, but there is something for sure. Let's try to fix it. I know someone. And it turned out that when I was 17, I had had a skiing accident. I had broken my femur, lost half of my blood, shrunken a kidney, and had a ski in my forehead. And so I was so fit before that accident. And after that accident, my life completely flipped. And for 12 years, I had myself limped, had chronic fatigue, done way too much sports to try to muscle, but done everything upside down. And I had ultimately found a solution while I was working in China with a Chinese doctor who had just recommended foods, just food. And my body was back to where it was at 29. It was back to where it was at 17. So I said to her, I know someone, I think she can help. It's not about your brain. It's about why is your brain complaining. And, you know, bear in mind, I didn't know anything about migraines back then. I'm sure there's a reason we talked to her. So we set up a call and I wrote 3 pages on all of her symptoms. And Dr. Zhang is her name, very kindly said, these are the foods she needs to eat and this is why she has her migraines. And within 3 or 4 months, my sister no longer had migraines and life went back to normal until my neighbor told me the same story and said, I've had 7 years of migraines. And I'm, oh, I'm so very sorry. And I've had a really confrontational conversation with my dad. And I go, what was it about? And she said, well, after 7 years of migraines, he says I need to get medicated for life, including having injections in my brain. And I thought, oh wow, that sounds a lot. I know someone, I think, who can help. I'd love to help you out, you know, between a conversation of WeChat, WhatsApp, we can fix this, I'm sure. And she was interested because she had lived in China herself. We did that. And after 4 months, she no longer had migraines. And I'm like, "Well, why did your father tell you to do this?" And she says, "Well, because my father is a neurologist." And I thought, "Wow, that doesn't make any sense." Of course, her father is smart. They're from New York. It's super well-educated. Of course, he loves his daughter. I have just not the slightest doubt of that. Why would he recommend 50 years of pain and medication when it's actually feasible otherwise? So I thought the foods I had recommended were very close to the medication he was recommending. But I realized it was the polar opposite. The medication was aiming at silencing the pain. And I was just doing like with the language, trying to listen to the message. Why is her body complaining about? Why is it just in pain? And so after I had met that doctor, I always wanted to set up something to help women because I think we struggle way too much. And this is 2024, it's time things change. And then it became evident from all of the data that I saw with 18% of women suffering from migraines, women suffering from them 3 to 4 times more than men, that something could be done.

Amazing. Absolutely amazing. So I know that there's been some link to like histamine foods and migraines. Is there any connection there with the foods that were recommended? I mean, were they avoiding histamine or—

Absolutely. So let's take that very concrete example. That's a wonderful insight. Yes. Removing histamine in Nandiramine can help a lot of women get their migraines fewer. And the reason for that is that the liver system— so now if we talk not English or not any Western language, but if we go back to Mandarin and we say liver, which is gan in Mandarin, when we say liver, we don't designate the liver organ, we designate the liver function with the liver, the gallbladder, a lot of the brain is the most connected organ to the brain, the tendons, the ability to detox, the breasts, the uterus, all of the female hormones, all of the mood hormones. Okay. So if we take that big function, let's imagine that for some reason that big function was overloaded, then the body would no longer have time for the wine and the cheese and the chocolate and all of the toxins. And so if you were lowering your toxins and if you were making your life smaller, which is really sad, and I'm nothing about life being smaller, but this is the only choice women are left with currently in society. If you make your life smaller and you say, I'm going to stop having histamine and tyramine, you might feel that the severity and the intensity of your migraines go slightly lower. And so that's going to work just because you deload that system that is grumpy in your body right now.

So, you know, a lot of women in this middle age and slightly over also deal with vertigo and/or dizziness that may or may not be called vertigo. We've recently talked here, listeners, if you remember, about dizziness can sometimes be a sign of electrolyte deficiency, meaning you need some more, but not always. So migraines, vertigo, dizziness, you know, that talk about what happens during perimenopause and menopause, that why do these emerge in someone who says, like me, I've never identified as somebody who has migraines?

So there are some fundamental changes that happen during perimenopause, and I think in the West we focus a lot on hormones, which are really important, but there's a lot more going on as we can feel, right? I think most women would say, oh well, beyond hormones, let me tackle a few topics. There's other things I'm experiencing. And so in that massive change, there's one change that is, well, there's a lot of changes that are important, but maybe one that is much bigger than the other ones, which is that in Western language, you would say we dehydrate. Okay. So if you think of the body from a Western perspective, you'd say the body is 60% water. The brain is 74% water. We've calculated all of that very precisely in labs. If I look for life on Mars, I'm going to look for water. If there's water, there's life. And in my body, I have all of that beautiful fluid. Fluids in my brain as well. In the East, they don't talk about H2O water the same way we do. They talk about another concept which is called yin. And yin is once again, from a language perspective, a lot more encompassing. So it talks about the water, but it will include the electrolytes you're referring to. It will include the hormones as well. It will think of yin more as your brain, your lymphatic system, your intracellular hydration, the hydration of your eyes, the hydration of your bowels, the hydration of your skin. And if you take a newborn, or let's take a 6-month before they walk and they get really, really fat and full of collagen and full of everything we wish we had more of, that's a baby in their springtime. Okay. And we go towards a little bit more autumn and they have a lot of moisture. And we have much less. And so when the woman starts to go into perimenopause, her yin starts namely to be more depleted. And so it's going to translate into a lot of things she thinks about. Okay. She's going to have more dizziness and vertigo because think of the brain and the gut-brain axis and think of the vagus nerve as a big tree. The roots are planted in your small and large intestine. Around your heart, around your stomach, around your liver, around your kidney. And all of these roots that gather the 100 billion nerve cells in your body will all gather in a trunk along your spine, form a larger trunk in your neck, and then they're going to plug in a bit like a Tesla in your brain, okay? That gives beautiful leaves. The more the inside of my thorax is beautifully hydrated with yin, the more my leaves are going to be very green. And so as I'm going to age and go from spring to autumn, my roots are going to be more dry and my brain is going to be more dry. So it's going to translate like this. I'm going to have a bit more dizziness, a bit more vertigo, a bit more blurred eyes. I'm going to struggle to find my words. My memory is slightly more poor, but at the same time, I feel more constipated. I go chronically to the bathroom. Then I take a few laxatives and I'm a bit, you know, things are a bit too fluid, then I go back to constipation. I have a bit of vaginal dryness. Then my skin is more and more dry. My lips are more dry. Everything in my body is slightly more dry. And so that's what is referred to as yin in terms of language in the East. And they're going to think about it in a very, very large manner. So with some electrolytes, but not only.

Okay. So what's the answer?

Yeah, that's a great question. So the first thing to probably notice, because it relates to a lot of the things that you've you've said actually, and you've written, and that you live by, is how to manage your fluids overall. Okay. So for example, you talk about a lot of exercise and how you can't exercise in this phase of life the way you used to. Because let's imagine you're doing like intense cardio, like really intense, like HIIT with high impact. Well, you're going to consume your yin left, right, and center. You can't defend yourself anymore. So you're going to hurt yourself. And so exercise, when it's poorly done and the way you would argue don't do it, would be migraine triggering if people were doing that all the time. Yeah? And so managing sweat is important. You need to sweat a little bit, but not as much. Then you also talk about fiber and you talk about too much fiber. And indeed, the fiber, what is really interesting, let's imagine vagus nerve and my gut-brain axis. When I have fiber in my gut, the fiber makes my digestive enzymes redundant because it says, "Hey, free pass. I don't need to be digested. I'm just going to go through." Yeah? And so if you're a bit constipated, initially it helps. And so therefore fiber have a great reputation in the West because they help with constipation. But now let's imagine I only have fiber. I only have fiber for my diet. Then my digestive enzymes become redundant. And so I have fewer of them. And so next time I'm going to eat something, maybe I'm going to feel bloated because I'm not digesting it. And yet it's going down and my small and large intestine are like, "Mayday, mayday, what's that thing? It's not digested. Someone didn't do their job before us. Thank you very much. That's not very helpful." Now we're dealing with all sorts of things that are not digested. And so you have to have a very balanced diet. And not push away starches too much. A starch, if you do a white rice and millet congee, for example, which is a very traditional Chinese recipe, in order to digest a congee, which has no fiber, you have to produce digestive enzymes. So the moment that little bowl of rice and millet with excess water doesn't look really nice, doesn't look very pretty, is really cheap to produce, really not expensive at all, What it's going to force your body to do is to instantly produce a lot more digestive enzymes, and that's going to in turn start to hydrate deep inside your body. And then sometimes we also medicate a lot. Now think about the medication for a minute. So the medication will enter your liver system and will do the job it needs to do. Usually medications in the West are very precise. They go straight to the point. They get the job done. Now, how do they exit the body? And do they? My experience is that they end up in 3 places: in the liver system, increasing the toxicity and therefore increasing migraines. So this is why women who will have migraines, the more they're going to medicate to not have migraines, the more they're going to have something called, in the West and scientifically proven, called rebound migraines and medication overuse headaches. Because the liver is more intoxicated, so through the vagus nerve, the inflammation is really felt. Then it can end up in the blood in form of blood clots and just accumulate in terms of residues. Or more predominantly, it's going to go in my large intestine and just stick around. And then it's going to build that little chronic small inflammation that's going to suck up a lot of my yin. So think of yin also as the water hose of a fireman. That extinguishes inflammation. I don't have a lot. And if I have the water hose, all of these medications that stay all the time, I really consume my yin. And so I'm going to get more chronically constipated. Okay. And so that's something to be mindful about. And also, as we age, sometimes we have to take medication, right? Like sometimes it's just not an option. The more we're going to accumulate them and overlap them, the more we're going to have that state of inflammation and the more we're going to have that dizziness, vertigo, mental lack of clarity, and really think back of the tree. If my roots aren't hydrated, then my leaves can't thrive.

Hey, this is Debra Atkinson, and there is one thing you can't do in the gym at your age, and that's get all the protein that you need. You've got to do that in the kitchen. To make it easy, For myself, not only to get the protein but the fiber, the fruits and vegetables I want daily, I started drinking a smoothie a day 30 years ago. But when I realized all the junk, the sugar, and the extras that you don't want, that I don't want, hiding in most protein powders, that's when I finally caved in after years of saying I will never ever ever sell supplements. Stop skipping, skimping, and sabotaging yourself in the morning after workouts by always being prepared. Look, yep, I agree, real food first, but it's just not convenient to carry a turkey sandwich. Sometimes the protein— and don't forget the fiber— they kill cravings and they boost satiety. And you've got to make it easy to do the right thing. You can use use code PODCAST for 10% off your first order at flipping50.com today.

So this is interesting, and what it's suggesting to me is that this is a vicious circle. You know, we're wanting to create a quick fix or You know, I know there have been times for me, I'm, you know, can't wait to close my eyes if I've got a really bad headache, if I've got a migraine, absolutely can't wait to do that. But then sometimes that being still and quiet will actually make me aware of how it's throbbing. So I will give in as much as I'm trying not to, take some over-the-counter fix. But how is that affecting us? We take an Excedrin, PM or, you know, etc., and migraine. How does that affect the gut and the constipation? That can be good.

Look, medications completely have their place. I think when we're in pain, you know, sometimes you have no choice but to power through, right? If you have children, work, you know, how can you miss on too many things? And, and so for women who suffer from migraines for a lifetime, it's awful, Debra. It's just awful because they're going to have all of these symptoms, for example, trembling sensations in the arms or in the legs. Maybe they get half their body paralyzed. Paralyzed, maybe they start to lose their eyesight, they start to have nausea, throw up, and they have all of these symptoms and they know the attack's coming, which creates a huge level of anxiety and they're afraid to be in pain and they have to cancel all of their plans. And when you are in these types of situations, of course, relying on medication, you know, can be vital and extremely important. And so it's really there to help, but in the long run, it massively hinders And doctors know it, the science knows it. Now, the way out is to tackle the root causes. What is my body complaining about? What is it complaining about? It's a bit the same as if you say, oh, my fire alarm is going on, and the doctor says, oh, take a hammer, and then maybe if you aim the box right, then you can stop the sound. And if that doesn't work, then you can cut the electricity current of the house, and it should technically stop. But then the woman is at the top of her ladder and she's like, oh my God, and there's smoke and my house is on fire. What's wrong with me? You know, I have this and I have that. And those two things belong together. Oftentimes they belong together. The migraine is this signal. It's actually evolutionary. There's this beautiful paper written by Elizabeth Loder, who's a professor from Harvard, and she writes about the evolutionary advantage. Like, why is it 18% of women have migraines? Well, because it's a really smart tool to help you be intuitive and say, hey, Debra, maybe time to relax. Hey, Debra, why don't we exercise differently, you know, than we used to? Hey, why don't we not eat that food as much? And so it was making women very intuitive and even able to predict weather patterns because people who suffer from migraine can be very influenced by weather. And so, yes, over the thousands and millions of years, people with that genetic predisposition survived more because at the core of it, it's a longevity genetic It's positioned today as a neurological disorder, such as if your brain was illogical. But have you ever had your knee hurting or your elbow hurting or your tummy hurting because of no reason? There's always a reason. So why would your brain, the smartest arguably part of your body, why would it complain for no reason? There is a reason. And if you can find it, then all of your symptoms go away and your life's much longer. And that's why that gene made it through the years.

Okay, so when I ask you something, you said not too long ago, you know, if a woman's been dealing with migraines for her whole life, you know, there are moments when you have to do what you have to do, and you are expressing and exuding a lot of empathy at that moment. In your heart of hearts and in that brain of yours, which we know has been around the block, do you believe that maybe is something that we can put a halt to, that there's a reason for it. It's just we have not been looking in the right place.

Yes. Yes. I do that days in and days out for the last 5 years. So look, it took me 3 weeks to learn Spanish and about the same to learn Italian. Arguably my mother tongue's French. But for the last 5 years, I've only done every single day. I'm a mom of two. I work and exercise every day. I'm a good mom every day, but therefore I have to work a little bit every day because a migraine is not a 9-to-5 problem. It is feasible. It is a very, very, very logical signal. And always when a woman says, oh, I still have a migraine or this is not working, I'm like, okay, let's hop online. It means I am not reading you. I am missing something. It's my fault, not yours, because your body will still be logical. It's just that I'm not hearing you properly. There's something that we're missing. And by problem-solving together, and like, there's something in your environment, let me— do you do this? Do you do this? Do you do this? Ah, okay, it's that. Oh, here's why. Oh really? I thought it was healthy, or I thought it was good. And then we change that until we get to the point. And once we get to the point, then the woman will lead the life that she's been always after. And so they have two really, really strong emotions. One is a sweet emotion of gratitude and thinking, oh my God, life is so good. The other one is quite bitter. And so that's That's why I started this podcast called Migraine Heroes, because for me, they're heroes. They fell so many times. They faced so many hurdles in their relationship, in taking care of their kids, in being fired for their migraines, in having to stop their studies, in having to stop their biggest dreams, in lying to everyone and saying they're fine when they're not, just because it's the same disease they talk about for years and they're misunderstood because people think of it as a headache. And, and they will try something again and again and again until they find and that's really a hero journey once you liberate yourself, but you've fallen so many times.

For sure. Talk to me about this. And is there a genetic component, or is that— do you find irrelevant?

Oh yes. So there is 1 to 40 genes, lucky, that have been identified that give migraines. But like you say, it's irrelevant because the body complains for something very logical. Let me give you a very concrete example. It's always nice to have concrete examples. Let's imagine, first of all, a woman in perimenopause who's going to be very constipated. The moment you lubricate the inside of her intestine and the inside of her large and small intestine, you remove the toxicity of the medication, you stimulate her liver system, her bowel movements are going to converge from sort of nothing or rabbit-like pebbles, which is called the type 1, according to the standard indicators, to a type 4, which is that beautiful banana shape comes out easy. And the more she's going to converge to that type 4, the less she's going to have migraines. Very visible. You can see both ends. Another thing that can sometimes happen is that in perimenopause, the body still has stuff it wants to expel, and there's a clock ticking. I have a number of women who have migraines before menstruation, which are different to during menstruation. Sometimes you can have a migraine during menstruation, if they have a few blood clots that are inside of their uterus and the brain is like, mayday, mayday, we need to expel this, this cannot stay. Or they have a cyst or fibroid and the body's like, I don't want this to stay, this is dangerous, this is not safe, and we can't defend ourselves and the doors are going to close at some point. We can no longer expel this. And so it's on a clock to get it out. And so when you let that out, You know, I've had women expel things, you know, of 8 to 10 centimeters. One woman, she expelled a blood clot the size of a baseball. That next day, she no longer had migraines. I can promise you. And she also no longer had anxiety. I think she was very anxious. Her body was anxious, was physically anxious. Was it irrational that she was having migraines? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. There was nothing of a neurological disorder angle. She was profoundly logic, and the migraines completely went away. And when the hard part is to find what is the root cause, because the root cause can be anything. It can really be anything. Let's compare now a man to a woman because it's genetic. Back to your question. I just mentioned that. Yeah, I think it's insightful. So if you say it's genetic, then, well, it should be 50-50, right? Men have it the same as women. It's not the case. It's 5% of boys and girls until they're— by their nature is you know, quite logical in our Western brain. And the moment we hit puberty as women, the incidence is going to triple to quadruple for women. And the moment we go into perimenopause, the incidence increases yet more. And the reason is, if you think of a man or a woman as factories, the men produce sperm, which is really important. A woman has the ability to produce a child. A brain, eyes, a heart, blood vessels, blood itself, bones, nails, hair. Which factory do you think is more complex? Well, clearly the female factory is of a different nature. And so if you had a dashboard to report problems, which is the brain, which dashboard will be likely more to go, you know, with the switchboard open left, right, and center? Well, the females. And so in Chinese, there's an expression that says something along the lines like, if you have cured 10 men, you still haven't cured a single woman, meaning the female body is incredibly more sophisticated than the male body. And the Chinese character for health in Chinese is a woman under a roof. And so the whole emphasis of traditional Chinese medicine is on the female body because they say if you provide security and health for the woman, You have provided security and health for the population.

I believe that. So that is directly in alignment with, you know, under our mission and tagline is we believe there's no more powerful health influencer in the world than a midlife woman.

Mm-hmm. Yes.

I want to, I want to summarize and then I want you to correct my summary, but I think there's so much important here and I think the biggest aha moment potentially for everybody here is that migraines are connected to constipation, and it's not necessarily an either-or, and you also don't have to sign up for both if you, you homeroom mothers who are overachievers. But so where are the traps we don't want to fall into when tackling constipation? And I would say a couple of them too, maybe that you didn't say, and one is ignoring it. That a lot of women simply tolerate it and don't actually realize that you might think of that as your normal, but we can fix this. There's something better and there's a reason that's happening. Too much fiber, you know, and I think that is where everybody goes. And they also go immediately to also more water, which should be helpful. However, you know, we can do too much, too little fiber, or too little diversity in the gut. And what about stress? You know, I mean, when we talk about like migraines and we talk about constipation, where does stress, the, our own perception of what is stress, where does that fall relative to both?

Oh, absolutely. So stress, if you think again of your vagus nerve, like the big tree, we go back to the big tree. The big tree is connected to the liver. It's also connected to the kidney and the kidney system is in charge of stress. And as we age, the liver organ, according to Western science, is going to decrease by 43% in volume, up to 43. So it's almost going to halve. So your ability to detox, your ability to produce in, your ability to produce blood, your ability to clean your breasts, your ability to reproduce, all of that just, you know, is halved. And the kidney system also goes down. They both transition with less power, essentially. And as that happens, you have just less resilience to stress. Now, in the West, we talk about the gut-brain axis as being a two-way street. In the East, they've always said that, not just for 15 years, but for 2,000 years. And they also say that emotions relate to organs and organs relate to emotions as both ways. So the more you age and the more your kidney system is weaker, the more you're going to be feeling stressed. And the more you're stressed, the more your kidney system is going to be weaker. And so it becomes quite difficult because you become quickly in a vicious circle. Now, the more you have a weak kidney system, the more you can have migraines, in particular behind the head and in the shoulders and sort of all those sensations. And so stress will be a huge trigger. Now, for some people, they feel the migraine during the stress phase.

Phase.

For some people, they find the migraine after the stress phase. And so once they relax, so it's a Friday evening, Saturday morning, or weekend or holiday migraine versus—

Have you been looking over my shoulder?

Yeah, it's very different. And you read that differently. And again, a lot of it comes back to language. I think when we say migraine or vertigo or dizziness, it's a word such as if it was one thing. That's absurd. It's the same as if you say migraine, it's the same as if you say, I have pain. You go to the doctor, you say, I have pain. Oh sure. Tell me, are you pregnant and are you in labor? Did you have a stomach bug? Did you break your arm? Did you break your leg? In function of that, we can help you. But if you just say pain, pain, pain, how do you want to be diagnosed well? And so when we say migraine, migraine is a word that, you know, of the dashboard is the same as if you dashboard clicking. Sure. Where does it click? And so is it on top of your head? Is it on your right temple? Is it on your left temple? Is it behind your eyes? Is it behind your right or your left eyes? Is it across your eyebrows? You know, it's all of these things. And what is it coupled with? Do you also, when you feel constipated, have vertigo and dizziness? Do you also lose your eyesight? Do you see blurred? Do you see dots and prisms in your vision? Do you see blurred at night? Do you have a cataract? Do you have a glaucoma? And all of these things will indicate Okay, where in the system is the body having a problem? And from there, it's completely feasible just by adding foods. By the way, I only add foods. You add foods and you repair the system. And once the system is repaired, the brain goes like, oh, thank you. And the woman also feels a very, very, very new sensation. She's like, wow, this body is working. I am being logical. And there is a solution. And no, I'm not crazy. It's a moment of extreme joy, just understanding what your body's trying to tell you. It comes with extreme joy.

This is just so insightful. And you said something there I don't want anybody to miss. You only add foods.

Yeah, I only add foods.

Very interesting.

Yeah.

Okay. For listeners who might be themselves dealing with migraines or constipation or the both of them and got a package deal they didn't know they signed up for, where can they find you, follow you, learn more about how potentially to work with you?

So I have an app called Migraine Heroes and a podcast called Migraine Heroes. So you can go straight in the app or the podcast. And my website is called mynectahealth. And there you can take a test free of charge and meet with me. And so basically, the first step for me is understanding your migraines. And so that consult is just $30. I usually take 60 minutes. Usually it will take me more. I book for 60. I always have buffer. Sometimes it takes, you know, an hour and a half, sometimes 2 hours just to explain you and walk you through all of the domino of imbalances that happen throughout your life. And why are you experiencing the symptoms that you're experiencing right now? How do they relate to the underlying conditions? And what can be done to correct it. And it's a moment where I strongly invite spouse. I strongly encourage spouse to come because spouse are usually very impacted as well. And they love this conversation. We talk about all things vagus nerve and gut-brain axis. They find it very informative. And, and then if that's of interest, then we start working together. And, yeah, and it's quite special. Look, I had a successful career before. I studied at Harvard. I was like working hard and doing this very classic thing. But now I have the most wealthy life I can have, which is, you know, giving people their life back, putting couples back together. And when you hear through the Migrant Heroes podcast, which are all women who are not sponsored, they just come because they have that moment of gratitude and that moment of really, why did I suffer so much? It's beautiful. I start to interview them as a couple because also the woman she transforms, she has a glow. She's just more lively. She says yes to things. She forms relationships. They also tend to lose weight. When the body comes in shape and in order, they have all of these added benefits together with more self-confidence, less stress. They're just thriving women, thriving elders. And this is where society then follows, you know, thriving elders. And maybe in the East we had that for longer. I think it's in the West we, we've lost that really wrongfully. So it means the younger generation are doing all sorts of crazy stuff that they think is going to be just fine when they grow older. And we know from the sidelines, completely not.

Yes. Yes. And you can't always tell them.

Absolutely not. They have to also do their own experiments.

Due diligence. Yes. Thank you so, so much for being here and for breaking this down in such a very unique and authentic way and weaving together the Eastern way of things and your gentle way of communicating it all made it so easy to take in. So I'm sure audience members will be following. I, I will be connecting with you. All the links so that you can connect with Diane will be in the show notes, everyone, that you will find at flipping50.com/migrainesandconstipationinmenopause.

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