Hormonal Migraines

A study writes,

“Fourteen of the migraine patients and none of the controls displayed either consistently high plasma cortisol or an occasional aberrant peak.”

It’s very common for us to have things like fatigue with a dependence on caffeine, restless sleep that is often far shorter than the 8-9 hours needed, cravings for sugary or salty treats, PMS and even mood swings.

But these are not normal.

These are our bodies way of communicating to us that there is a problem, and that the problem is escalating.

Our body is like a web, any one system being pulled on, stressed and strained, is translated into the other systems.

You see, as the process of degeneration goes on in the body, more and more systems are pulled in and affected. This causes more and more symptoms.

Depending on the individual, the area where their brains are affected may be:

• Close to the beginning in the first few years

• Somewhere down the middle 5 or 10 years later

• Or even towards the end 20+ years after the first symptoms of compromise began like is common in menopause

There is so much more to our health and we are nothing like a car. The body doesn’t simply have a part switched out and have chronic disease go away.

Chronic disease like recurrent headaches and migraines are systemic.

When we experience a symptom, it is our bodies way of trying to bring balance back into the equation.

Too many aggressive thoughts and emotions, coupled with exacerbating workouts that go on too long or too hard, coupled with foods that only heat the body and do nothing to cool down the heat already created on all of our other fronts ends with a severely imbalanced equation.

It has to equal out somewhere.

Our body is always running between the 2 polarities that are present in everything, from the heating or cooling foods we eat, to the heating or cooling drinks we drink, to the exhaustive or recuperative exercises we practice, to the restless or rejuvenative nights of sleep, to the quick and hot or slow and soothing breaths we take. Even the aggressive shame based anxiety or calm, cool and connected emotions we feel all go into the equation of our bodies balance. (Excerpt from the 10 steps program)

There are three areas we want to look to and 3 systems we assess in anyone looking for information on connecting what is going on below the surface and what is causing the pain in their head.

1. The stress hormone that kills your bodies ability to repair

When we are looking at our bodies overall functioning and we want to understand one of the most reliable indicators of how much, how little or how well our body is responding to the stressors in our lives then this well known glucocorticosteroid is a no brainer.

When we wake up it should shoot up within minutes of us opening our eyes, before we go to sleep it should be at an all time low and allow our more feminine regenerative hormones to shoot up and give us the restful recuperative sleep we need.

The test I use is called an HPA stress profile and this shows me how my cortisol is fluctuating throughout the day, is it shooting up in the morning, are we getting a steady drop throughout the day and are we at an all time low and ready for bed in the evening?

This test tells it all to us and gives me an idea of how well your body is adapting to stress, if your blood sugar is staying balanced, how well your hormones are doing, if your immune system is getting the reset it needs every day, if your moods have the resources they need to remain level and if you are able to take advantage of your sleeping time.

You see, cortisol is a very stimulating hormone, known as a stress hormone but it is responsible for almost everything in our body because it is a controlling hormone. It will dictate how all of the other systems in our body function.

If we have an imbalance here, it can cripple our bodies ability to heal. Whether that be from:

• Poor circadian rhythms

• Blood sugar imbalances

• Mental/emotional stress

• Trauma

• Infections

• Nutrient Deficiencies

This is a great way for us to know how stressed we really are, to get an objective view and understand how long this stress has really been going on. But it also gives us an idea of how long it will take to start feeling better.

When your cortisol is balanced, your inflammation is too and this provides a massive relief to the pain and symptoms that we experience.

See the graph below from a study. The white dots are controls and black dots are chronic migraine sufferers. The chronic migraine sufferers have significantly increased cortisol levels.

2. The blood sugar balancer

There is always a balance in the body. Where there is a hot and aggressive hormone, there is another hormone on the opposite side of the spectrum that helps us build and cool and calm.

In terms of cortisol, which in the body brings blood sugar UP

We have insulin, which brings blood sugar DOWN

Where cortisol is well known to release sugar into the blood in the case of situations where we are in danger, threatened or enter into “fight or flight mode” also known as fight/flight/flee/freeze and befriend mode. When our body senses danger, it makes resources available to us through cortisols raising of our energy levels and release of blood sugar.

But if this is happening all of the time, if we are constantly missing sleep, caffeine dependant and living in stress mode, then this puts a massive strain on our bodies.

With high cortisol comes high insulin.

Insulin can be thought of as the key to a door on our cells. The insulin unlocks these doors and allows the sugar in the blood to flood into the cell to be used for fuel so that the blood sugar doesn’t cause us any damage in the blood.

Remember that a diabetic who has no insulin can be put into a coma with enough of a blood sugar imbalance.

When insulin is balanced, blood sugar is balanced. But when insulin has to be raised because of chronic overexposure to calories or chronic stresses like the ones listed above, then insulin becomes too common place in the blood.

Eventually, if our cells are not processing the sugars into energy and have no reason to use up their energy stores, they will begin taking away the doors on the cell. These doors are known as receptor sites.

As insulin goes UP, receptor sites go DOWN.

This is known as insulin resistance.

And, this poses a large problem because we will need more and more insulin, to maintain the same balance.

More and more insulin, leading to more and more resistance by the cells.

So what do we do?

We cannot simply add more insulin like is often done in diabetic management because this does not address the ROOT of the cause.

There are two sides to this equation if we do not include the complex energetics inside of the cell.

There is the increased blood sugar on one side of the cell and the decreased need for utilization of energy on the other side.

So we want to resolve all of the above issues to bring our cortisol and blood sugar back into balance.

Then

We want to Increase our bodies ability to utilize blood sugar and give it something it needs to use it for, like exercise!

But this is just the beginning of the vicious cycle because everything we do to our aggressive or “yang” hormones, we are also doing to our regenerative or “yin” hormones.

3. Hormones – The depletion that gives us symptoms which will not go away

In the HPA stress profile there is half of the equation which is cortisol and its rhythm but then there is another half which is DHEA-S.

DHEA is one of our “mother” hormones and it helps produce a number of other hormones. When in balance, it also helps balance out the effects of cortisol.

But we are not balanced. If we already have symptoms and systems breaking down, we have lost homeostasis here.

As cortisol rises to meet the demands of whatever stress whether acute or chronic is going on, so will DHEA to balance it out.

The cool part about DHEA is that it forms hormones like our estrogens and testosterone.

But the rise of these hormones to help balance out cortisol is problematic.

It drains our bodies resources very quickly.

Our acute response inflammatory hormones are extremely resource intensive and demand a lot from us.

The way we can think of it is a plane taking off.

When a plane is building up speed on the run way to take off, you will have to give the power full throttle to give it enough juice to get there. If you don’t, the plane wont be able to lift off before the runway runs out.

But full throttle is not sustainable and it will burn out the engine if it continues indefinitely. It should only be used acutely for short periods of time to help resolve the situation, help us fight the tiger, deal with the infection, get over a relationship or get us into the air.

Our hormones are very costly molecules and after a few days/weeks/months even years, they will not be able to maintain a high degree of stress without rest and recuperation.

This cripples our hormonal system.

Soon enough we are not able to:

• Reap the benefits of exercise

• Regulate female hormones involved in the menstrual cycle to avoid PMS

• Our blood sugar is hanging on by a thread and any sweets that we now have cravings for send us into aggravations and drive up our trigger levels

• Maintain steady levels of hormones to give us energy as our body starts yelling at us and forcing us to “slow down” with fatigue and all manner of irritable moods

And here begins the cycle.

At the beginning it may have just been simple symptoms like some PMS which everyone tells you is “normal,” or some fatigue which is almost always medicated with caffeine.

But over time as system after system becomes affected by these imbalances we develop more symptoms.

The headaches may have come with the loss of hormonal balance, the loss of immune integrity because of imbalanced cortisol or maybe it took all the way to the point where an infection took up housing in our gut because of the loss of immunity and lack of digestive capacity from the stress.

There are so many areas we break down when this system is compromised and without knowing how compromised we are, we just wait until another system starts showing symptoms.

Have you ever had your cortisol rhythm tested? I invite you to join me on this teaching journey by sending me a message here.

One of the most common and regular triggers out there is the first day of a woman’s cycle, her period. Luckily these are largely caused by hormones which regulate themselves quite well when supported. In this article I will be answering the question, can menstrual migraines with aura be prevented?

What is a menstrual migraine and why can auras come with them?

A menstrual migraine is one that comes with the menses.

Menses are the first few days of your period when you bleed.

The reason this time of the month is usually such a problem is because estrogen and progesterone are at an all time low.

The menstrual cycle begins with day 1 being the first day of bleeding. Days 1-14 are when estrogen generally rises the highest with day 14 being around the time of ovulation and the best time to conceive. Days 14-28 there is a small spike in estrogen but a large increase in progesterone followed by a drop in both progesterone and estrogen by day 28. This is followed by the period once again.

The large fluctuations during this time can be enough to push us over our threshold and cause our brain to shut down.

If the weak link in our brain is our visual centers then we can experience a visual aura when this shut down occurs.

If it is in our auditory brain centers then we may experience an auditory aura etc.

To see our full presentation on the 3 Linchpins That Destroy Hormones and Leave Your Brain in Pain click here.

4 Huge factors that impact our menstrual migraines during our cycle and their auras

The first factor we need to consider is our progesterone.

Progesterone

Progesterone is one of the most important and protective hormones that women have. It not only balances the effects of estrogen but it can also become estrogen or testosterone based on the bodies needs.

But progesterone is fragile because of its reaction to stress and its need for a safe environment to work properly.

The body has a hierarchy of priorities.

It always chooses Survival over Sex.

It’s actually a feedback mechanism it uses to keep you from becoming pregnant when there is famine or war or too much scarcity around you.

The body makes survival and sex hormones out of the same resources.

But it will always choose survival.

This means that whenever we are in chronic stress or even if we may not necessarily think we are but our body feels like we are through the feedback of all of its systems and how well they are functioning…

Then it will divert all of its resources into creating survival and stress hormones leaving sex hormones dry.

Progesterone is especially susceptible to this which means we want to make sure that we are relieving stress on a few different levels:

• Mental and emotional stress in the form of fears and safety issues

• Physical stress in the form of musculoskeletal imbalances, tightness or overtraining

• Dietary stress in the form of too many sensitive and inflammatory foods

• Chemical stress in the form of off gassing products and polluted air space

• Electromagnetic stress causes by electronic pollution

The 5 most common mistakes guide goes into more depth for addressing these stressors and how they affect the nervous system which you can get free here.

Estrogen

Estrogen is a critical part of women’s health but it also has its negative effects. It is responsible for releasing nitric oxide into the blood which triggers vasodilation and may aggravate sensitive blood vessels in the brain because of it.

The key with estrogen is not having too much or too little.

In terms of too much estrogen we want to make sure that our body is not creating too much of it and that we are not taking in too much environmental estrogen.

Estrogen is wide spread in our environment because of our reliance of rubbers, plastics, oils and other synthetics which is causing many changes in the wildlife around us as well as in ourselves.

Some of the largest sources are:

• High estrogen foods

• Makeups and other hygiene products

• Plastic containers and synthetic fibers(BPA)

• Cleaning products and fragrances(Obesogens)

But we also want to make sure our estrogen isn’t falling too low and this is where our doc may suggest taking the birth control pill to supplement a little bit of estrogen every day and avoid harsh drops.

This needs to be carefully monitored and you should make sure that before you start taking any estrogen that you get tested at different times in your cycle.

See this pin on how your estrogen and progesterone fluctuate throughout your cycle.

Testosterone

Testosterone has been shown to be a massive success in helping with migraine headaches.

One study found that 92% of patients improved on subcutaneous testosterone and 74% had a 0 severity headache score in 3 months time.

Testosterone is not just a male hormone as women create it as well but just much less than a man.

Both men and women can benefit from testosterone but again this is a hormone and affects every system in our bodies so it needs to be regulated through testing as there may be side effects.

The fourth and final factor that changes with these hormonal up and down swings is glutamate.

Glutamate is a neurotransmitter in the brain and is completely normal for brain function. It helps carry thoughts between neurons in the brain.

Glutamate is an excitatory neurotransmitter and excites nerve cells in the brain.

But there are also glutamate scavengerd and glutamate transporters which make sure any excess glutamate is picked up and being taken to where it needs to be used instead of exciting cells where it shouldn’t be.

During the menstrual cycle glutamate will fluctuate and reach its highest points around the end and beginning of the cycle.

The problem is that women have far less glutamate scavengers and transporters than men and this leaves it out causing it to excite cells.

If we have neurons that are already having issues producing energy, if they aren’t able to maintain normal concentrations of minerals and process oxygen and glucose properly then this excitation becomes too much.

It may actually lead to the over excitation and death of nerve cells called excito-toxicity but once this starts it can spread to surrounding nerve cells creating a wave of over-excitation followed by a blackout.

This is known as cortical spreading depression or CSD and implicated in the creation of migraine auras which you can read more about in our article on 7 essential skills for how to stop a migraine aura.

So what can we do about it?

Glutamate is most well known as MSG or mono-sodium glutamate.

But glutamate is found in almost every food at least in small amounts so what makes MSG so bad?

MSG is a form of free glutamic acid which means it’s not bound up to other nutrients like amino acids and fibre.

This makes it get absorbed and enter the blood stream very quickly and gives it the chance to enter the brain. We are especially susceptible if we have leaky brain like I describe in this video.

Some of the most common sources of free glutamic acid are the same ones that have high histamine and tyramine levels which are also migraine triggers in some people.

These foods include:

• Matured, cured, preserved foods

• Fish sauce

• Soy sauce and protein

• Bone broths and meats cooked for long periods of time

• Malted barley used in breads and beer

• Dairy casein

• Wheat gluten

The best way to go about removing free glutamate would be to first remove processed and packaged foods as they can contain numerous forms of hidden glutamate such as the ones in the pin below.

Then if that’s not enough you can go ahead and remove some of the natural sources of it like those above and once symptoms have settled start introducing them one by one into your diet until you find specific triggers.

It’s important to note that glutamate may only be a problem if there is also chronic inflammation going on so this needs to be addressed as well with something like turmeric or ginger.

By supporting your progesterone’s natural protective effect and making sure your estrogen and testosterone are balanced with glutamate you can make amazing strides with your menstrual or hormonal migraines and auras.

See our video on why do menstrual or hormonal migraines happen and what to do below.

Make sure to read our article on 7 essential skills for how to stop a migraine aura here.

Do you experience menstrual or hormonal migraines?

Let me know in the comments below and make sure to share this with someone who needs the information.