9 Shocking Things Your Doctor Doesn't Tell You About Migraines

9 Shocking Things Your Doctor Doesn’t Tell You About Migraines

66% of migraine sufferers agreed that they do not have access to effective treatments in 2017.

The way I deal with the frustration of my doctors approach to my health is by understanding that:

– They only have a few minutes with each patient because of our current insurance based model of medicine

– They have to quickly sift through symptoms to find the drug that will match them

– They have to prescribe as safely, effectively and efficiently as possible in that time

In this post we are going to be talking about the 9 shocking things your doctor doesn’t tell you about migraines

1. Medication, botox and surgery isn’t the only thing you can do

There are dozens of different modalities and substances you can take that have shown lots of promise for migraines.

Many of which work better than the preventive migraine drugs that were all invented for other reasons than migraine.

For example, CoQ10 is a nutrient our body uses in its energy metabolism and as an antioxidant and immune regulator that has shown benefit in studies with migraines and has an amazing safety profile.(Study)

There is also a really big fact that most doctors will never bring up to you and part of it is because they have no knowledge in the area, they are not specifically educated on migraine and telling you would cause them to lose revenue.

It’s food.

Food has been the most successful migraine reliever for years and some studies have shown that 100% of patients improve with dietary changes. (Study)

2. They have no knowledge of nutrition, lifestyle or environmental medicine and especially not for migraine

“Most graduating medical students continue to rate their nutrition preparation as inadequate.” (Study)

The migraine mechanism exists in many people and some experts would even say that it exists in most.

The problem is that we are entering into a time period where the triggers for this mechanism are growing exponentially.

From the outgassing of chemical fumes from new cars, new houses and new products…

To the ever increasing electromagnetic frequencies we are being subjected to through radio, cellphones, routers, smart meters and other “smart” electronics…

To even things like mold, household cleaning products and cultural perceptions of beauty that causes us to hold improper breathing patterns, which exert undue pressure on our necks and trigger.

Nutrition or lack of as well as environmental and lifestyle stressors play large parts into how high our threshold is and how high our trigger levels are.

Without addressing these we can hardly hope to make long term changes to our health and affect the frequency, intensity and severity of our migraines.

But doctors are not well educated in these areas and because of this the majority of people that go to their doctors for help end up missing key pieces to the migraine puzzle.

It’s up to us to get educated and seek out well rounded health practitioners that can help us tackle these areas.

This is why I provide the 10 steps program for those who want to get deeper into their health than ever before.

3. They know little to nothing about migraines except what their list of medications tells them

The average doctor is little interested in the specifics of migraine.

Through their scope of practise they are only required to be able to assess and diagnose a migraine and look down their list of medications for a possible fit for treatment.

The majority of them other than neurologists and headache specialists do not keep current with the literature and do not know the specifics of the migraine battle.

They don’t understand the vast number of problems and difficulties that come with migraine, social stigma and treatment unless they have migraines themselves.

It’s important to understand they are trying their best but they should not be an end all be all source for migraine treatment.

Ask them to refer you to a specialist who will know more and make sure to get a dietary assessment from a nutritionist as well as a physical assessment from someone like a NUCCA chiropractor or CHEK practitioner as a good baseline.

4. Your health is the most important factor in your tendency to migraine

When we think of migraine we need to break it down into the basis of how a migraine comes to be.

We have our triggers which are the accumulation of the stresses in our lives from dietary, to emotional, to environmental, to hormonal, to mental and so forth.

We call this our trigger level.

Then we have our threshold level which is the level that if we cross, our migraine will trigger.

Then we have the bodies base functions that are constantly repairing, detoxifying and dealing with the stresses life throws at us.

These are the foundation principles for health and if we keep them fine tuned, our body can deal with a massive amount of stress and still come out okay.

The thing is, our health is implicated in all three of these.

It will determine how much our body can compensate for stressors and how many stressors it can take before we trigger.

Making sure we stay healthy through all the different avenues of health keeps our threshold high, triggers low and foundation principles balanced so that our body functions at its best.

5. The most successful, well studied relief therapy for migraine is diet

Diet is huge and often understated.

This study found that when an average of 10 foods were avoided there was a dramatic fall in the number of headaches per month, with 85% becoming headache free.(Study)

Many migraineurs know their trigger foods because soon after them, they trigger, and we all know pain teaches us best.

But there is also a huge number of foods our body is sensitive to 1-3 days after ingestion that affects us that isn’t so obvious.

Then there are the foods that are just generally unhealthy and cause inflammation and oxidation as well as provide little to no nutrients.

Between these groups of “trigger foods” we have a few studies that have shown amazing results for migraine sufferers that are far better than the mediocre results from many of the standard “migraine drugs” like topamax.

Without negative side effects, but plenty of positive ones.

For more information on food triggers get my food triggers guide here.

6. Many people recover from severe migraine without medication

It happens every day.

Finding the causes of why so much stress and tension is building in the body is far more effective in the long term than medicating and trying to push the problem away.

It’s important to remember that chemicals act on only a few pathways and most of them for migraine are unknown as to how they work…

But they create so much distress in the body that it gets shocked out of its regular pain generation and we see some benefit and think its working(Queue the placebo).

This is why they usually come with a list of “side effects” which are actually direct effects because the body is trying to compensate for the damage they are doing.

When dealing with medications it’s important to make sure you supplement for the nutritional deficiencies they are causing and a simple site like mytavin.com can help a lot.

You’ll notice that many of the migraine preventive nutrients(magnesium, CoQ10, B vitamins) will be on the list of depleted nutrients caused by the drugs.

For example topamax causes glutathione(antioxidant) and folic acid(B9) to be depleted.

This is problematic for long term health and all drugs should be screened for deficiencies.

7. Migraine is a protective mechanism and a headache is a type of migraine

Proposed by Dr David Buccholz is the idea that migraine is actually the main mechanism by which all headaches come about.

He states that a headache is simply a mild more controllable migraine and that what is classified as a migraine is a headache that the body has a much harder time recovering from once triggered.

This makes sense if we think of headaches as a fire in the brain.

A small fire that only causes a little bit of damage is easily put out by our bodies firefighters and only causes minor symptoms like pain because there is little damage.

On the other hand, when our trigger levels get really high and a wildfire starts because of way too much inflammation…

Not having enough nutrients/antioxidants which our bodies firefighters use as water causes the damage to go out of control.

The fire burns longer, gets hotter, causes more damage and because of this creates more symptoms like nausea, vertigo, vision loss, radiating pain etc.

When we can see the entire fire for what it is,

We can take steps to support our firefighters and provide them with the nutrients and foundations,

For them to put the fire out and help the amazing ecosystem that is our brain to regrow stronger and healthier preventing us from trigger the next time stress gets the best of us.

8. The more responsibility you take for your health the better your migraines will be

Stay away from the blame game and making it anyone’s fault.

These are just the circumstances we’ve been given.

But as soon as we can take responsibility for it, we can move from a place of power.

The power to make the change and get the help we need is in our own hands and we are far stronger that way.

Instead of being stuck in a “fix me” mentality, we can move to “let’s find solutions” and act from a place of problem solving instead of being stuck in the victim mentality.

Take a stand for the beautiful body that you are taking care of for these few brief years on this planet and think of it as your friend.

If you were taking care of your friend and wanted the best possible scenario for them with the best chance at finding a solution that works for them, what would you do.

Research, get educated on migraines and what all the health practitioners use to help their patients.

From a headache specialist to a nutritionist to a CHEK practitioner, acupuncturist and craniosacral therapist.

There are many amazing solutions that can get you back to living a normal life.

The catch is that only you live in your body 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and only you can make the right decisions moment to moment so empowering yourself is a must.

When you see your doctor, make sure you are taking an active role and pre-educating yourself on options and consequences for long term health.

They will be happy to see that you are actively searching for solutions with them and looking into areas their scope might not cover so that they can help even more patients in the future.

9. They often get paid by device and drug companies to sell their products

It’s not uncommon for companies that create drugs and products to pay for expensive dinners and pay doctors to attend “seminars” where they learn about the use of their drugs and devices.

But this can provide a conflict of interest as some of these gifts are extremely generous and create biases in the doctors perception of what to use for their patients.

There are two sites that show some information about doctor kickbacks such as openpaymentsdata.com and projectpropublica.com.

The problem is that it’s not easy to find out BUT luckily it is becoming less and less of a problem as more measures are put in place to keep these conflicts of interest from happening.

When receiving a prescription it’s important to cost compare in your area and online.

See if there are non brand name alternatives as they can be 10x cheaper in some cases and be weary of your doctor continually prescribing expensive brand names.

Overall there are many pieces that aren’t covered in the quick few minutes we have with our doctor but as long as we stay educated we can come from a much better place and put ourselves on a healthier path that doesn’t cause more problems than we initially came with.

To take the burden off of doctors and make one resource for migraineurs to learn about and deal with all the different areas mind AND body stress comes in I created the 10 Steps program.

This program covers mental, emotional, physical, dietary and environmental stressors but also has some bonuses like what detoxification actually means and how reducing our bodies toxic load can alleviate symptoms.

To start the 10 steps program click here.

Is there something your doctor does that you don’t agree with?

The Foundation Principles of Migraine Health

Worldwide there are approximately 22 500 000 migraine attacks every day.

Migraine attacks aren’t a Root Cause – they’re a symptom of something underlying.

Shifting Perspective

When we look through a kaleidoscope, we see many multiples of reflections of whatever we are looking at. But these pictures are not the actual object, just reflections.

This is how migraines work. Evolution didn’t spend millions of years just to end up crippling a seventh of the population.

The body uses whatever it can to tell you that somethings wrong. Be it a migraine, skin issues, depression or gas.

Its like putting your hand on a hot stove, if you didn’t have a pain reflex, you would hold it there until your hand was so badly hurt that it stopped functioning.

Without these warning signs we would have no way to gauge when we are doing something wrong. We have to be tough to get through the pain of migraines, but we have to be gentle with ourselves to learn what it is that’s hurting us, whether it be emotional pain, intolerant foods, poor environmental conditions, lack of nutrients or parasites.

Looking at the Root Cause

The problem is getting a proper assessment that is functional in our day to day life that gives us solid steps to take towards healing the root.

How do we do this ourselves?

It all begins with a log.

Keeping a proper daily exercise, diet, sleep and emotion log is un-waiveringly one of the most important steps you can take to getting to the root.

This benefits you twice because it not only gives you the ability to be the detective in your own life but if you ever end up lost without a paddle it allows a skilled holistic health practitioner to easily get a record of all of the events, triggers and upsets that have been happening in your life that are regularly lost to memory.

When you can begin to tune-in to your own feelings and functioning you can begin to take a step back and say “ hmmm I notice that when I work late two nights in a row, I skip my winding down at home.

This cuts the stress relief of being with my family which, in the first place, is the reason I am working so much.

Then this ends in burning the wick at both ends which cuts even more time out of work and family and leading me to a migraine on the fourth day.

The log is the first step, but creating a foundation of health is the second.

How to support the body

A foundation in health can be found through applying the 6 foundation principles and gauging where your individuality lies within them.

When this foundation is flowing like it should, our hormones and blood sugar are stable, energy and creativity is high, our digestion is repairing and lymphatics are removing congestion.

We come from a place of abundance instead of scarcity because we feel solid.

1. Thinking

There is nothing more important than having a system for where to guide your thinking. When we have a system we don’t have to rely on the random fancies of our thoughts to whatever whim they take.

It all begins with growing a dream and goals out of our desires and fears.

Something that makes us burn inside and want to create and heal, but also keeps the hungry wolves of our nightmares away.

This dream needs to have something concrete that it can leave behind and be known by so as to satisfy the greater functionings of our mind and soul. This legacy is forged out of the world we want to create for our family, friends and children and what you want them to know you by.

These dreams are fueled and rooted in our loves. Our loves feed the burning fire of our dreams and are made of the things we want to achieve them for. Whether it be for our own desire to become healthy and pain free, or to be able to give 110% to our careers, or to be there for our children when they grow up. The love is our day to day fuel that feeds us to be better.

When we are clear on our dream that we want to create, legacy we want to leave behind and the loves that fuel it, healing is easy and natural.

– Create a crystal clear picture with step by step instructions on how you will get to your dream

– Dedicate yourself to it, if you are getting migraines then maybe big macs are not the best way to get to your dream

– Commit to finding who and what you need to know to achieve it, find someone that’s done it and learn what they did

2. Breathing

Breathing is absolutely essential but rarely talked about. Nobody tells you that monitoring your breathing can tell you if your body is stressed or relaxed and how to bring down your cortisol and calm the body or prepare it to do battle with the day.

When we breath, we should be inhaling 2/3 into our abdomen and 1/3 into our chest. The breath should be about 6-10 seconds long in total.

The average person has a much quicker breath and this causes a stress response from the body. It can also be because of a stress response or a reaction to eating too much acidic sugary food.

If you find that you don’t breath into your abdomen you can practise laying on a flat surface with a water bottle on your stomach and purposefully raising and lowering the bottle as you breath in and out of your abdomen until your diaphragm is retrained.

If you find that you don’t breath into your chest you can try this:

  • Take a seat and make sure you are sitting up

  • Put your shoulders back and down

  • Inhale and hold your breath

  • Inhale more and hold it

  • Inhale again and hold it

  • Then inhale a fourth time and hold it for a few seconds to feel your chest and shoulders expanding. Don’t let your shoulders raise up.

  • This will help promote stretching of tight muscles around the top of the lungs that prevent expansion

These two simple techniques have solved chronic headaches that have lasted for decades in many patients once they learn how to do it right.

3. Drinking

Proper hydration can be difficult especially at the beginning of a healing journey. When we’ve been dehydrated for so long, our body will take any chance it can to start flushing out toxins that were previously unable to be dealt with because of a lack of resources.

At the end of the day, it’s water that gives us a majority of our energy because most people walk around with more than enough caloric energy.

If you drink much less than half your bodyweight(lbs) in ounces of water a day then you are at high risk of needing some hydration.

Hydrating and not just adding more toxins begins with finding a clean pure water source like a local artesian well or finding a reliable water filtration company.

If you are not sure how many minerals are present in your water, add a pinch of sea salt because the minerals are what suck water into our tissues.

Avoid plastic and tap water at all costs.

Remember, “the solution to pollution is dilution” because we are made of water and this is highly understated.

4. Eating

It can be quite simple to begin eating a healing self sustaining diet, but when we run into problems like migraines there can be many many factors that change what our diets need to consist of and this is why I recommend doing a rotation diet and food logging.

As migraineurs we can run into many problems with diet that we most likely aren’t even aware of because of our variety of symptoms and foods with dozens of ingredients.

Depending on the case, a patient may need to go anywhere from: ketogenic to paleo to antifungal to low amine and anywhere in between.

Doing allergy tests doesn’t help either because our bodies desires and intolerances can change from one day to the next based on its needs.

And being able to tell our triggers can be extremely hard when a food that we eat on day 1 does not end up triggering us until day 3.

Start off paleo, it’s really simple, wholesome, nutritious and eliminates many of the additives preservatives and chemicals we find in our day to day food supply causing us aggravation.

5. Moving

Moving is simple when we think of the primal patterns of movement, Walk(jog run), lunge, squat, twist, pull, push and bend.

These are the basis for all of our movements and it’s absolutely crucial we can perform these movements without pain or else an assessment should be done by a qualified practitioner like a CHEK practitioner.

Our body is made up of what we call fascia, fascia is like a web of tissue that interconnects our whole body and can be the reason why a problem in our foot, could be causing an imbalance in our head giving us pain.

If we start to notice a reduction in our ability to perform any of the primal pattern movements it’s imperative to roll it out, stretch it out and strengthen it or find a qualified practitioner to help you make sure its not causing your migraines.

Getting out in the sun and sweating when we can is a huge bonus to our immunity, lymph, digestion, emotions and hormones. This effectively strengthens our body as a whole, because it’s what we were designed to do.

6. Sleeping

Sleep needs to be deep, undisturbed, restful and refreshing.

Ideally we need to sleep between dusk and dawn as our repairing hormones are peaking for physical regeneration between 10pm-2am and our psychologicalhormones are primed for repair from 2am-6am.

Not all sleep is the same so make sure you optimize your sleeping environment.

No computers tvs or lights that stay blinking all night as they can cause a cortisol response. Try and block out all outside light and noise with good windows and blinds or try a sleeping mask and ear plugs.

Winding down is one of the most important aspects and I find journaling my thoughts of the day as well as writing a list of things I have to do the next day or few days really helps me let go of them and know that I can pick the thoughts right back up where I left them in the morning. On the paper not in your head.

Just as it takes about an hour for the sun to set, our bodies are adapted to take an hour of preparation for them to be able to drop our cortisol(energy/stress hormone) and flood us with melatonin(sleep/repair hormone).

Take the time to do something non-stimulating, no screens or “blue” lights which are lights usually given off by fluorescent, LED and TV screen lighting. A simple addition to your sleep arsenal is a pair of amber glasses that block the blue light from entering your eyes.

If you just can’t fall asleep, use magnesium before bed, it’s the missing mineral in our 21st century diets. An epsom salt bath, a magnesium supplement or a magnesium spray are great ways to add what’s known as the “relaxation mineral.”

Remember it’s absolutely crucial to cover the foundation principles of health before starting therapies that might just become palliatives and prevent you from actually “healing” and instead just “managing” your migraines.

It can be likened to having the engine light turn on in your car. Not covering the foundation principles and adding more things to stop the pain would be like going into the dashboard and breaking the engine light. In the end, the engine still has a problem that can be getting progressively worse, and now you aren’t even aware.

Homeopathy for Migraines

This is where the magic and wonder of homeopathy comes in. These little white pills are minute amounts of medicinal substances that create a remembering effect in the body. They are like jumper cables in that they amp up the immune system of the body to speed up restoring balance from the inside out.

Homeopathy in migraines are extremely helpful as they have no toxic side effects and prompt the body to begin healing the very core of what is causing the symptoms in the first place, whether it be sensitivities from a toxic liver, too many heavy metals, overburdened immunity, sluggish lymphatics an over run digestive system and more.

Some studies like this one have shown huge efficacy in using homeopathic medicine to permanently reduce the severity of migraines by prescribing homeopathic remedies that are targeted to the individual person and their set of symptoms and experiences and not just a migraine.

There Are Hundreds Of Homeopathic Remedies For Head Pain

Homeopathy has thousands of different remedies that can be applicable in a variety of cases but it all depends on how the “totality” of the symptoms of the person comes up.

For example if a migraineur finds barometric pressure differences to be an extremely important trigger, the homeopath may choose to include the rubric

(Generalities; weather; change of; agg.; barometer changes:)

Which has the remedies:

(achy cinnb gels MERC PHOS psor RHOD rhus-t tub)

But there are 9 different remedies that all have different pictures they present with.

In the end its all about looking at the whole person and finding a remedy that matches who that person is to the “picture” of the remedy.

Wonderful things can happen to migraines when homeopathy is used in conjunction with supporting the body.

And the body can only be supported properly as a whole, because that’s what it is.

This is why it is so important to find a great holistic health practitioner that looks at the root cause, and understands what it’s like to go through migraines so that they can guide you out.

Complex and Complicated Migraines

7 Great Tips for Complex and Complicated Migraines

A complex migraine can be incredibly hard for you to treat and even worse when complicated with things like trauma, comorbidities and physical changes.

It’s usually the more difficult patients that come to me so I’ve dealt with many of these cases.

It’s always most important to address the biggest stressors and focus on the root causes for long term relief.

In this article I’m going to cover 7 great tips for complex and complicated migraines.

Before I start, here’s a great video on complex migraines:

Here is a statistic on some common symptoms reported by people with complex migraine:

7 Great Tips for Complex and Complicated Migraines Infographic

1. Get a full physical assessment from a skilled physical therapist like a CHEK practitioner, NUCCA chiropractor or osteopath

Physical issues can be a massive source of stress on the neck, shoulders and head that won’t be fixable through medication alone.

Having a medical doctor give you a physical assessment is never enough because their specialty is not in structural assessments.

There can be a number of physical relationships between muscles, tendons, ligaments and bone that affect the body non stop and create tension on the head.

These therapists can give you manual therapy and take home exercises to help undo years of physical stress on the body and fix common contributors to complex migraine headaches like posture and subluxations of vertebrae.

You can find a NUCCA Chiropractor near you here: http://www.nucca.org/directory/

A CHEK practitioner near you here:

http://www.chekconnect.com/app/findpractitioner

An Osteopath near you here:

https://doctorsthatdo.org/

2. Have a functional medicine practitioner hear your case and send the appropriate functional lab tests to you

Functional medicine practitioners and naturopaths are the all stars of the medical chronic disease care world.

If you are experiencing chronic, constant, complex and complicated migraine headaches then you need to have the right laboratory tests done.

But a regular GP will likely not do this for you.

These tests can include:

  • A full hormonal panel not just the standard hormonal tests run by GPs

  • A GI map that tells you about dysbiosis, parasites, infections and so much more

  • A micronutrient analysis to see if your nutrient levels are low which can easily make you susceptible to a whole host of problems(magnesium, vitamin D, vitamin B12, zinc, selenium, B vitamins)

You can find a functional medicine practitioner near you here:

https://www.ifm.org/find-a-practitioner/

You can find a naturopath near you here:

https://www.naturopathic.org/AF_MemberDirectory.asp?version=2

3. Make sure your MD has given you an assessment, taken blood work and sent you for an MRI to rule out anything more serious

It’s absolutely essential your primary care physician(PCP) has gone through your case, heard your story, sent you for the routine testing and you have a baseline in case anything changes.

This will also rule out a few things they can find that may be underlying the migraines because as we know, migraines are often a symptom of something deeper.

Because I do things holistically I often run into migraine sufferers who have been completely mistreated by their doctors and not listened to at all.

Do not stand for this, fire them just like you would with anyone working on your house.

If they don’t want to listen, ignore you, talk down to you or aren’t giving you satisfactory results, give them the boot.

You’ll be happy you did because a good doc can make all the difference.

4. Have a holistic health coach go through your entire life with you

Holistic health coaches are the new GPs of the chronic disease care world.

They are like the functional medicine practitioners and naturopaths except they have much more time to talk with you and go through the nitty gritty.

Do not ignore the nitty gritty.

The nitty gritty is all those things that contribute to the body’s stress load that raises our trigger levels and lowers our threshold level.

This can include:

– Environmental toxicity coming from:

  • Hygiene products

  • Makeup and care products

  • Offgassing caused by house, clothing and vehicles

  • Electromagnetic fields

  • Blue light

  • Living location

– Dietary toxicity and absence of nutrients

– Physical stress and lack of or excess

– Emotional overwhelm

– Mental excess

– Improper breathing patterns

– Sleep insufficiency

– Circadian dysregulation

and so much more.

In a world that has become increasingly synthetic, these are specific reasons we are experiencing more headaches than ever before.

Our genes evolved to be really good at how nature functions and the last 100 years have flipped it on its head.

A holistic health coach can help you figure out what caused so much stress on your physiology, long before the straw broke the camel’s back.

5. Get your foundations solid

We’ve talked about the foundation principles before and go into depth about them in module 7 of the 10 steps program.

They are essential for everything your body has to do at all times to function properly.

Just one of them being severely out of balance is enough to create more headaches than you can deal with.

It’s super simple but extremely powerful once you understand them.

They are critical for your body to clean up waste and bring in nutrients.

The problem is that most people are not doing them correctly and this is leading to the massive amount of chronic disease we see today.

Not only that but they directly contribute to headaches.

If you want your body to love you and give you pain free days you need to learn how to:

– Think right

– Drink right

– Eat right

– Breath right

– Sleep right

– Move right

There’s a lot more to them than just:

– Think positive

– Drink enough so you’re not thirsty

– Eat vegetables

– Remember to breathe

– Sleep 8 hours a night

– Get exercise

Those are just scratching the surface so I encourage you to check out the 10 steps and get started on a journey where you’ll learn more about health than your doctors ever taught you.

6. Create a detox program

There are well over 30,000 synthetic chemicals circulating in our food, air, water and soil.

Most of these are not regulated and not tested for safety.

Our body only has a few systems to detoxify an almost infinite number of stressors.

The problem is that when we get too many of these piling up in our body, our body starts to go haywire.

It starts creating dysfunction, our brain cells metabolism gets impaired and we develop sensitivities and intolerances.

We get things like chemical sensitivity, food allergies, hives, eczema and more that all aggravate our body and push our trigger levels up.

Everything that contributes to the body getting stressed, contributes to headaches becoming easier and easier to trigger.

There are 5 main detoxification organs:

– Liver

– Gut

– Skin

– Kidneys

– Lungs

But you also need mental and emotional detoxification.

A detox program will support you in a few key areas:

– Detox foods like specific fruits and vegetables that support the organs(carrots for GI, grapes for kidneys, cauliflower for liver etc)

– Supplements that support detox (ie dandelion for liver, celery root for kidneys, chamomile for skin etc)

– Movements that help your body fine tune itself (working in, working out, tai chi, qigong, stretching, massage)

– Breathing exercises

– Sleep optimization since the brain detoxes during sleep

– Emotional detox

– Mental freedom

You can create your own detox program through the guide provided in the 10 steps program.

Every migraine sufferer I talk to has mental and emotional stress and overwhelm as one of their main problems.

The issue here is that not only can we be influenced by mental and emotional stress during the events and when we think about them…

But unless we learn how to let go and get them out of our bodies, we will hold onto them.

Strong experiences like trauma and things like overcare can eat us alive from the inside out.

We can become obsessed about things that continue to degrade our health.

This is my message to you telling you to stop.

You deserve better and require a lot more love than you allow yourself because of these situations.

Get into the feelings and let them go, shake them out and give yourself a break every few hours to focus on giving yourself love.

It’s one of the biggest causes of degrading health and there’s no lab tests for it.

When we don’t acknowledge that we are worth it and act like it…

Our body can start to attack itself and lead to things like autoimmune disease, which migraine is starting to look a lot like.

If you can’t do anything else, just repeat “i love myself” and “I complete me” every chance you get.

Drive how you feel into your subconscious to reprogram how you see the world.

7. Eliminate every food trigger/sensitivity and stressor

There is something absolutely profound about finding that just by removing a single food, you can cut your headaches in half.

But it sounds too good to be true, nobody believes it until they try it.

Often times it’s this one simple technique that can change a migraineurs life.

I’ve helped patients experience it over and over again, food matters.

Not only does it matter, but for some people it’s the entire reason they are experiencing migraines.

There’s a simple formula but it takes some preparation.

It goes like this:

– Remove the most common trigger foods

– Create a simple system for finding personal triggers

– Heal the gut so that you can stop creating sensitive foods and even recover some already sensitive foods

– Slowly challenge and eliminate them

It’s really easy if you know what you’re doing so I created a guide that’s currently in its pre-release here.

When we are dealing with complex and complicated migraine headaches it’s important to understand that there are many different factors that go into developing disease.

Most of them are not necessarily related to the brain so we need to take a step back and look at the whole picture.

We need to look at our entire life, the stresses in it, our traumas, accidents, surgeries, medications, physical body and how all of our systems are functioning.

If a system isn’t working right, let’s say we are experiencing diarrhea every day, then we need to look deeper at what is going on in the gut because it is directly connected to the brain through millions of neurons.

When we can address the whole body and all of its systems, not only can we find what’s creating the pain, but we can also make our body much much stronger to developing issues next time life gets the best of us.

If you’d like to get help figuring out the migraine puzzle click here to get a free 20 minute strategy call to work through it together.

7 Great Tips for Complex and Complicated Migraines Infographic

Tragus and daith ear piercings for migraines with reviews

We want an easy way out of the migraine pain.

 I suffered for years trying anything I could get my hands on to get relief.

 After going through many health courses and learning what causes migraines and headaches I’ve been migraine free for 7 years now.

Migraine sufferers are always on the lookout for effective ways to find relief from their debilitating symptoms. One method that has gained popularity in recent years is ear piercing, specifically tragus and daith piercings. Though still considered a non-mainstream solution, many people swear by their effectiveness in alleviating migraine pain. In this article, we will explore the reasoning behind these piercings, the science (or lack thereof) supporting their use, and the testimonials of those who have experienced relief like the one below.

What is the tragus/daith ear piercing and how does it work to stop migraines?

There are two ear piercings that are gaining a lot of attention in the migraine treatment world because so little is focused on dealing with the actual causes of migraines like neuronal excitation and inflammation.

The two piercings are:

Daith

 

Tragus

 There are some differences between the two but there is far too little scientific literature on either to make clear distinctions.

Daith piercing is the more popularly discussed method of preventing and relieving migraines and headaches.

The Migraine Professional community definitely vouches for daith piercings’ effectiveness more than the tragus.

It is also little known about why they work or if they are simply placebo but here is what we do know.

Acupuncture uses similar areas to treat diseases which we will talk about further down…

And

These areas go through arnold’s nerve that is connected to the vagus nerve which has been implicated in migraine.

Some conditions like depression and epilepsy have been proven to be relieved by vagus nerve stimulation and some of the common devices for migraines like gammacore are specifically used on the vagal nerve for relief.

Stimulation of the vagus nerve has been shown to have analgesic effects in some studies, which could potentially explain the perceived relief from migraines with these piercings.

Acupuncture, acupressure and vagal nerve stimulation are the closest reasons we have that connects the possible migraine relief to tragus and daith piercings. But make sure to read our huge warning below.

It’s fairly simple.

You find a reputable tattoo shop, get the piercing done and take care of it so that it heals well.

Some even advocate pulling on the piercing when you feel pain coming on to stimulate the vagus nerve further. See video below:

A Huge Warning

Adding metal into your body is not to be taken lightly.

Providing you take care of the hole and it heals up well without infection and with a quality metal that won’t poison you…

It’s important to understand that our bodies are electromagnetic and run on biological electricity.

When we add a metal into our bodies tissues, we turn that metal into an antenna for any radio, internet or other electromagnetic frequencies in the area.

Our cells use a very small amount of energy to communicate with each other so when we introduce a large amount of stimulation into an area we develop chaos in the system.

The best materials to use to avoid this include insulating and neutral substances such as:

– Bone

– Stone

– Porcelain

– Wood

See the video below on one of the world’s most renowned health experts Paul Chek talking about the dangers of piercing, metals, implants and radiation below:

Which side is the best for tragus or daith ear piercings to help migraines?

Generally what is recommended is that you get the piercing on the side where you experience the most pain.

If we take what we know from the information above then we would make sure that if we have a one-sided piercing we get a piercing on the other side to help balance the pull of radiation.

For the musculoskeletal system, compensating for tension on both sides is easier than just one.

This is especially important if we have an imbalance like TMJ which can be made worse by one sided stress.

Is the daith or tragus ear piercing working through acupuncture?

There are some that say acupuncture is at work here and others not.

An interview on ear piercings with Dr. Foster says:

“”Yes I have heard of that piercing,” said Foster, an acupuncturist. “Whether it’s effective for all people suffering from migraines is an interesting question.”

Dr. Foster says it really just depends on the person and the type of migraine that they get. He says that point on the ear is associated with digestive organs. So if your migraine stems from digestive issues, the piercing could work.

“There are zones on the ear that correspond directly to zones on the body,” he said.”

And acupuncture is well known to work for migraines and headaches of all kinds.

Acupuncture is a  traditional Chinese medicine practice that involves inserting thin needles into specific points on the body to alleviate pain and treat various health conditions. Some studies have shown that acupuncture may be effective in reducing migraine frequency and intensity (2). It is hypothesized that these piercings could stimulate acupuncture points that target migraine relief, but more research is needed to confirm this theory.

Even sham acupuncture works really well because needles have a huge placebo effect.

This study on acupuncture for migraine prophylaxis found that, “the mean (SD) frequency of attacks decreased in the true acupuncture group by 3.2 (2.1),

in the sham acupuncture group by 2.1 (2.5),

and the waiting-list group by 1.4 (2.5);

a greater reduction was observed in the true acupuncture than in the sham acupuncture group.”

My perspective is that it’s far better to use a systematic approach to health than just take shots in the dark.

It works much better and you know what’s happening so you can track and alter course for even more benefit.

How to change daith ear piercings, earrings and jewelry

By popular demand I’ve also attached a video on how to change daith ear piercings, earrings and jewelry below.

Reviews for tragus and daith ear piercings for migraine relief

Now we will talk about all the amazing and not-so-amazing reviews for these ear piercings and if they prevent migraines for others.

First, let’s start with what the Migraine Professional Community says click here.

Now let’s see some reviews left in the comments of tragus and daith piercing videos:

  

 

 

 

 

Although scientific evidence supporting the effectiveness of tragus and daith piercings for migraine relief is scarce, the power of personal experience cannot be underestimated. Many people who have undergone these piercings have reported significant improvements in their migraine symptoms. While it’s essential to approach such anecdotal evidence with caution, these personal testimonials can offer hope and inspiration to migraine sufferers who have tried other treatments without success.

These reviews are amazing, but what do the studies say?

Daith Piercing migraine studies

First off let’s start with one of the only actual scientific studies done on daith piercing. Sadly none have been done on tragus.

This study presents a case of a 54 year old man with “refractory chronic migraine with medication-overuse, who substantially improved after bilateral ear daith piercing.”

Of his own free will he decided to get the daith piercing.

“After that, he experienced a reduction of migraine attacks, which became very rare, and infrequent, less disabling episodes of tension-type headache.”

But this doesn’t tell us much because it’s only one case.

What we do have is some amazing graphs done by surveys through migrainepal and migrainebuddy.

The first is a survey done by migrainebuddy which involved 70 users who shared their experience, made simple in the graph below.

 This shows that 41% experienced no change but the rest did.

Next we have a survey done by migrainepal which included a much larger 1107 participants.

 This shows that 36% of people who participated and had the daith piercing had their migraines stay the same or increase since the piercing.

The rest reduced or eliminated their migraines.

These studies are basically showing that it’s fairly 50/50 hit or miss.

What can we learn from this?

Taking all of this information into account, it’s important to understand that this little and seemingly insignificant piercing in the grand scheme of migraine can make a huge difference in a person’s life.

That said, it doesn’t seem to be addressing the cause of migraine that often goes untreated and can create neurological damage later on.

In my personal practise I’ve seen much better results in taking a systematic approach where you address all the factors that are adding oxidation, inflammation, stress and tension into your life.

Doing this alone often relieves migraines by half or more unless there is a deeper pathology going on.

But it’s simple, the body is always trying to heal and always attempting to repair damage that leads to pain.

If we can remove what’s causing the damage and give the body the support it needs through its 6 foundation principles…

Then add in some supplements to fill in the holes and pain disappears.

When nothing else works, we need to learn simple steps we can take to heal our brain, recover our digestive capacity and fix our hormones.

This is exactly why I created the 10 steps program which takes you step by step over 10 weeks to developing a strong foundation on which your brain can recover.

Our brain is about 90% immune cells so as much work as we need to do for our neurons, we also need to fix our immune system or the inflammation will keep on coming.

Click the picture below and learn the simple system that works without drugs or invasive procedures.

Have you ever had your daith or tragus pierced for migraine relief? Let me know in the comments below.

See our facebook discussion and what everyone has to say about their experience here.

Excedrin migraine vs CBD oil for migraines

Ever since I began the Migraine Professional community I’ve been inundated with migraine and headache sufferers of all kinds asking about cbd and cannabis oil.

In this article I’m going to compare excedrin migraine which is one of the most commonly used medications for migraine with CBD oil and see what the research has to say.

I’m going to lay out some information on both, answer some questions and then talk about what this all means.

What is Excedrin migraine?

Excedrin migraine is one of the most common over the counter acute migraine relief medications taken in caplet form.

The excedrin website states:

What is CBD oil?

CBD oil(called cannabidiol) is one of the newer kids on the block because of the legalisation of cannabis that is coming around to a country near you.

CBD oil is an extract that comes from cannabis, with only very small amounts of the active ingredient(THC) that gets people high. Many CBD oils are made from hemp which doesn’t have any psychoactive effect.

Even though there is little to no THC in CBD oil, some very sensitive people do still feel the effects of the minute particles of THC and which is enhanced by CBD’s natural calming effect.

But CBD oil and cannabis have been used for thousands of years for all different kinds of aches, pains and ailments.

They are nothing new to our bodies and we have a massive system called the endocannabinoid system which functions off of cannabinoids.

The endocannabinoid system is responsible for a huge number of physiological and cognitive functions including but not limited to:

– Fertility

– Pregnancy

– Pre and postnatal development

– Appetite

– Pain-sensation

– Mood

– Memory

According to migraine key, “An Italian study published in 2008 found that chronic migraineurs had an endocannabinoid system that only functioned at 50 percent compared to that of healthy people (study).”

Because of the vast range of influence of the endocannabinoid system and CBD’s effect on it, the range of application is huge.

CBD oil can be taken through:

  • Tinctures

  • Concentrates

  • Capsules

  • Topicals

  • Sprays

  • Vapes

CBD can be taken by:

– Inhaling

– Orally

– Sublingually

– Topically

A patient survey done by care by design shows CBD rich cannabis’ effect on pain/discomfort of various condition below:

Ingredients/What is in excedrin migraine?

The active ingredients in excedrin migraine are:

  • Acetaminophen 250 mg

  • Aspirin 250 mg – Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug (NSAID)

  • Caffeine 65 mg

  • The active ingredients can be different in countries other than the US

Common question: How much caffeine is in excedrin?

Excedrin migraine contains 65 mg of caffeine which is a little less than one cup of coffee which has 94.8mg.

Ingredients/What is in CBD oil?

There are many different kinds of CBD oil, hemp oil and cannabis oil that all have different things they work well for.

What you are looking for is a full spectrum extraction and a good CBD:THC ratio.

A full spectrum extraction has more than just CBD in the oil and takes advantage of the “entourage effect” that all the different nutrients in hemp have to offer making CBD more powerful.

Its similar to eating vitamin C from a plant cell as opposed to vitamin C from an isolated supplement.

The vitamin C from the plant cell comes in a nutrient complex and this delivers thousands of other nutrients with it that make the vitamin C absorb and work even better.

Nature makes it right and our body loves the way nature does it.

For more information on the different types of cbd oil and what’s in them see thisarticle.

How easy is it to get an excedrin overdose?

The amount that it would take for you to overdose on excedrin is dependant on your own physiology.

The stated recommendations say:

How often can you take excedrin?

Recommendation is to not use more than directed which is 2 caplets with a glass of water.

Dosage is stated at a maximum of 1-2 caplets per 24 hours but I personally know many migraine sufferers who start popping them like candy during incredibly painful attacks and this can create liver toxicity and accidental overdose so it is not advised.

According to everyday health:

  • Research has shown that painkiller overdoses send tens of thousands of people to the emergency room each year, and a study published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine in 2011 found that accidental overdoses of products containing acetaminophen (such as Excedrin) accounted for roughly 78,400 ER visits per year.

An overdose may cause a series of symptoms including:

  • Nausea

  • Vomiting

  • Bleeding

  • Bruising

  • Tiredness

  • Stomach pain

  • Burning pain in the throat

  • Dizziness

  • Confusion

  • Fainting

How easy is it to overdose on CBD oil?

Naturally extracted CBD oil is not something that is connected with any overdoses.

That said, synthetic cannabinoids can cause adverse reactions so make sure that you are sourcing your CBD from a reputable company.

Is Excedrin and alcohol dangerous?

Yes, do not mix excedrin migraine and alcohol.

See this drug interactions checker for possible consequences of mixing the two.

Click here for drug interactions between alcohol and excedrin

Alcohol may increase some of the effects of cannabis but not much is said about its interaction with CBD’s effects.

What can excedrin migraine and CBD oil be used for?

According to the ministry of hemp “People are using CBD oil to ease their chronic pain, and relieve symptoms of conditions ranging from arthritis to depression. Unlike its close cousin, psychoactive cannabis (‘marijuana’), CBD oil won’t make you feel high — but many users report significant relief of their symptoms.”

CBD oil is used for a massive range of symptoms and illnesses thats list is growing every day based on recent studies being done.

Some of its benefits that make it so great for a range of uses are:

– Anxiety relief

– Anti seizure

– Pain relief

– Neuroprotectivity

– Anti acne and even cancer treatment

According to webmd’s description of excedrin migraine, “This product is a combination of aspirin, acetaminophen, and caffeine. It is used for the temporary relief of pain from conditions such as muscle aches, toothaches, menstrual cramps, or headaches (including migraine). Aspirin and acetaminophen relieve pain by keeping your body from making certain natural substances.”

For tension headache sufferers there is a medication called ‘excedrin tension headache.’

Side Effects

Excedrin side effects:

– Common

  • Heartburn

  • Stomach ache

  • Nausea

  • Headache

  • Feeling jittery

Contact your doctor if you experience:

  • Rash or hives

  • Trouble breathing or wheezing

  • Persistent stomach pain

  • Bloody or black stools

  • Unusual bleeding

  • Vomiting

  • Ringing in your ears

  • Swelling of the face, eyes, lips, tongue, or throat

Excedrin migraine is prone to causing medication overuse headaches(MOH) and needs to be taken with caution as you can end up in a rebound cycle worse than your regular pains.

Here is what one review on amazon had to say:

CBD oil side effects:

  • depression

  • dizziness

  • hallucinations

  • low blood pressure

  • withdrawal symptoms such as irritability and insomnia

That said, CBD oil doesn’t appear to have any major risks for users.

Can you take excedrin while pregnant/during pregnancy and while breastfeeding?

One of the active ingredients in excedrin migraine is aspirin which is a type of salicylate medication. Babies should never be exposed to salicylates.

During the first two trimesters of pregnancy there may be some exceptions which should be discussed with your doctor.

In terms of using CBD during pregnancy and while breastfeeding, there is not enough information to make an informed decision and it should be discussed with your doctor.

That said studies done on cannabis and pregnancy are not conclusive either but it does show that small amounts are not particularly harmful.

Again, everything depends on your own physiology and everyone is different.

Is excedrin a blood thinner?

Yes because excedrin migraine contains aspirin it is a blood thinner.

CBD may interact with blood thinning medications so it should be consulted with your doctor before use.

Legality?

Excedrin migraine is legal in most places(with differences in ingredients depending on the location) and if it’s not available somewhere it’s fairly simple to get acetaminophen, aspirin and caffeine and take them together to create a similar product.

CBD oil, because of its connection to cannabis has some illegality issues even if hemp might be legal.

Concentrated extractions of CBD that come from marijuana or hemp high in THC is illegal but CBD coming from low THC plants is legal.

What does this all mean for the average migraine sufferer?

First see this infographic:

Overall, CBD does incredibly well but I am biased because I’ve seen natural treatments work so much better and give migraine sufferers a much better long term outcome.

That said, CBD oil is more expensive because of the extraction process but may be starting to get covered by some insurance companies because of legalization.

My overall pick here is definitely CBD because of its amazing effect on supporting the endocannabinoid system and actually providing nutrients along with all of its benefits which can help our brains deal with all the stresses that cause migraines in the first place.

For more information on CBD for migraines see the video below:

As opposed to the excedrin migraine which has liver toxicity, drains the bodies resources with the caffeine, depletes the body’s main antioxidant glutathione and doesn’t provide nutrients to help offset the damage.

I asked the Migraine Professional Community about their opinion on excedrin migraine here and I encourage you to take a look at what everyone’s individual experience with it has to say.

It’s important to remember that even though we are talking about relieving migraines in this article that dealing with the root cause has given more long term relief to migraine sufferers than taking an extra “add-on” ever will.

To look at the deep root causes like breathing patterns, hormones, food intolerances, environmental toxins, mental and emotional trauma and stress as well as everything that goes into dealing with the causes of migraines holistically, try the 10 steps program.

3 Powerful steps for acephalgic migraines

3 Powerful steps for acephalgic migraines

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There’s nothing in the world that some migraine sufferers would want more than an acephalgic migraine.

But for acephalgic sufferers, pain is the least of their worries.

Acephalgic migraines are the same as regular migraines, except without the pain.

This means treatment is fairly similar except we aren’t as focused on pain reduction.

In this article we are going to talk about 3 powerful steps for acephalgic migraines and what they are.

Let’s start at the beginning.

What is an acephalgic migraine?

According to Dr Traci Purath, “acephalgic migraines are not a type of migraine yet the actual phase of which a migraine attack is in. There are 3 phases of a common migraine in which an acephalgic migraine involves phase one and two only. Phase 3 of a common migraine is the actual headache itself. The typical symptoms involved in an acephalgic migraine are speech disturbance, migraine with aura, loss of vision, vertigo and many more.”

It goes:

Prodrome => Aura => Attack => Postdrome

Acephalgic migraines are one of the most highly misdiagnosed migraines because of the vast differences in symptoms and a lack of head pain.

Some types of migraine separate from acephalgic migraine include:

– Migraine with typical aura

– Migraine with brainstem aura

– Hemiplegic migraine

– Retinal migraine

Some other names for acephalgic migraines include:

– Silent migraine

– Amigrainous migraine

– Migraine aura without headache

– Migraine equivalent

– Isolated visual migraine

– Optical migraine

Common symptoms that can come with acephalgic migraines include:

  • Blurry vision

  • Sensitivity to light

  • Vision loss

  • Seeing zigzags or squiggly lines

  • Numbness

  • Tingling

  • Weakness

  • Confusion

  • Difficulty speaking

  • Dizziness

  • Diarrhea

  • Vomiting

  • Abdominal pain

  • Scintillation

  • Transient hemianopia

  • Bilateral central scotomata

  • Classic amaurosis fugax

  • Diplopia

  • Altitudinal field loss

  • Tunnel vision

  • Temporal crescent involvement

  • Transient central scotoma

The most common symptom of acephalgic migraine found in one study was the classic half moon visual disturbance.(Link)

Here is an awesome video which talks about the confusion about acephalgic or silent migraines.

Some of the most common triggers for acephalgic migraines reported through healthline are:

  • Odors

  • Noises

  • Bright lights

  • Fermented foods

  • Caffeinated drinks

  • Alcohol

  • Barometric changes

  • Chemical preservatives, colorings, and flavorings

  • Stress

  • Hunger

  • Exercise

  • Pain

  • Eye strain

  • Neck problems

  • Sinus problems

  • Too much sleep

  • Too little sleep

  • Menstruation and other hormonal changes

For a better list of triggers see our article on the most common triggers for migraine by clicking here.

What causes acephalgic migraines?

Most often, the cause of acephalgic migraine is reported to be unknown, the same with most types of migraines.

This is to be expected with only the equivalent of $0.50 per migraine sufferer going to migraine research.

It’s important to remember that migraine is but a mechanism.

It’s frequently connected to cortical spreading depression and even more so in cases with aura.

This cortical spreading depression(CSD) is a cascade reaction that happens when the brain goes through a process of getting ‘choked up.’

See the common connection behind all migraines here.

Just like a hose that hasn’t had water run through it and sputters for the first few seconds, a migraine is a choking up that starts in the brainstem and hypothalamus.

When the brain has gotten sufficiently taxed and the energy generating reserves of our neurons are depleted enough…

The brain stem goes through a ‘spurt’ or a ‘rev’ and this can cause a choke up which will radiate through the brain.

During a regular migraine, this will radiate into pain sensing nerves and cause the protective pain reflex normal to our body.

This protective pain reflex is there to make us  stop doing what we are doing that may be causing the pain.

During migraines with aura this will radiate into different areas of the brain creating different aural symptoms.

For example, the visual processing area of the brain is in the back, the occiput, so if this area gets the cascading effect we can experience visual auras like zig zags, blurring etc.

The causes of this lack of energy, spurt or rev in the brain can come from many different areas and for many different reasons.

Migraine doesn’t have one cause but many because migraine is just a mechanism that gets triggered by weakness in the brain.

This weakness can come from anywhere in the body, not necessarily the brain.

A strain on any system of the body can spill over into the others.

This is why hormone imbalance, gut dysfunction, musculoskeletal imbalances and allergies are such common causes and triggers of migraine.

What are some common treatments used for acephalgic migraines?

  • Biofeedback

  • Massage therapy

  • Behavioral therapy

  • Acupuncture

  • Ayurveda

  • Homeopathy

  • Supplementation

  • Nutrition

  • Aspirin

  • Ibuprofen

  • Naproxen

  • Acetaminophen

  • Excedrin migraine

The first 8 are more recommended than the simple quick fix medications that can compromise organs like the liver and lead to rebound headaches.

See our article on the top 10 natural remedies for migraines here.

Who is most likely to experience them?

If you experience some type of migraine then it’s far more likely you will have an acephalgic episode at some point in your life.

It is estimated that 20% of migraineurs have experienced a silent migraine.

People over the age of 50 are more likely to experience this “silent” type of migraine.

There are also many people who have no history of headaches that may be getting strange symptoms which are actually acephalgic migraines.

This type of migraine also more commonly increases during perimenopause.(Link)

Now let’s talk about what we can do.

3 Powerful steps for acephalgic migraines

1. Find out what it is first

Always make sure that if you’ve never experienced these symptoms before or have never been assessed and diagnosed by a doctor, that you go to one immediately as it could be a sign of something more serious like a stroke.

2. Assess the cause

Most often, the trigger was something that we did or continue to do in the last 24-72 hours that has caused our body to rebel and our trigger level to cross threshold.

Ask yourself these questions to identify where it’s coming from.

Where are we in our cycle?

What foods have we eaten in the past day or two?

What’s the weather report?

How high is my stress level 1-100?

How much quality water have I drank in the past 3 days?

How much restful sleep have I accumulated in the last week?

Is my breathing shallow or deep?

Is my tongue changing its appearance?

Have I moved my body enough to clean out the gunk the last 2-3 days?

What are my bowel movements like?

What color is my urine?

How do my eyes look?

What is my pattern and have I ran it right into trigger?

To find out more about how your body is telling you exactly what is going on see our 10 steps program.

3. Deal with the cause first, when your foundations are solid, supplement.

When the brain is going through this lack of a steady stream of energy we need to help the process that our cells go through to generate energy molecules called ATP.

There are some amazing supplements and techniques you can try today.

  • CoQ10 at 150mg per day (Study)

This study found mean reduction in migraine frequency after 3 months of treatment was 55.3%.

  • Detox heavy metals and get enough zinc and magnesium (Study)

This study found that migraine sufferers had high levels of metals harmful to the brain and low levels of those that supported brain metabolism

  • Use ketones, lower carbohydrates in your diet and fasting to make the body release butyrate (Study)

This may be because of its effect on neural inflammation, cortical spreading depression, and enhancing brain mitochondrial metabolism

  • Fix posture to allow your brain to get nutrients going through your spinal vertebrae (Study)

Try techniques like supporting better ergonomics, eldoa and other fascial stretches as well as organ assessment to look at the deeper causes of postural imbalance

  • Take a methylated b complex (Study)

In this study, b vitamins reduced migraine disability in half.

Above all, reduce the stress on the body and brain.

Find a way to drop your stress hormones any time the tension starts to build in your body and use a reliable technique to drop it.

Studies show that within 2-3 minutes of using a stress reduction technique, cortisol(the stress hormone) drops in half.

To learn all there is to know around migraines that your doctor doesn’t have the time to discuss with you, start the 10 steps program today by clicking here.

Share this post for others who may have mystery symptoms or experience migraine and may actually be having a silent attack.

Comment below and let me know:

Have you ever had a silent migraine?

Most Common Migraine Triggers Statistics

Most Common Migraine Triggers [Statistics]

Migraine triggers are a massive problem.

With 20% of the worldwide population experiencing migraines that means over 1 billion people will get a migraine at some point.(Link)

If we can avoid triggering the migraine mechanism, we can avoid migraines altogether.

But it’s not that simple.

We aren’t able to avoid many of our triggers.

Luckily, we can learn to manage them and raise our threshold to trigger.

Let me break it down and make it simple to understand.

How do migraines work?

There are 3 aspects that go into triggering a migraine.

1. Trigger level

2. Threshold level

3. Foundational release

We have to understand and apply all three while we figure out what the linchpin to our disease is, whether that be trauma, hormonal imbalance, compromised digestion, infections etc.

1. Trigger level

This is the total amount of stress put onto us by our triggers.

The higher our trigger level is, the more triggers are stressing our body and the more likely we are to trigger.

2. Threshold level

This is the amount of tolerance our body has to stresses.

Some people are incredibly resillient and can take a beating before a migraine gets triggered.

Others are more sensitive and have a lower threshold so the amount of triggers needed to push them over the edge is less.

3. Foundational release

This is what releases the triggers from our body.

Our body is constantly:

– Repairing

– Detoxifying

– Recovering

– Rebuilding

– Cooling inflammation

– Digesting

– Resting

When we support our foundation principles, our body is able to slowly process and eliminate the trigger level created by our triggers.

But when our foundations are compromised, our trigger level stays high and we have to tip toe to avoid adding any more stress.

What are the most common migraine triggers?

Here is a statistic showing the major triggers leading to migraines among U.S. patients as of 2016

 But these are noticed at the very tip of the threshold.

These come when our trigger level is so high, our foundations are so compromised and our threshold so low that only a straw is needed to push us over.

Smells, barometric pressure, bright light, sleep issues and stress are all perfectly normal occurrences and stressors.

We have dealt with them for millions of years through evolution and they are not actually enough to create a huge problem.

But if the three areas are compromised, they will push us right into a migraine pain cycle.

Here is a more indepth statistic showing a wider array of triggers for both migraine with aura and migraine without aura.

 This statistic goes into more depth and gives us an idea of some food triggers reported by migraine patients.

The big things we can take away from this post is that:

  • Fasting and skipping meals is a no no

  • Caffeine withdrawal will create rebound

  • Low fluid consumption takes crucial water away from cooling the fire going on in our brains and bodies

  • Alcohol is terrible for blood sugar, dehydration and hormone balance

  • Many migraine sufferers have gallbladder issues and this shows up with trouble processing fatty foods

  • Keep consistent sleeping habits that fall in line with the setting of the sun making us wind down and the rising of the sun making us “wind up”

  • Keeping a daily mindfulness or meditative practice can kill all the stress in our lives and our body’s reaction to it

For a detailed explanation of food triggers along with a total list and way to reduce them sign up for the pre release of my food triggers guide here.

Now we can enter into food specific migraine triggers which create a massive impact on trigger levels.

Food Triggers

Before we start it’s important to note that in this study, when food triggers were eliminated, environmental sensitivities like the ones to odors, light, weather etc. all reduced.

This shows how important food triggers really are.

study done on food that completely eliminated headaches in 85% of the participants and reduced the headaches in 100% found these to be the most common food triggers:

  • Wheat (78%)

  • Orange (65%)

  • Eggs (45%)

  • Tea and coffee (40% each)

  • Chocolate and milk (37%) each)

  • Beef (35%)

  • Corn (33%)

  • Cane sugar (33%)

  • Yeast (33%)

These are some of the most common culprits because they can be inflammatory and are staples in our diets which means they are constantly introduced to our bodies and increase the likelihood our body will eventually say no under stress.

In my food triggers guide I go into detail about what causes food triggers, the most common food triggers, the most successful migraine diet studies and how to heal the gut to regain tolerance to foods.

So what are all the triggers we should screen our bodies for to see what system is the most stressed out?

The most common triggers I’ve found play a major role in my patients lives are:

– Hormones, hormonal imbalance and hormonal troubles around menses (5 mistakes of hormonal migraines guide)

– Pregnancy, hormonal contraceptives, hormone replacement therapy

– Dehydration

– Lack of exercise

– Improper sleep

– Mental or emotional stress

– Anxiety

– Trauma

– Musculoskeletal imbalances

– Weather changes

– Bright lights

– High altitudes

– Strong odors

– Blood sugar imbalance

– Weather

– Caffeine

– Alcohol

– Exhaustion

– Infection

– Allergies

– MSG

– Artificial sweeteners

– Medication overuse

To be honest, there is probably many more I have missed but it’s critically important to understand that the cause of the trigger is even more important than the trigger itself.

See the video below on the 10 most common migraine food triggers:

Look below the surface of the trigger to find the cause.

If our body has become susceptible to a number of foods, there is likely a weakness that has developed in our system that is allowing the foods to wreak havoc. This is often a digestive compromise. Try an oligoantigenic diet.

If our menses are triggering for us, there is a hormonal imbalance going on. Hormones do not go out of balance for no reason. They are incredibly important neurotransmitters that our body uses to communicate so if they are going out-of-whack then the problem needs to be looked at deeper and corrected. (Free E-guide)

If even the slightest fasts from food are causing our blood sugar to drop then we need to look at how our brain is processing food and if it’s overly carbohydrate dependant.

These are all different factors and systems that we take a deep dive into to understand what is causing the migraines.

I can help you find all your triggers, eliminate them and get you migraine free but to get you back to living a normal healthy life, we have to address the underlying causes and find what’s causing the house to collapse in on itself.

This is why I created the food triggers guide which is currently in its pre release.

To get onto the list and find out how I help migraine sufferers regain some of their sensitive foods join here.

Share using the facebook link so others can benefit and learn about their own triggers.

Comment below and let me know:

How do triggers affect your life?

53 Best Migraine Headache Memes of All Time

There’s a lot of amazing (and few offensive) migraine headache memes.

I’ve created some viral migraine memes of my own to give the community support and they’ve definitely been a hit.

In this article i’m going to talk about the 53 best migraine and headache memes of all time on the web.

1. Life can get the best of us when we are constantly rushing through it. It’s important to remember to stop every once in a while and reflect.

2. When the pain gets so serious you start having to joke.

3. Some migraineurs describe their children as the human versions of headaches.

4. Migraines and headaches are risky games to play, sometimes it can feel like russian roulette with everything we do.

5. Finally coming out of a migraine after being stuck in the hole is one of the greatest feelings ever.

6. When the pain becomes so great that even getting the medication is unbearable.

7. Even the smallest light, when i’m in the dark trying to sleep becomes unbearable. Switch the breakers off in your room to keep EMFs low while you sleep.

8. A migraine free day is a blessing, just don’t do so much during them that you end up giving yourself three more with a migraine.

9. After a certain point, we can start trying anything to relieve the pain. Try the 10 steps program before you give up.

10. There’s so many medications that are just hit or miss it can take years to find one that works.

11. When the nausea pills aren’t working, try ginger instead and make sure you use enough of it.

12. One of the very first migraine memes ever created describing different sensations around types of headaches. It’s clearly not this simple.

13. Continuously triggering the migraine mechanism can make us feel incredibly terrible. It’s a vicious cycle.

14. Migraines suck.

15. Migraines can be far worse than headaches.

16. That feeling when a migraine jumps out at you out of nowhere for no apparent reason.

17. Fluorescent lights are bad news, not just during a migraine but anytime because of the high electromagnetic fields they give off that makes our bodies susceptible.

18. Even though the majority of people mean well, it can often make us feel even worse… As if we haven’t thought of medication as step #1.

19. That time of year can be a huge deterrent from us wanting to do anything, at all, ever.

20. Definitely not a shocker.

21. When the caffeine in medication keeps you from the sleep you need so you can get over the migraine you took the medication for…

22. The average doctor isn’t specifically educated about all the ins and outs of migraines and living with them. See our post on 9 Shocking Things Your Doctor Doesn’t Tell You About Migraines.

23. When you have the migraine of all migraines and your head feels like its about to explode.

24. It’s all too often we develop a headache and our heart starts to race enough for us to actually feel the beating inside our heads that makes the pain throb.

25. When the migraine wins, what do you do? These two are classics.

26. One of the most common symptoms that show up with severe migraines is vertigo. Vertigo is no joke.

27. When even sleep won’t fix the headache and its status migrainosus, get help ASAP.

28. Having to endure pain can makes us want to do all kinds of incredibly creative things.

29. The photosensitivity is real. Protect your senses. Remember that studies have shown sensitivities to environmental factors like light actually reduce when the right foods are eaten. Find out more in our food triggers guide here.

30. Sometimes the pressure feels like this barbie with a clamp on her head. What does yours feel like?

31. The symptoms that can come as a result of the migraine aura are so bizarre.

32. Double check with your doctor to make sure it’s not just a migraine. Get a second opinion and MRI to confirm.

33. A tell tale sign of a migraine coming on is the aura or prodrome. Many times it can be cravings, fatigue, excitement or any number of weird others like abdominal pain, eye pain, smells, visual zig zags etc.

34. One of my absolute worst triggers was perfumes. They would send me into a spiral of pain.

35. If migraines are becoming chronic we can start to feel like staying in is much better than going out.

36. Gollum lives in the dark and is as photosensitive as a triggered migraineur.

37. After getting acquainted with our new enemy migraine, it can often start to feel like they have more control over us than we do.

38. Ryan gosling is here to give us some support and help us get over the headache we are experiencing right now because it won’t last forever.

39.Provided the hangover isn’t bad, the end of a migraine spells freedom for over a billion people around the world.

40. Migraines are one of the most energy demanding experiences we can go through. Be sure to stay hydrated, keep your blood sugar even and provide enough nutrients to combat the stress.

 41. Many of the weird and various symptoms that can accompany a migraine. Many of them a product of rampant inflammation running through our bodies.

From here on out these are memes are from me and created based on what I’ve seen going on in the community.

42. The sun can really hurt.

43. The levels of going through healing pain.

44. Always choose searching for the root cause when you can.

45. How to approach symptoms and where to look for the root cause.

46. This was an absolute disaster in the migraine community. Making a pose out of migraines upset so many people. So I made a meme to convey how insensitive it was. The community loved it. Join us on Facebook andInstagram.

47. Migraine and severe headache sufferers know. As soon as any symptoms start showing up, use your rescues. The sooner the better.

48. The irony with medication side effects is real.

49. There are so many supplements, treatments, modalities and therapies to try. Don’t put yourself into a box. If you’re looking for a different perspective then get a a free 20 minute migraine strategy call here.

50. Water is usually not enough, make sure the water that you do drink has good minerals in it as minerals have been shown to help headaches.

51. There’s something great about finally finding a reliable and consistent method to help with the pain.

52. All too often I hear patients complain about how their doctor doesn’t listen and only wants to try medications, botox or surgery on them. Don’t be forced into a serious procedure like surgery unless you have received at least a dozen different opinions from practitioners in different areas of health.

53. This is for all of the amazing migraine sufferers who are sick of the pain and on the path to health. Every day I hear more stories about how the drugs don’t help them and it was the little things like the ones below that made all the difference and gave them freedom. If you want to get started on this journey with us, join our private support group here.

 

If you have any other headache or migraine memes you’d like to be featured, let me know in the comments below.

What do you think about the memes? Let me know in the comments and make sure to share.

Making it through life with migraines is incredibly tricky, I’ve been there.

But having hormone imbalances aggravate our bodies, raising our triggers and giving us flares can make it unbearable.

That’s why I created the 5 mistakes to hormonal migraines guide available here.

In this guide we talk about how to heal your hormones naturally so that they can rebalance themselves.

Click here to join the Migraine Professional Community and get the Free guide.

 

Plus, here are some bonus memes!

The FREE 5 Most Common Mistakes Of Hormonal Migraines E-Guide teaches you:

– Why hormones are the most important focus around why your migraines and headaches keep triggering

– How PMS is common but NOT normal and why it needs to be addressed to be pain free in the long term

– The 5 most common mistakes why hormones stay broken, why so many women become migraine free with pregnancy and why birth control is not a solution