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Alcohol and any chronic illness do not go together. Alcohol, migraines and headaches are the same. Even though alcohol can be a treat to indulge in once in a while, it carries its own burden that gets added to the body when we ingest it.

A healthy individual can generally compensate as they have extra resources available inside of them, whereas someone who is battling with an ill does not. In this article I want to go through the 15 factors that we need to consider and 10 ways to mitigate damage when drinking alcohol. This applies to how it affects migraines and headaches in a negative way as well as some sure fire tips to give your body more resilience when dealing with the burden of alcohol.

15 Factors to consider:

1. Blood sugar regulation – alcohol in and of itself causes dysregulation in blood sugar but when paired with simple sugar drinks this issue gets compounded. For people with lots of stress, lack of sleep, obesity, insulin resistance or previous blood sugar handling issues, this is a sure fire way to spike their bodies inflammation and set them off.

2. Dehydration – Alcohol takes a lot of water and flushes it out of your body because it is a diuretic. This is not only a problem because intracellular water is crucial to every function in the body since we are molecularly 99% water, but also because this leads to mineral loss. Using some clean structured water full of minerals is essential to retaining this balance. I like to use some lemon, sea salt, cream of tartar, magnesium glycinate, honey and peppermint leaves to rehydrate. Careful not to add vodka and tonic water or you’ll be back in the loop.

3. Sulfites – found mostly in beer and wines but which can also be added as preservatives pose a particular problem, especially for the sulfite sensitive or those with Gastrointestinal issues. The more sulfites there are in a product, the more likely you are to have a reaction to them. The wine wand is a great way to remove sulfites and histamines inside of wines and even some beers.

4. Histamine Release – All alcohol releases histamine which is a neurotransmitter involved in immune reactions. Some individuals have particularly high histamine levels, deficiencies in histamine degrading enzymes or chronic illnesses where histamines become overactive in the body. These will be aggravated by anything releasing more histamine. On top of histamine release by alcohol, there are also histamines present in any fermented drinks or foods which pose their own problems. As we know, migraineurs in general have lower levels of a histamine and tyramine degrading enzyme called DAO. A product like the wand helps to remove sulfites and histamines from wine. See our article on the histamine migraine connection for more info.

5. Mineral loss – Migraine and headaches sufferers know how precious minerals like magnesium and potassium are. Alcohol is a known irritant of balance here partly because of its diuretic effect but also because it requires nutrients to process it and compensate for the damage it does.(Link) An easy way to balance the effect of alcohol on your vitamin and mineral balance is to have a high quality multivitamin/mineral complex ready.

6. Alcohol content and your biochemically individual means by which you detoxify it – Everyone has a different speed and effectiveness at which they detoxify and this will influence individual susceptibility and effect. We are all biochemically different and this means the speed at which every gene, organ and enzyme in our body functions is different from everyone elses, even our family members. As different as we are on the outside, we are on the inside. Helping to support the nutrients we lose from alcohol and the nutrients we need to repair, recover and protect ourselves from it is essential, some products like this one make it easy.

7. Acetaldehyde – Alcohol once absorbed is immediately filtered through the liver and takes priority over many other processes because it is a poison. During the breakdown process alcohol turns into acetaldehyde. Acetaldehyde is a known carcinogen and creates a number of issues and strain on the body. A probiotic product like Zbiotics is engineered to help break down alcohol to take the burden off of the liver.

8. Tyramine – The heal your headache diet has made tyramines well known to migraine and headaches sufferers. Many alcohols like beer, sherry, liquors and wine contain levels of tyramine high enough to cause problems in tyramine sensitive individuals. This is not everyone, but for some it makes a big difference if they eat or avoid tyramine containing foods and drinks.

9. Hormones – Alcohol is known to lower testosterone and progesterone but increase estrogen especially beer. This process gets even worse when alcohol is stored as fat which is an estrogen producing gland, creating even more estrogen unabated by progesterone. Hormonal balance is a huge part of maintaining resilience against pain and keeping a healthy brain and gut.

10. Both a vasodilator and vasoconstrictor – at small levels alcohol is generally a vasodilator but at high levels can become a vasoconstrictor. This was once thought to be a major reason why migraine pain came to be but this theory has since fallen by the wayside. That said, there is still a reason for why the brain and our blood vessels expand and contract and they do affect the brain’s health. Some people are more susceptible to one or the other and we generally want to provide as much blood flow as we can to the brain.

11. Promotion of NMDA receptors activation and excitation in the brain(Link)

12. Wiping out of our intestinal microbiota and damage to our gut lining. (Link) One of the things we know alcohol does best is sterilize. It does the same thing inside of us. This is why it is best to drink alcohol with meals, in smaller amounts and with plenty of hydration before, during and after. Our microbiota protect us, form our immune system, signal to our brain and even make nutrients for us. We need them on our team.

13. More prone to mood swings, lower quality food intake and less mindfulness, generally. These speak for themselves, we all know how alcohol lowers our inhibitions. For those that are on a healing protocol, a really bad day or two can set you back weeks if not months of work. If you’re tired of feeling like this, find another way.

14. Amino acid burden is huge for our entire body. We constantly need more amino acids to repair and regenerate all of our tissues. When we are sick and battling something like the 80%+ of us that have fungal or parasitic infections, we need our acute response immune cytokines to be firing on all cylinders. This take a lot of amino acids and when we drink alcohol, we add another amino acid burden.

15. Leaky brain is the process by which the barrier our brain has separating itself from our blood stream so that only certain molecules are allowed access to starts to leak. This can allow bigger and more inflammatory molecules through.

10 considerations to mitigate damage:

There are also a number of factors that will affect how our body and brain react to alcohol as well as how we feel after. The better we can understand what our body needs, the more we can fine tune the support and recovery process when drinking.

1. Adequate quality and quantity of sleep
2. High protein meals before during and after
3. Lots of hydration with mineral replacement
4. Zbiotic supplementation prior to
5. Anti inflammatory diet before during and after
6. Slow and progressive adaptation to alcohol
7. Organic brands free of preservatives
8. The wine wand
9. DAO enzyme supports
10. Multivitamin/mineral supplement

 
We have to understand that each step along the way from our mouth to our brain, our body is trying to protect us and mitigate damage from alcohol. Our microbiota are trying to digest and break down the alcohol, but alcohol is highly antibacterial and wipes them out. Once alcohol gets through the gut it goes straight into the liver where the liver attempts to detoxify it and make it safe but it poisons the liver and slows down all processing here. Once it gets passed the liver and into free circulation the brain tries to protect itself but alcohol puts holes in our blood brain barrier and opens our brains up to even more damage.

Step by step our body has put barriers in place to protect us so the last thing we want to do is overload ourselves with alcohol and knock these systems out for a while. When drinking, drink responsibly and use the above tips to understand why your body is the way that it is and what you can do to support yourself if you must have a drink.

If you need help understanding why your brain is so close to its threshold, why your gut is not resillient or why your hormones keep creating problems, feel free to send me a message.

Since the beginning of civilization the foods we eat have played a role in our headaches and migraines. Recently, some studies have found incredibly powerful dietary modifications for alleviating the chronic pain and inflammation inside our brains with 50% to upwards of 100% of individuals seeing benefits.

One of the most common and biggest buzz diets in the 21^st century is going vegan. Partly because of its health promoting effects but also because of the ease it gives some people in terms of their moral lives. In this article I will be covering the health aspect of going vegan and will not be diving into “veganism.” We will cover what you need to watch out for which may be causing the relief of your symptoms as well as what you need to be careful for which may make symptoms worse.

At the end of the day it is the foods we eat and not any specific diet we follow that will determine our health, this is the best way to think of it. Let’s dive in.

What may be helping:

Whole Foods

Some of the most common health benefits of switching to a vegan diet, especially from something like the Standard American Diet(SAD) is that you will(hopefully) be switching to many, many more whole foods.

A whole food is the state that a food is in when it is grown. For example, a chicken eaten as chicken and not a nugget, barley eaten as barley and not bread, edamame eaten in a bean instead of in tofu or potatoes eaten as a potato and not a french fry.

The more a food is processed, the less whole it is and the more nutrients and genetic and epigenetic signalling we lose. Many times it may not be that the food is no longer whole, but that the food has (C.R.A.P.) in it. It is high in Carbohydrates, Refined sugars, Additives and Preservatives. These are detrimental compounds and will determine how healthy the food you are eating really is.

The more we can stick to whole foods, the more likely we will do better on a vegan diet and any diet we choose.

New Foods

Any new diet will automatically introduce new foods. One of the most important principles of a brain healing diet is variety and the introduction of new foods along with not overusing the same foods. When we don’t digest well and have a condition like leaky gut which is extremely common, we run into a big issue. If the proteins in our food are not broken down properly during digestion and get through the lining of the intestine(leaky gut) then our immune system can become sensitized to them. When our immune system becomes sensitized to the protein in a food, whenever we eat that food we can trigger an inflammatory immune reaction. We can also trigger poor blood sugar handling.

This is a recipe for disaster we have to avoid and a new diet may help support that.

Lighter Foods

Vegan diets often come with their fair share of fruits and vegetables. This can be great for digestion and can be much easier for some people to digest. Some people, especially those with a chronic illness have compromised digestive systems. This means their digestion is not effectively breaking down and absorbing the foods they are eating.

This can lead to symptoms such as:

• Bloating

• Cravings

• Indigestion

• Gas

• Loose Stools

• Constipation

• Burping

• Mood Swings

• Low energy after or between meals

• Need for stimulants

• Feeling worse after eating

• Being overly full from meat or feeling like meat is just sitting in their stomach

When we make the switch away from animal foods this may be alleviated, but it is not fixing the actual problem of WHY your digestion is not working properly in the first place. It can be something as simple as too much stress, poor vagal tone or low stomach acid.

It could also be something more complex like dysbiosis, SIBO or parasitic infection. In our virtual clinic we use stool tests that can be taken in the comfort of your own home and tell us how your digestive organs are functioning, if there is an imbalance of your good and bad gut bacteria and if you have any active infections compromising digestion. You can contact us to learn more about this.

The benefits we see from a diet switch to vegan may be because of the lighter foods we are eating and we want to be able to see this objectively so that we can always address the ROOT cause instead of just symptoms.

Detoxifying

One of the most common benefits of switching away from conventionally raised meat and fish is that you discontinue ingesting excess toxins. Endocrine disruptors and toxic compounds have become ubiquitous in our environment and everyone’s health is affected in some way because of it. Conventional agriculture is extremely poisonous to the plants, animals and humans that eat it so this is one of the best places to reduce our exposure.

Animals are bioaccumulators because they are higher up on the food chain. Every level you go up on the food chain increases the amount of toxic accumulation in the tissues. The grains the animals eat are sprayed with pesticides and then fed to the animals, accumulating in their tissues. Then when you eat an animal thats whole life has been sustained by these grains, you are taking that animals toxic burden onto yourself.

Vegetables and fruits will provide many of the antioxidant and fibrous compounds that help our body detoxify chemicals our body is trying to excrete on a daily basis.

Switching to a vegan diet is a great way to go one step down and avoid those bioaccumulators. Another option for the non completely vegan is to go to your local farmer, choose grass-fed, grass-finished, pastured and wild meats. But the same goes for conventionally raised plants. Choose organic and clean sourced foods.

What to be careful for:

Amino Acids

As you switch over to a vegan diet you want to be aware that anyone who exercises, has high levels of stress or has a chronic illness will need many many more amino acids(proteins) so that their body can make the compounds it needs to make to heal.

A protein is simply a chain of amino acids. Your body takes the proteins in food and breaks it down with acids and enzymes into amino acids. These amino acids are the building blocks it needs to form every tissue in your body. In the chronically ill, these amino acids are needed to repair our tissues, create hormones, form acute stress response cytokines and all of our enzymes.

Without being aware of it, switching to a vegan diet can take away many of the amino acids necessary to do this. Our body needs A LOT of amino acids on a daily basis because it can only recycle so much. It also needs a proper balance of amino acids which is often not found in a single plant food so food combining may be necessary. On the contrary, animal proteins will contain every amino acid we need in a balanced ratio because it is made of the same proteins our own tissues are made of. As long as you are eating nose-to-tail.

I often see chronic individuals come in with poor amino acid levels and this cannot be overstated enough.

Conversion of nutrients

There is a big difference between a plant cell and an animal cell. Plant cells use plant cell nutrition and animal cells use animal cell nutrition. The problem with a purely vegan approach is that our body is made of animal cells.

When we ingest a plant cell that gets broken down by our digestion(hopefully) and the nutrients are absorbed, our body has to then convert the nutrients into animal cell nutrition which our body recognizes and can use in its own systems.

This requires a conversion and in this process we can lose a huge amount of the intended nutrient. For example, flax seed may be seen as very high in omega 3 which is healthy and necessary for functioning, but it is not the same omega 3 our body uses in the forms of EPA and DHA. Depending on your biochemical individuality when your body converts flax seed omega 3 into EPA and DHA as much as 50-95% can be lost in the process.

Animal nutrition is often superior so when making the switch you have to account for the much higher dietary intake needed to achieve the same body requirements.

The final issue is to beware of negative effects showing up between 1-2 yrs after switching to a vegan diet. During the first few months you may see great improvements and gains in everything from feeling to functioning to pain and fatigue. But remember to listen to your body. Just because something works well for you today does not mean it will work well tomorrow. Be open to what your body is saying and make changes accordingly.

Food choices should be lead by the bodies own mechanisms for telling you what is right and wrong. If we place the burden of the right foods onto our mind we can easily fall into traps like diets, isms, religions and morals above our own health.

Our health should always be the highest priority because it is what cleans the lens that we see the world through.

If you are looking for a great guide to steer food choices for your brain and headaches see the food triggers guide.

If you need personalized help jump on a 20 minute call to see if we can work together by clicking here.

I have had nothing short of a wonderful experience being a part of the Migraine – Healthline app community and startup.

The support and sense of belonging we have been able to foster inside of this group has been incredible.

In this post I’m going to cover some of my favourite parts of this app and the experience in general.

Before I get going I would like to give a shoutout to Eileen who has been the most incredible guide for the entire community, her dedication has been incredible. So let’s get into it.

Groups

The groups tab has been an amazing way to be able to dive right into specific topics you are looking for answers on and to be able to ask the questions you want answered in a place where individuals with experience in that area or with similar questions are able to come together.

The groups tab is comprised of:

• General

• Prodrome and postdrome

• Medication and Treatments

• Social Life with Migraines

• Migraine Strong

• Migraine and Family Life

• Migraines at Work or School

• Lifestyle

• Mental Health

• Navigating Healthcare

• Alternative Therapies

• Migraine Triggers

• Inspiration

There is an absolute wealth of knowledge in each and every one of these groups which you can jump into any time and become part of the conversation.

Topics

My favourite topics so far have been the ones I chose to focus on. Part of our launch and to help see what the community is interested in was to do live chats. I hosted two of these live chats, one on Lifestyle and one on Alternative Therapies.

In our lifestyle live chat I started off by explaining Allostatic load, which every migraine sufferer should know:

Allostatic load is the process by which the body adds up all of the stressors it is exposed to, head to toe, mental, emotional and physical. If this load becomes more than the body can maintain normal functioning, we trigger. The more we can do to reduce this load the more we can give our body a chance to stabilize and build resilience.

I then went on to cover the foundations of lifestyle therapies such as:

• Sleep

• Hydration

• Breath

• Clean Environments

• Diet

• Movement

These are massively important and we could also add in properly timed and adequate daily sunlight , circadian health, grounding and supportive social structures.

After I opened up the conversation to these areas we dove in with questions, answers and experiences.

The next chat we had was in Alternative therapies where I covered a number of therapies used by practitioners to help individuals heal. These included:

• Acupuncture

• Manual therapies

• Homeopathic

• Hormonal

• TCM/Herbal therapy

• Nutrition

These chats have fostered community, growth, sharing, learning and support in a way that only apps like the Migraine Healthline App can.

Night Mode

One of the great introductions that developers have created since the launch has been night mode which is much easier on the sensitive migraine brain and eyes.

I have loved the continued development and improvement as well as the slowly expanding list of countries that the app is available in so that this community can continue to grow and support itself.

All in all I have loved the experience and opportunity to be a part of this movement and I would encourage you to jump on and browse around for yourself.

You can click this link to download the free app Migraine – Healthline right now and get started exploring the amazing Migraine and Headache community.

I am super excited to announce the partnership between Migraine Professional and Healthlines new Migraine – Healthline App which serves as a way of bringing the community together with high quality information for understanding what migraines are really about.

This app is a great way for us to bring the community closer because we know how important connection is for getting through all of the ups and downs of chronic illness.

The more we can connect and communicate in healthful ways the more we can develop tools and techniques to understand our own bodies as well as help others around us understand them to keep them on our team and not turn them against us.

The Migraine – Healthline app serves as number of tools including:

• Bringing others who are similar to us together in a 1 on 1 setting to help us feel understood, get support and hear about treatment experiences

• Giving us continuous support and affirmation to stay on the healing path and give us simple tools and tricks we can apply whenever we have the energy to do so

• Providing access to medically reviewed information, infographics, articles, pictures and videos which can help cut through the clutter of what is real and valuable and what is just fluff inside the health community

• Allowing me to add support and answer questions that come up inside of the community to give you the most current answers research has found for migraines, headaches and all of the chronic illnesses that come with them

• Group discussions as well as migraine influencer and guide live chats to help you get answers to specific topics

I’m super excited to be a part of this amazing community and be able to lend a personal hand in providing sources for amazing research that is breaking the ground for what future migraine therapies will look like.

Click this link to download the free app Migraine – Healthline right now and get started exploring the safe and growing group for the migraine community.

Have you ever experienced vision changes like flashes of light and blind spots right before an intense headache?

Wait, that’s more than just a headache.

That’s probably a migraine.

Migraines cause severe throbbing pain, usually at the side of the head and symptoms may include nausea and vomiting, numbness or tingling, and sensitivity to light and sound.

There are a few types of migraines, but we can take note of two major ones. In this article I will be covering the two main types of migraines as well as how to apply mindfulness in a simple and actionable sense to reduce stress an improve our brains ability to cope with stressors.

Migraine Without Aura

Migraine with aura was formerly called Common Migraine. Justifying its former name, this is the most common type of migraine. It is characterized by a severe pulsating headache that is aggravated by movement. This likely causes nausea and vomiting, sensitivity to light (Photophobia), or sound (Phonophobia).

Migraine With Aura

Migraine with aura was formerly called Class or Complicated Migraine. Visual disturbances typically appear when you have this type of migraine. You may see flashes of light or temporarily lose your vision. Numbness, muscle weakness, or trouble speaking are also less frequent symptoms of this type of migraine. Usually, these symptoms occur 10 to 60 minutes before the pain kicks In, but in other cases, they may occur one or two days before the pain occurs. See our article on how to stop a migraine aura here.

Migraines usually take hours or days to go away. There are over-the-counter medications available to treat migraines, but prescription drugs might also be necessary for the severe ones.

What causes migraines that we can alleviate with gardening?

A number of factors could contribute to the onset of this consuming pain. Different types of stress because they cause oxidative damage, are linked to migraines. Some of the stressful situations that migraines could manifest from include:

1. Anxiety, nervousness, and tension(either physiological or situational)
2. Lack of sleep, sleep disturbances or not being ready for sleep
3. Stress at work and no good outlet or support system
4. Financial problems and living above means
5. Drastic changes in life (marriage, divorce, having a child, or moving into a new home(mold), contracting parasites abroad or locally, death in the family)
6. Having too much on your plate or burning the wick at both ends

We want to make sure we have strong programs and protocols including lifestyle medicine to deal with the root causes of pain. When finding specifics in lifestyle medicine that work for us, we need to do some exploration work. Not everyone will always be willing to sit down to meditate and empty their mind that way. Instead, they can use gardening because of its strong grounding and mindfulness based benefits. Just the scents of the herbs, the connection with the earth and the immediate presence needed to garden take a LOT of stress off of your brain and body. They disconnect you from that monkey mind and reconnect you to your body.

Gardening Treatments

Just going outside to your garden is already therapeutic because you are telling yourself this is self care time, this is time for me and this is where I can relax. Feeling the breeze and seeing your baby plants growing, is part of the joy that goes into watching your hard work pay off. On top of the mindfulness based benefits with pain and stress reduction, the harvest from your little garden may be beneficial to you too. Planting some herbs that are therapeutic could be a remedy to your head pain issues.

Lavender, Lemon Balm, Rosemary, and Peppermint

These herbs, if planted in your garden, could be aroma-therapeutic. They could also be used in steam baths or blended massage oils. Using them in humidifiers could also bring out their scents.

Rosemary

Aside from aromatherapy, rosemary can be taken internally infused in hot teas or as flavors in your food. They offer a lot of benefits, like regulating blood pressure and intracranial pressure. They are also known to treat migraines.

Feverfew

This is the standard herb for migraines and headaches. It also serves as an analgesic, anti-inflammatory, antipyretic, as its name suggests.

Ginger

Gingers have been used traditionally as a remedy for headaches, stomachaches, nausea, and inflammation. A study conducted in 2014 by Maghbooli, et al., found that the efficacy of ginger powder was similar to sumatriptan, a prescription drug for migraines.

Studies show that when you do something you love, it relaxes you and pulls you into the stress-free zone. Nobody is ever so busy that they do not have time for themselves. No matter how busy you are with work, you will always have even a little time to relax. It’s just a matter of prioritization and finding the right tools for YOU.

If you have pests in your garden click here to read a guide on an easy alternative

Tips To Improve Gardening as a Mindfulness Practice

Gardening isn’t so difficult to do when you have everything ready, most notably your time and commitment. Here are some ways you can improve gardening’s effect on stress levels:

Schedule a time

We can all find excuses to not give ourselves enough time for self care, but that is exactly what the burnt out individual does, and we do not want to be them. So schedule it in like you would any high priority task. Make the room for it and hold to your schedule. If you have 30 minutes great, if you only have 15 then awesome, just make sure you take advantage of the full 15.

Cut the social ties

Unless you’re a blogger, your smart-phone should be left inside the house. You’ll want to be completely immersed in the activity and disengaged from the social networks that give you little benefit and feed anxiety, stress and superficial desires that do nothing for your soul. This will also help reset your eyes strain and musculature so that any office sitting and excessive screen time can be balanced out.

Focus

When we can bring our focus into singular points of relaxation(the basis of meditation) we can experience a great relieving of the stresses and tensions in our body and brain. Gardening can help you clear your mind so that you are more able to focus on the things you really need to do. Diving into the beauty of nature by noticing color, taste, structure, patterns and scents allows your brain to wrap itself around the present experience.

Mindfulness is a large part of recovering from any chronic pain conditions because we have to reprogram the sensitization which begins happening inside our nervous systems. But, not everyone can do every technique and so just like the right diet, the right mindfulness practise and methods of stress reduction need to be explored and we need to find our own individual fit. There is a form of meditation for everyone. What works for you? Let me know in the comments below.

If you are looking for quick and easy stress reduction techniques with breath-work see our video here.

I love dealing with clients who have hormonal issues like hormonal headaches and migraines because they are one of the straightforward types to correct. At the end of the day we need to think of hormones as just messengers because that is what they are. If our body is having a problem sending the message or receiving it, we are going to run into hormonal symptoms. One of the most important areas here is contraception and I’m often asked if using contraception is the right thing to do for migraines. In this article, I will be discussing hormonal migraines in conjunction with the BEST IUD for migraine sufferers.

Before I get started I just want to cover that the most important aspect of IUDs and any hormones is to track what your body is doing. You want to track any symptoms throughout your body that you have before you start and then track if you develop new symptoms, symptoms go away or get worse. Hormones affect your body in many different ways we still do not understand and you may be reacting adversely over a long period of time leading you to believe it is something else when really it is the IUD.

What is an IUD?

An IUD which stands for intra uterine device is a type of birth control used by inserting a device into your uterus by your healthcare provider.

There are generally two types in the US:

• Hormonal IUD(Mirena, Skyla, Liletta, Kyleena)

• Copper IUD(Paragard)

These are different from a vaginal ring like the Nuvaring which is manually placed on your own into your vagina during your cycle and then removed to allow you to have your period.

Copper IUD:

The copper form of the IUDs use a small release of copper into the uterus to create an inhospitable environment for sperm and creates uterine inflammation to prevent pregnancy.

But if you’ve read my other articles you know my opinion on inflammation and by far and large we have more than enough inflammation to keep our systems running properly and fine tuned.

I don’t think its a good idea to be releasing copper into your body but if for some reason you have to use the copper IUD then it would be important to have your tissue copper and mineral levels checked. If you are already on the high end and have other mineral imbalances then this would likely add to the stress already present.

Hormonal IUD:

The hormonal IUDs contain a form of synthetic progestin called levonorgestrel which is often passed off as progesterone but it is not.

I want to be really clear on this; the hormones in hormonal IUDs are NOT natural progesterone.

They do not have the health benefits that natural progesterone does but they come with many side effects.

If you do not have hormonal migraines then it may be better to use the copper type in case you trigger hormonal issues.

If you are only looking at birth control as a way to control your migraines then you are way off and have been mislead.

It’s a common misnomer that if you have hormonal migraines or headaches that you should be correcting them with birth control.

Birth controls use synthetic hormones that are NOT like our natural hormones and can actually create a whole host of more pressing issues which I will talk about in the side effects section.

You may experience relief from using birth control for your migraines if the other nutrients that birth control depletes are currently at optimal levels and you have “resources to spare.” If your only migraine trigger is because of your hormonal fluctuations then using this synthetic birth control may actually provide some relief.

BUT

And this is a big but…

This does not fix the hormonal issues, will eventually deplete nutrient levels and can have extreme consequences like breast cancer and stroke.

If you have hormonal issues, you want to first find out what the exact issue is, where in the cycle the problem lies, if you just are not making enough hormones or if your ovulation time is just misplaced leading to upset in the cycle. In our clinic we correct all of these without the need for synthetic hormones.

Then you want to find out WHY this issue is happening.

Your hormones and cycle do not go out of whack for no reason and you’d know this if you’ve received our free E-book on hormonal migraines here.

If you have not yet, you HAVE to see our full presentation on The 3 Linchpins That Destroy Hormones and Leave Your Brain in Pain by clicking here.

IUD Side effects

Ideally we would use other methods of controlling for accidental pregnancies that do not cause inflammation and add copper or change our hormones like these IUD devices.

But that isn’t always possible and so if you do not have hormonal migraines and your hormones are fine then it would likely be better to use a copper device over a hormonal one.

Now lets talk about the side effects of something as dangerous as putting a foreign device inside of your body.

The first two and some of the most serious side effects of IUDs are perforation and expulsion:

Perforation is when the IUD gets imbedded into your uterine wall or breaks through it. This can be dangerous and is why you want a professional placing it like a gynaecologist.

Symptoms include:

• Severe pelvic or abdominal pain that does not go away

• Bleeding

• Pain with intercourse

• Absent strings or shorter menses

Expulsion is when your IUD gets kicked out of the uterus. You may want to have an ultrasound to find out where it went and what you will have to do to get it out. Always make sure you are screened for risk factors for these.

Hormonal IUDs have a 3-6% explusion rate and copper IUDs have a 3-10% expulsion rate in the first year.

Women with a history of heavy menorrhagic or incredibly painful dysmenorrheic periods are at a higher risk of expulsion. Same with post partum.

Side effects of progestin found in hormonal IUDs:

• Altered structure of human brain

• Increased risk of stroke, heart attack, cardiovascular issues

• Increased breast cancer risk

• Depression, anxiety and suicide risk increase

• Do not protect brain health like natural progesterone

• Headaches and migraines!

• Increased risk of autoimmunity and digestive disorders like dysbiosis and SIBO

• Lowered levels of B vitamins, Vitamin C and Zinc

Best ways for contraception versus best ways for hormonal migraines and headaches

In terms of IUDs as long as your copper levels are not in the high end of the range and your other minerals are balanced then copper may be the better option if you absolutely must have an IUD.

For hormonal migraines and headaches, birth control simply is not a safe nor effective answer.(But it is often the one given) Hormonal IUDs don’t actually address the cause of the hormonal migraines or headaches but instead just throws more hormones into the mix, with unpredictable and non specific results.

In reality, using birth control for headaches is using one of the few prescription hormone tools available to doctors but using it for something completely different and using it “off label.”

If you’ve read our free E-guide on The 5 Mistakes of Hormonal Migraines, this is not how we fix our hormones.

In our clinic we find out what the problem in the cycle is, what is contributing to the problem and then how to go about correcting it. Not using synthetics that can further deplete already low nutrient levels and lead to more serious complications in the long run.

Best IUD for migraine sufferers

I generally believe that IUDs are a better system for contraception than birth control pills as you are using much less hormone. As long as your detox pathways are functioning properly and you do not already have a hormonal imbalance then this may not break the camels back so to speak.

But it’s not the best way to fix hormonal issues and you need to be aware that the progesterone in IUDs is not natural progesterone.

At the end of the day I’ve found that nature often does it best and we need to first correct any functional problems before we go beyond and add more to the mix.

Our health is dynamic so if we can approach it with all of our dynamic factors like nutrition, hydration, sleep and stress management and have those honed in then our body responds incredibly well.

Diet, stress management, sleep and exercise are at the core of hormonal management and if hormones aren’t functioning properly, it’s more than likely these are not optimized.

The way we think, move and breathe is what gives us health and we need to honor that. We honor that by honoring our bodies.

Our bodies are honored by us listening to them and learning from the signals they give us on if we are performing better or worse.

When we can authentically listen to what the body says yes this helps it function better to and no this does not help it function better then we can enter into a space of transformative health.

This is what actually healing is and a necessary step for all of us to get our health back and become empowered with our own vitality.