I want...
November 19, 2024 By
Leanne Vogel
February 4, 2025
Diane Ducarme
Which is going to challenge the woman in her family situation, but also in her professional life. And so it’s going to be really hard for her to manage and also feel listened to because there’s no real solution aside of medication. And so that’s going to make the woman feel very isolated. And so she’s going to start to learn to fake that she’s fine.
Leanne Vogel
Hello and welcome to another episode. I’m so glad that we get to hang out today and chat about migraines. So, so many of you have told me that migraines are a challenge for you.
Leanne Vogel
I myself personally deal with them when.
Leanne Vogel
I’m structurally not okay. And we chat about the differences in the episode. Today we’re talking about how migraines feel, the symptoms of migraines, the sign that a migraine is going to hit, and the anxiety that happens in anticipation of the migraine triggers root causes and a couple of things you may not have assessed or thought of when it comes.
Leanne Vogel
To the root causes behind migraines.
Leanne Vogel
Our guest today’s name is Diane Ducarme. She hosts the podcast Migraine Heroes.
Leanne Vogel
So if after today’s episode you’re like, darn, I want to learn from Diane. She sounds awesome and you can find her there. Diane comes from a very large family.
Leanne Vogel
Of ladies and she is Belgian of origin.
Leanne Vogel
Her mother tongue is French.
Leanne Vogel
In the last 15 years, Diane has.
Leanne Vogel
Lived in South Africa, the U.S. china.
Leanne Vogel
And now New Zealand. She brings so much understanding of root causes behind migraines to the platform that.
Leanne Vogel
We haven’t discussed before. So I’m really excited to go through this. With her understanding of healing, nutrition and roots in Chinese medicine, it’s just a really great conversation. Overall, let’s cut over to our time with Diane.
Leanne Vogel
Hey, my name is Leanne and I’m fascinated with helping women navigate how to eat, move and care for their bodies. This has taken me on a journey from vegan keto, high protein to everything in between. I’m a small town holistic nutritionist turned three time international bestselling author turned functional medicine practitioner offering telemedicine services around the globe to women looking to better their health and stop second guessing themselves. I’m here to teach you how to wade through the wellness noise to get to the good stuff that’ll help you achieve your goals. Whether you’re seeking relief from chronic ailments, striving for peak performance, or simply eager to live a more vibrant life, this podcast is your go to resource for actionable advice and inspiration. Together we’ll uncover the interconnectedness of nutrition, movement, sleep, stress management, and mindset, empowering you to make informed choices that support your unique health journey. Think of it as quality time with your bestie mixed with a little med school so you’re empowered. At your next doctor visit, get ready to be challenged and encouraged while you learn about your body and how to care for it healthfully.
Leanne Vogel
Join me as we embrace vitality, reclaim our innate potential, and discover what it truly means to pursue healthfulness.
Leanne Vogel
Hey, Diane, how’s it going?
Diane Ducarme
Very good. So good to be with you, Leanne.
Leanne Vogel
Yes, yes. Thanks for being here. I like. I like to ask all of my guests why you do what you do and what lights you up on a daily basis with your work.
Diane Ducarme
Ah, you know, because I can change, transform people’s lives. When I was 17, I had a skiing accident. I lost half of my blood. I broke my femur. I shrunk a kidney. And for the subsequent 12 years, I’ve been in quests of my old self just having my body work. And work took me to South Africa, the us, China. And in China, by coincidence, there’s a doctor who put me on back on my feet, not using acupuncture, not using herbs, just using food.
Diane Ducarme
And that took three weeks. After three weeks, I was my old self. And this was the biggest gift I had ever received from any human beings. And I really dreamed. This was in 2011, and I dreamed, how can I give that to other people? And I thought, oh, you know, who’s. Who’s losing their blood, blood so much, and, you know, it’s not very frequent. But then, because I gravitated towards people who were struggling with their health when I was in business, I was listening a bit more when people were saying, I have problems physically, and I helped my sister and then the daughter of a neurologist with their migraines. And I made a huge difference in their life, a difference that was way bigger than even I had received.
Diane Ducarme
And so what lights me in my day is when I have someone who’s battling with migraine disease for 5, 10, 20, 30, 40 years has seen doctors, neurologists, the people who wrote the books, you know, who. Who did the everything. And yet they say the only person who fixed it was you. And that just fills my heart with joy, because then they see their husbands and they have time with their family, and they can work, earn their life, and just live again. And so that’s what lights me up, as you can tell.
Leanne Vogel
Yeah, your whole continents just, like, changed. You’re just like a different person. When I asked you that question. You look just like so lit up. And that, that is so true. And what lights me up every day too is just those. It seems like a small suggestion. And when people implement your recommendations and they see change, it’s just so cool that you get that opportunity to work alongside somebody and make that difference.
Leanne Vogel
And especially when it comes to migraines, I think like migraines and pain, they really go side by side. Whether it’s like full body pains or joint aches, it’s just debilitating. Like, I had a friend growing up whose mom had migraines and I saw her once, I knew this girl for probably a decade and I saw her mom once because she was always in her bedroom, always with the door closed. Like, we weren’t allowed to make noises upstairs because mom was sleeping. Like that was her life. What sorts of like. I’m sure there’s severity to migraines. What do you see as like the small baby issues to like the full blown crazy migraine issues?
Diane Ducarme
Well, let’s start by the mother, your friend. I love that example because this is so, so true. So a migraine attack will be anywhere lasting from three hours to three, four days on paper. And in practice, like the mom of your friend, they can last sort of almost forever. Like the person is a constant state of pain and the head pain is just one aspect of it, which is there most of the time, but not always can be excruciating. More labor, like in intensity, then will come accompanied by a ton of other symptoms such as dizziness, vertigo, willingness sensation to vomit and actual vomiting can come with nausea. Sensitive to light, sensitivity to sound exactly like you explained, but also sensitivity to smell. Sometimes it can come with half paralysis of the body, or especially on one side, it can come with tingling sensations, trembling sensations.
Diane Ducarme
And women will usually experience this in sort of three phases. A phase where they know it’s going to hit them. So they might be yawning uncontrollably, or they might experience really immense fatigue, or they might start to lose their eyesight and they know it’s coming and so can come a lot of anxiety because they know they’re going to be in massive pain a bit like, you know, before you give birth and you’re like, oh, I’ve done this once. This is not going to be, this is not going to be pleasant. And then they go into that massive phase of migraine attack. And then they have, after that migraine attack, they can still have lots of sensations where their body is completely groggy and Trying to recover from, like, a massive sort of. That would be a sort of almost hangover phase. That would be the third part.
Diane Ducarme
And so. And so if we go back to your question, which is, what is light all the way too strong? The light version would be, hey, this happens to me once a month before my menstruation. Usually, I think I’ve tracked it like that. I think wine might be a trigger, or chocolate or cheese, I think, but not always. It’s also not always the case. But it just comes and goes. Can come at puberty and then all the way to. I’m in pain every single day.
Diane Ducarme
I had a traumatic brain injury. I had a burnout at work. I started a new medication or pill, birth control, and I started perimenopause. And I’ve been in pain ever since. And so everything in between. Yeah.
Leanne Vogel
Wow. Okay. There. There were a couple of triggers in there, and I definitely want to go back to them. But one thing that you said was the anxiety and the anticipation of it coming on can sometimes make it worse. And I can relate to that. I have, like, this chronic neck pain issue that comes on when I’m stressed. And when I feel it coming on, it can flare, like, really bad to the point where I’ll have nodules all over the back of my head.
Leanne Vogel
And I know. I know when it’s coming on. I know when it’s going to get really bad. And the anxiety will make me stress more, which makes it worse. So you’re saying that migraines kind of have that same thing for many people where we know what’s coming on and then does the anxiety make the reaction come on quicker or worse in its severity?
Diane Ducarme
Sometimes that is going to depend. So, yes, it can make it worse. I think what makes it really sad is let’s imagine that mother you were talking about. She was on that one day where she was standing up in her kitchen. The anxiety and anticipation of the next migraine attack takes away the joy that she can have in that given moment. And that’s really. That’s quite terrible because it means you live in constant pain. It’s constant, constant fear of your next migraine attack.
Diane Ducarme
Now, stress itself and anxiety for even external factor can and are triggered for a lot of people. For some people in that zone of stress, they will have the migraine, and for some others is as soon as they have a relief. So it’s the weekend, it’s Friday night, it’s the holidays, then bam, they have massive migraines. And so they go, go, go, go, Go in that stress phase and it’s the release that brings the pain. So there’s variation, but definitely correlation for most. Yeah.
Leanne Vogel
So you mentioned PMS and other, you know, smells making things worse. Are there different types of M. Like, certain people will be triggered by xyz? Like what. What are the triggers? What’s happening with all of that?
Diane Ducarme
Yeah, yeah. So there are a lot of different types of migraines. So from a Western science perspective, there’s a lot of different name. You can have hemiplegic migraines or cluster migraines or migraines with aura or migraines without aura. So there’s a lot of names, probably around 10, 12 names of different types of migraines because we start to appreciate in the west how different people’s experiences. They will, unfortunately, language, just give us one word. But that one word means so many things to people who suffer from migraines. And for the rest of the ones that don’t have them, it means a headache.
Diane Ducarme
So it’s quite an unfortunate word and a word quite hard to use. But, yes, you have a lot of different types and then a lot of different triggers. So for some people it might look like this. For some people it might look like, let’s take a child, they’re going to have maybe a migraine that they would then refer more as a headache because the intensity of the pain of what they’ve experienced later in their life was a lot more. But so they will put something cold on their forehead, and it’s mainly on the forehead and then they go lie down in the dark. And the mother or the grandmother, who may have had or may have migraine themselves, have a sense of what to do in those circumstances might medicate the child. And then through puberty, the person can have sort of more violent migraines. Then you can have some people who go for the exams and then they kind of lose their eyesight and in that moment it looks like a stroke.
Diane Ducarme
So the person is going to have a lot of stroke similitude symptoms. They will end up at the emergency room and after three days and a lot of medications, the doctor will come and say, oh, what you had was a migraine. And people are usually very surprised. Like, Wes, what do you mean? Like this felt so much more. And they’re left with that diagnosis a little bit. Yeah. Without much answers. So, yes, a lot of different variations.
Leanne Vogel
So when it comes to our audience, many of us are women between the ages of like 40 to 55 ish. Some of us are experiencing challenges with PMS, where I’m sure migraines are coming and going, or even menopause, where migraines are coming and going. What are the common issues like plaguing women in those kind of groups when it comes to migraines?
Diane Ducarme
Great question. They are massive. So when you look at the stats, because migraine is genetic, it’s 5% of boys and girls, the incidence triples for women to quadruples for women at puberty. So once the hormones change and go upwards towards fertility, it starts, we start to reshuffle the cards on who gets them. Once you get to 40 to 55, suddenly everything changes yet again. And so in that phase, a lot of women may, for some, lessen their migraine. For some, they start to have some and for others they just change in nature. For some, they accentuate.
Diane Ducarme
So it’s a crossroad where again, how people, the intensity of the, of the pain that people experience is going to vary. And so what you’re going to see a lot around that age is women will feel a lot more dizziness, fogginess, vertigo, sometimes if they have sensitivity to light or eye issues such as glaucoma or lesions behind the eyes, et cetera, all of that is going to start to be accentuated. And it’s really difficult because it comes with all of the perimenopausal symptoms as well. At the same time, they might have hot flashes, not sleep really well at night, not digest wine, cheese, chocolate as much, not be able to handle as much stress. So it comes in addition to all of the rest. But yes, they will have that. And one of the things that women in that category have more is also something called Meniere’s disease, which is, to me, a variation of migraines and is manifested by a lot of dizziness, fatigue or sort of constant, which is going to challenge the woman in her family situation, but also in her professional life. And so it’s going to be really hard for her to manage and also feel listened to because there’s just no real solution aside of medication.
Diane Ducarme
And so that’s going to make the woman feel very isolated. And so she’s going to start to learn to fake that she’s fine. She’s going to try to fake as much as possible that it’s fine. Her husband and children will know because they know her intimately, but with her friends and co workers, she might get away with it if they don’t have too much empathy.
Leanne Vogel
Yeah, I mean, when do we learn to fake how we’re feeling? I don’t know, I feel like I learned that really early on in life of just like, suck it up and get her done.
Diane Ducarme
Push through.
Leanne Vogel
Exactly. So is it hormone fluctuations that are causing these issues? Like, I know that this is such a loaded question because root causes are vast, depending on the circumstance. But when it comes to the ladies that you’ve connected with, what do you, what do you feel are the top root cause issues around? These migraines?
Diane Ducarme
Yeah, absolutely. So in order to understand them, I always go east and west, and I’ll start with the west. Actually. There’s an organ like that has been identified quite recently. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the interstitium.
Leanne Vogel
No, I don’t think so.
Diane Ducarme
So this is a really recent find. And I find that the west is not really owning completely yet because it’s really disturbing. So about a couple of years ago in 2015, and then 17, 18, 19, it accelerated. Two doctors, one in Germany, one in the US made an accidental discovery. One, the German one, was looking at how to explain how some cancers infiltrate very fast. The other one was just desiccating bile duct. And both what they found was that there was an additional full network inside the body that is in charge of 25% of the liquids of the body that had gone untouched, unfound and unseen. And they called that organ like system the interstitium.
Diane Ducarme
And the interstitium looks like you need to imagine spaghetti that are surrounding all of your organs and regulate your digestion as well as your internal temperature. Does that make sense? I’ll just take a pose there.
Leanne Vogel
Yeah. So it’s sort of like a lymphatic system, but more so around organs.
Diane Ducarme
Exactly. That’s exactly right. It’s exactly.
Leanne Vogel
Okay, okay, I’m following you. And it regulates your temperature almost like your thyroid would. Yeah, okay, okay, okay, okay.
Diane Ducarme
And it helps, it aids digestion. And if you think of your body, it helps with deep hydration. It’s at this, at the core of it, this is deep hydration. And what they discovered still, I’m still in the west for a minute here, they discovered that it’s really exciting. They discovered that it had hormones circulating in there. There was also a lot of collagen and yellic acid. Pardon my French. Yeah, and hyaluronic acid.
Leanne Vogel
Yeah, yeah.
Diane Ducarme
These liquids, they were sticky and yellow. And in the west, this is where we are now, where we’ve discovered the system. And we know the system must play a lot of roles, but we’re not sure which ones. And we know that this is the way cancers can infiltrate the body and take control over the body very fast. Okay, so now this is what we’ve discovered in the west, in the east, we’ve known this for thousands of years. The system is what is regulating the yin. When I go through perimenopause, I start to dry. Yeah, it’s fascinating because basically this research validated, that’s why it’s currently not overly talked about.
Diane Ducarme
And so the yin in traditional Chinese medicine, Eastern concept, is a concept of inside of your body. And in order for your body to perform, you need to have really fine liquids that will irrigate your bowel movements, that will be part of your menstruation, and that will irrigate your brain. So now if you think of the gut brain axis, and if you go to the vagus nerve and imagine the vagus nerve, such as a big tree that plants its roots around your small, large intestine, around your stomach, around your heart, around your lungs, then form larger roots along your spine and sort of plugs in like a Tesla in your brain in a way that we don’t fully comprehend yet. I would like to think, and we describe a lot in the west, the vagus nerve, neck and below, but not so much that interconnection with the brain and which organ corresponds to what part of the brain, because it’s so complex. But if you think of that as a tree with a really dense foliage, then the roots need irrigation that are linked to that system. And when that system dries, then the brain complains. And if you have a genetic predisposition for migraines and that you have that dryness, your genes. And there’s a brilliant paper written by Elizabeth Loder from Harvard Medical School, who says the.
Diane Ducarme
The genetic advantage of migraine is evolutionary advantage, sort of that functions like a fire alarm. And I completely agree with her. The file arm is going to kick in to say, hey, dryness, dryness. It’s going to manifest in dizziness, vertigo, et cetera. And so that will come really strong in that stage of life. Now, if you have more inflammation, the yin will be less as well. If you bleed a lot and you have a physical blood volume deficiency, the yin will be less as well, and the brain will complain. And so what you see is a lot of women who suffer from these symptoms and just have that.
Diane Ducarme
Those liquids, not enough. Now, when you replenish them, you achieve a couple of things. Number one, you achieve mental clarity, peace and love with your brain. Again, that’s spectacular. Number two, you also achieve a much Better digestion again and not so much bloating. When women in that age category feel bloated, they often attribute to something they do too much of or they have too much of, but it’s usually actually a sign of deficiency. So when you were asking, what are some of the reasons why women experience migraines in that age bracket, this is a huge one. Now, medications, what they will do is they will be aiming to kill the pain, but they will add toxicity on the liver that then the yin system needs to help rid of.
Diane Ducarme
Yeah, with the liver. And so you’re consuming your energy. So if you arrive in perimenopause, you’ve taken a lot of medications, chances are your migraines are just going to be more and more and more and they will be correlated by a chronic constipation that no fiber, no medication can get rid of it. And that leaves the woman in a state where her vagus nerve, her gut brain axis is no longer performing because it’s no longer hydrated. And she will feel that the medication is actually not helping that much.
Leanne Vogel
I mean, that makes a lot of sense to me. It has my two thumbs up, just like as you were talking. I’m kind of going through the Western to Eastern also. My brain just thinking about, when we are experiencing menopause, we are required to have a balanced liver and balanced adrenals. That’s a big part of it. And we live in a yang dominant world where it’s like, go, go, go, push, push, push. Like, we don’t do a lot of natural yin activities. Would that be part of it too? Of, like, as we reach menopause, our adrenals are burnt out.
Leanne Vogel
They’re requiring to be more online because they’re going to start, you know, doing all the hormone stuff that your ovaries did at one point. And coming from that Yang existence that we have of the go, go, go, push, push, push. We’re already depleted in our yin energy because the Yang is just so completely, so 100%.
Diane Ducarme
And you touched on exactly another two root causes of migraines. You talked about the importance of the balance of the liver massive. So in that phase of life, the liver organ is going to reduce in size. Now, when you say liver in Western languages, you always designate the piece of flesh below your right ribcage. When you say liver in Mandarin, so you say gan. Gan means liver gallbladder. All of the irrigation of your tendons, ability to detox a lot of your brain, your temples, your eyebrows, the top of your brain, your eyes, ability to see, well, breast and female hormones, mood hormones and uterus. And so when they say gan, they mean all of that.
Diane Ducarme
And so that system is in transition in that phase. And from a western perspective, the liver organ reduces in size. And so all of these abilities, ability to detox, ability to produce the yin, ability to produce hormones, etc. Everything goes down. Now, if you overly medicate, on top of that, the level of inflammation of your liver is higher, and so your ability to balance is lower. It’s exactly what you see, because it’s exactly. You can’t prevent your liver function from sort of aging. That’s just a normal process.
Diane Ducarme
But you can have it age gracefully and in balance. Then you keep it happy. If you hammer it with a lot of substance, it’s just a lot harder. It has a lot more work. It’s overworked. So that’s a cause of migraines. Then you talked about the kidney system. Absolutely.
Diane Ducarme
The kidney system will also go through change. And as it goes through change, its capacity to deal with stress, which is one of its function with the adrenals, will indeed be reduced. Yeah, completely.
Leanne Vogel
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Leanne Vogel
Well, and if you think of the common medications that individuals are prescribed, late 40s, early 50s, beta blockers, a big one that’s going to affect our kidney function and then any sort of statin, which is going to affect liver function. And so you’re coming into this, like, go, go, go lifestyle with two of these top medications affecting two of the top organs that are required. You know what you were talking about in. In the system of liquids and regulating migraines. And you’re already coming into it with a dysregulation of these two essential organs, is what I’m hearing.
Diane Ducarme
And beta blockers can be prescribed, actually, even for migraines, migraine medication. And look, I’m not a doctor. And when you have an acute problem, you should support your body the best you can in that given moment. And that’s always true. You always need a doctor to validate that. You know, you do an MRI and you do your blood work, and everything is sort of clean and not problematic. In the case of migraines, a lot of different medications that belongs to a lot of different diseases and conditions were administered in the context of migraines because they would sometimes work. Beta blockers is one of them.
Diane Ducarme
Triptans is another one that will contract the blood vessels, but then antidepressants as well, and sort of a whole plethora of medications that, yeah, are prescribed with that effect. Yeah.
Leanne Vogel
So is a fair next question, like, how do we. How do we fix all of this? How do we unpack? Like, I don’t want the woman listening to be like, okay, okay, I got it. I have migraines. My body’s a mess now. Like, what do I do with all this? What do I even. How do I age gracefully with my liver? How do I get the more hydration and replenish these liquids? Like, what. Where do I go from here? What do I do?
Diane Ducarme
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think that the first port of call is you need to rule out. You need to confirm these are migraines. And when you do that, you go to a proper doctor and you do your. You do your thing, you do your mi. You rule out that there’s anything else going on. It’s very rare that there is. But, you know, you want to know, and you want to have that reassurance.
Diane Ducarme
The second thing is then you do things a lot more holistically. So we talk about the liver system and the kidney system, for example, the Kidney system. You talked about, you know, having more yin activities. You talked about, you know, having a bit of downtime, less. Less sort of young, brutal things, but also sometimes less stress, which is one way the liver. You can also say, okay, I’m going to have less sort of liver stimulating foods. And you can, you can decide to say, okay, if my liver and my kidney can work less, I’m going to give them less work. Or you can say through.
Diane Ducarme
And I do that through foods. I’m going to, through foods stimulate these systems so that they work a lot more and say, hey, dear liver, I really love you. Where you and I like, it’s for a long time, I’m going to really give you a lot of energy. I’m not just going to detox you. I’m going to give you foods and nourishments that will increase your power. And same for the kidney system and then same for the yin. You can re. Increase all of these things.
Diane Ducarme
Fundamentally, I think you have to fundamentally trust two things that, number one, your body is sound, and number two, it wants to be healthy. And I really want to explain that for a minute because I think that a lot of people, they receive strong diagnostics and they also have a lot of things that are popping up as problems here and there, and they see them as disjointed when they really belong together. When the body has an issue, let’s imagine your kidney system is really weakened and you can’t take too much stress. The kidney system has a lot of functions in the East. If we go back to the east for a minute, it’s your biggest immune system. It’s the defender against cancer. So the body is going to say, but also it has a lot of other things. It has the sense of smell, the sense of hearing, it has the hair, it has the ovulation.
Diane Ducarme
So it can make a lot of compromises before it has to go all the way to a low immune system. And so when these things, oh, I have sensitivity to sound, I have sensitive to smell, suddenly my hair turned gray or I lose a lot of my hair. You can also trust that your body is not frenetically having symptoms and frenetically doing random stuff. What it’s actually trying to do is instead of having one single big mess in one place, which would be really hard to fix, it’s going to make a lot of small messes in a lot of places. Because if you suddenly meet Leanne and go through something holistic, you can still fix it all. And the body knows that, but it knows that if it does, if it takes the shortcut, things get out of control and then they have something major and big. And then you really need to go west and do the right thing yet again for your body, but in a very different style. Does that make sense?
Leanne Vogel
It absolutely does. It absolutely does. I have started doing more yin based activities to try to regulate my nervous system. I recently went through a pretty epic like mold sickness situation personally. And when that happens, my nervous system gets dysregulated and I massively go into overdrive. And I find like as simple as like sitting in a quiet corner and breathing. It’s a great yin based activity. Or before bed, I’ll, I’ll like 45 minutes before bed, I’ll just go into my bedroom, lay out my yoga mat, usually on the floor, just so it’s comfortable and I’ll bring like pillows and I’ll just like stretch and listen to music and wow, my sleep has been so much better that now that my nervous system is dysregulated, I’m like, I’m gonna keep this because this is fantastic.
Leanne Vogel
Like, this is just such a great way to wind down the day. Other type of yin based activities is I’ll listen to, what is it? Beta wave.
Diane Ducarme
Oh yeah.
Leanne Vogel
Playlist on Spotify. And I’ll go for a walk with my dog who. This only works if you have like a really good dog who doesn’t pull on the leash. And it’s not stressful. Like walking with my dog is super chill. But there are other dogs in the neighborhood which this would not be a chill activity with. But we just go for about an hour long walk before we start the day before we do anything. Like that’s the first thing we do together, her and I, is go for a walk and those little things, like maybe you don’t have an hour, that’s fine, maybe you have five minutes.
Leanne Vogel
But it really does make a difference of like the stillness aspect. I know for myself personally, because there are a lot of things we can’t change in our lives that are more yang based. Would you agree that those are some like good examples of like yin based activities? If people are just like, I don’t even know what that means.
Diane Ducarme
Oh, absolutely. I mean, these are, these are terrific. I hear also some people sort of cutting WI fi and trying to have just less electricity surrounding them. And definitely mold will put a lot of stress on the body. Oh yeah, yeah, mold will. Mold for people who have the genetic predisposition for migraines will usually translate into fogginess which is quite different. And they might say, look, I’m not in pain every single day. I don’t have a migraine attack every single day.
Diane Ducarme
But I have this, that constant fogginess. And this is so unpleasant. But indeed when you do that, when you go in a meditative state, you allow for your body to do its other jobs. It’s a bit like, let’s imagine you have a team of co workers and they’re doing their daily tasks, their operational work, and every day you come back and say, oh, I have an, an urgent email, an urgent task, an urgent. And you constantly disrupt. So the. Okay, sure, we take care of your urgency, sure, we’ll take care of your urgency, sure. But then it means that the daily to do’s get slipped.
Diane Ducarme
So you want to allow your body to prioritize and do what it thinks it should, that should be done. Yeah. And so I find that when you do sort of softer things, you allow for your body to keep control and reset quite nicely.
Leanne Vogel
I love that picture of just like giving your body the space to like not be on that urgent lookout for the next thing and just allow it to do what it needs to do. Because you’re right, it is, it is so wise. I have seen some crazy stuff in my practice with clients where they’re like not in a good place at all physically and the body is so resilient. And you’re right, it does want to be balanced. And oftentimes we need to get out of our own way. And sometimes that’s doing less.
Diane Ducarme
Yeah, completely. Now that being said, I’ll just add a caveat because women who suffer from migraines, they will have that alert system. Oh, if I go out too much, I have a migraine. If I drink alcohol, I have a migraine. If I socialize, I have migraine. If I watch too much my screen time, I have aura. And so little by little they make their lives smaller. And so they start to control their environment in a hyper strong way.
Diane Ducarme
And in spite of that, they are still in pain. And it’s very frustrating. I don’t, I don’t want to, I really want to acknowledge them as well because they’re probably listening too and thinking, hey, but wait a minute, I do all of these things, all of the above, and still I’m in pain. The body is an incredibly complex system of, we’ve just covered three of them, you know, 50,000 root causes, and there are combinations that can happen. And so sometimes when the body got out of balance and in a vicious circle it really will struggle to resurface on its own, although with a lot of patience, it ultimately would. But sometimes with years of medications and years of pain, a few things need to be reprogrammed, you know, to become what I call the migraine hero. Like someone who has acquired a mastery of their genetics and is just, yeah, really happy and able to live a life free of pain.
Leanne Vogel
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Leanne Vogel
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Leanne Vogel
With those ladies that you just mentioned. Are there areas that you could kind of lead them down a little bit to kind of give them a clue as to what they should look at next. I know it’s so hard. Like with root root, with proper root cause work, it’s sort of like, like you said, 50,000 different options. But as practitioners, we start to see patterns in certain things, like, are there.
Diane Ducarme
I think the, you know, when women experience so much migraine, dizziness, et cetera, this is what conditions their life. A better attention to focus is on their bowel movements and trying to fix that. Once your bowel movements are really good, then usually your brain follows. And so if they’re chronically constipated or they have sort of constipation, diarrhea constantly, it’s hard. Good bowel movement is one that comes in the morning, ideally before breakfast in one go. As what is called, from a Bristol chart perspective, a type 4, which is banana like, doesn’t require any wiping. And in the west, we don’t like to talk about poop. Poop is an important topic.
Diane Ducarme
It is really important in the East. I live in China. In China, everyone talks about it. You know, your colleagues will, you know, explain to you why they’re not coming from work. If, you know, with, you know, great details. And, you know, I love that.
Leanne Vogel
That’s awesome. I, I’m always talking about poop. My husband hates it so much.
Diane Ducarme
Oh, I love you do that. I love it. My husband really hates it too. And my kids, like, we have these whispers. I’m like, you know, and I’m trying to teach them, like, you have to observe that stuff. This is your, your basic, you know, was your gut brain axis, was your vagus nerve today capable of doing its basic function? When you have a baby, if they eat and they poop, it was a great day. You know, it was a great day. It’s really hard to have a baby who’s constipated, for example.
Diane Ducarme
And so really watching that. Yes. And in China, I remember, you know. Yeah. Colleagues mentioning, you know, in a lot of details why they were not coming to work. Like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I don’t need to know that much. You can just tell me you’re sick. That’s.
Diane Ducarme
We’re good. We’re good. But, but it’s very cultural and so that’s the ideal. And so trying to refind that is really important. Yeah, it can be tricky. But still, if you, if you try to observe a lot, try to observe, you know, if I, if I eat this, then it’s better. If I eat that, it’s. It’s worse.
Diane Ducarme
Also, as a spoiler alert, if you’re really constipated, having more fiber will, in the long run make you even more constipated. And I think, you know, like, it’s really trying to understand, trying to have a really balanced diet and not too much fiber. I don’t know if you want to.
Leanne Vogel
Extend on that or not, but, yeah, it’s interesting. I find for me, and I find everyone’s just a little bit different. I need at least 50 grams of fiber in a day to, like, have good bowel movements. But the type of fiber makes a big difference. Like, if all I had was, like, broccoli and cabbage and rough things, I would never poop. Like, I would be constipated all the time. But I can hit 50 grams of fiber no problem with, like, oats and beans and kiwi and berries and coconut flour. Totally different.
Leanne Vogel
So, like, fiber isn’t always just fiber. I know that when. When I was doing the mold illness stuff, I really ramped up all those foods that I know my body just doesn’t do well with. But I knew I needed for mold. And after about two weeks, I was like, I’m not doing this anymore. This is not working for my bowel movements. Because you need proper bowel movements to get rid of mycotoxins and to move around estrogen, if you have excess estrogen, and all of those issues can be at the root cause of your migraines. So there are individuals who do better on, like, low fiber.
Leanne Vogel
They can’t do fiber. At least for me. My goal is always 50 grams. And it’s the type of fibers, for me that really make the big difference. Like, I. Raw kale would ruin me. I could not even.
Diane Ducarme
Yeah, and I think you nailed it. That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. Yeah. Like, some people would say, oh, because I’m constipated, I’m going to take, like, cubes of, you know, sort of fabricated fiber, and if it may get the job done that day. But you see what you gain. You don’t see what you lose. And essentially, those types of fibers are not digested by gastric juices.
Diane Ducarme
They go through, and so they make gastric juices redundant. And the less you have those, the less you digest next. So. Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. Exactly the way you do that. But yeah. So looking at your bowel movements, I think that would be. That would be a good activity and just, you know, taking the time for these things to happen.
Diane Ducarme
Yeah.
Leanne Vogel
Yes. Is there anything that you feel like we didn’t touch on when it comes to migraines that you feel you want to leave the listener with, that you feel like we didn’t cover?
Diane Ducarme
I mean, we’ve covered pretty much everything. I think the one thing I want to say is it’s complicated. We take care of Doctors of nutritionists, of pharmacists, of nurses. We’ve had really old professions and the reason why that happened is because it’s just so complicated. So never be ashamed to struggle to read your brain. It is a complicated dashboard. Don’t feel ashamed. This is hard.
Diane Ducarme
This is hard work. And. Yeah. Do you see what I mean? I really want to say that.
Leanne Vogel
Absolutely. It’s so different. I can think of just a couple of clients as well as myself with the pain. Like. Like my migraines come on due to stress because of an issue in my neck and they can flare and it’s terrible. And so all my stuff is more structural, like making sure that even when I’m sitting on this podcast, the camera is directly straight. I’m not bending my neck. When I’m doing pull ups, I always have to make sure that my neck is in the right position, like my pillow.
Leanne Vogel
And everything is more structural around my neck. And as long as I keep everything structurally good and I keep stress low, I’m good. Whereas I have a client that she had significant metal toxicity. Her liver was totally sideways. And we overcame her debilitating migraines by getting the metals out of her day to day, getting them out of her mouth, getting her liver moving and working. And now she doesn’t have migraines anymore. More like two. Very similar.
Leanne Vogel
Like the way we presented was very similar. Very similar type of migraine. Absolutely. World’s difference in how you address it, like completely.
Diane Ducarme
I love that you bring those two examples. That’s exactly right. I mean, that’s it. Completely. Like, that’s, that’s why the one word feels absurd is like yours should be called something different to hers.
Leanne Vogel
Absolutely right.
Diane Ducarme
Doesn’t make sense. And. And the reality is the medication you’d receive or you’d be suggested would be the same, you know? Yeah.
Leanne Vogel
Yeah. And that would not help at all. Like, at all. Yeah, it’s crazy.
Diane Ducarme
Yeah.
Leanne Vogel
You really gotta dig deep and have patience, just like you were saying. And I know that you have a podcast dedicated to migraines where you just go through all this. Can you tell us a little bit about what that structure is like and what your intention is around your show?
Diane Ducarme
Yes. So it’s called the Migraine Heroes podcast and there’s three types of heroes that we interview. One is health heroes. So people who’ve had amazing journeys and the intent is exactly. To illustrate what you’ve said is. It’s one word. Yes. It’s very, very different situations.
Diane Ducarme
But when you listen to that, you have a couple of feelings. The first one is, wow, I’m not alone. Like, this is an uninstagramable life and this person went through hell, and it’s such a beautiful ending. The second one is it gives hope. And the third one is, I think it helps me convey how different we take care of everyone else, like, the same way. It’s not like that woman you took care of. You said, oh, here’s how I do it. And that works.
Diane Ducarme
So if it works for me, must work for you. The second type of hero I interview are community heroes, people who suffer themselves and have dedicated their entire life to forming communities, helping people navigate the disease. And the third type of heroes are artists who use art as a therapy to help them cope with pain. Yes. So it’s beautiful, beautiful show of incredible lives.
Leanne Vogel
That’s incredible. Where can people connect with you, learn more about your show? Like, all the places that they can make sure that they interact with you?
Diane Ducarme
So on two things. The first is we have a brand new app on the app store, which is called Migraine Heroes, and there’s a freemium, and it’s just to track. And then we have an automated service where if you track and we can start to orientate you to what you should be doing for your migraines and say, hey, based on everything we’ve seen in the world in the last five years, this is how you might get luckier. And if it’s incredibly debilitating, it’s really taking over your life and your relationships and your work, then we have services still in app, but with human interactions, et cetera. And so this is a Migraine Heroes app. We also have a website which is called mynectahealth.com where you have all of that and you can take a test. That test is about 100 questions. And I think when you take that test, it really starts to highlight and help you make connections.
Diane Ducarme
You can take the test from the app as well. It starts to help you see, oh, wait a minute. I have migraines and I also have pcos. Or I have migraines and I also have endometriosis. Or I have migraines and I also have anxiety. I have migraines and I have adhd. I have migraines and I have a leaky gut. You start to notice, what if my migraine issue was my gut issue when my migraine was just a dashboard signaling the gut issue? And so as you start to form these connections and understand intellectually, then you know this can be done with you and not done to you.
Diane Ducarme
So along each step of the process, you can understand what’s happening and correct it. And once you do that, then the anxiety you were referring to disappears. And this is where you know, then you’re super happy. And we’re super happy. Just the same way as Leanne. You’re happy every day because of the job that you do.
Leanne Vogel
Exactly. Oh, this was so good. I am so glad we connected. As you were speaking, I was like nodding my head like, yes, I agree. It’s so good to have individuals on the show that, that I get to learn from too. So thank you so much for coming on today.
Diane Ducarme
Oh, thank you so much for having me. And thank you for guiding women you know in the right direction. I think this is much, much, much needed by society.
Leanne Vogel
If you enjoyed our time with Diane, you can find her by going to.
Leanne Vogel
Your favorite podcast player wherever you are.
Leanne Vogel
Right now and look for Migraine Heroes.
Leanne Vogel
That’s her website. You can also find her at Migraine.
Leanne Vogel
Heroes app app on your Play Store.
Leanne Vogel
And I’m excited to chat with you next week for another episode. We’ll see you then. Bye.
Leanne Vogel
Thanks for listening to the Helpful Pursuit Podcast. Join us next Tuesday for another episode of the show. If you’re looking for free resources, there are a couple of places you can go. The first to my blog, healthfulpursuit.com where you’re going to find loads of recipes. The second is a free parasite protocol that I’ve put together for you that outlines symptoms, testing and resources to determine whether or not you have a parasite, plus a full protocol to follow to eradicate them from your life if you need to. That’s available at healthfulpursuit.com parasites and last but certainly not least, a full list of blood work markers to ask your.
Leanne Vogel
Doctor for so that you can get.
Leanne Vogel
A full picture of your health. You can grab that free resource by going to healthfulpursuit.com labs. The helpful pursuit Podcast, including show notes and links, provides information in respect to healthy living recipes, nutrition and diet and is intended for informational purposes only. The information provided is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis or treatment, nor is it to be construed as such. We cannot guarantee that the information provided on the Healthful Pursuit Podcast reflects the most up to date medical research. Information is provided without any representation or warranties of any kind. Please consult a qualified health practitioner with any questions you may have regarding your health and nutrition program.
Hi! I'm Leanne (RHN FBCS)
a Functional Medicine Practitioner, host of the Healthful Pursuit Podcast, and best-selling author of The Keto Diet & Keto for Women. I want to live in a world where every woman has access to knowledge to better her health.