356: Migraines: Root Causes, Hope and Healing - ft. Diane Ducarme

ELLA:

So people who suffer from migraines can move past them? Can they move through that phase of their life and get past them?

Diane Ducarme:

Oh, completely, completely. So that's what I do every single day. And so that's what keeps me going. You know, I've had a beautiful career before that, but nothing beats to give someone just their life back.

ELLA:

Welcome. You're on air with Ella, where we share simple strategies and tips for living a little better every day. If you're interested in mindset and wellness, or healthy habits and relationships, or hormone health, aging well, and eating well, honestly, if you're into just living better and with more energy, then you're in the right place. Welcome to real, honest, no-fluff conversations about creating a better you. We're not here for perfect. We're here for a little better every day. Let's go. Hey, you're on air with Ella. And today I am joined by Diane Ducarmes. Hi, Diane. How are you?

Diane Ducarme:

Very good. Thank you, Ella, for having me today.

ELLA:

Diane, could you please tell us who you are and what you do?

Diane Ducarme:

So my name is Diane Ducarme. I'm a French speaker. I'm from Belgium. And after probably a solid 15 years of consulting and an MBA in the US, I have become a master at investigating migraines. I do that using Western science, Eastern medicine, and I combine that with technology to really understand what underpins the root causes of migraines of individuals, really taking them individually and helping them lead the lives that they want to lead, you know, with a brain that performs just the way they love it.

ELLA:

So I am dying to know, Diane, you have your MBA from Harvard. You've lived on several continents. You speak, I don't know, what, seven languages, Diane? Yes. Okay, seven, as one does. How on earth did you decide to become a master in migraines?

Diane Ducarme:

ut I couldn't. So this was in: 2000

ELLA:

Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that because women suffer from migraines more than men, do they not?

Diane Ducarme:

Yes, absolutely. You're right, Ella. So it's three to four times more women suffer from migraine than men. So it's one in five women, one in 20 men. Yeah, the incidence triples at puberty.

ELLA:

Oh, my word. Okay. I would love to get into why that is true. But just a quick point of note, you mentioned TCM. Are you referring to traditional Chinese medicine?

Diane Ducarme:

Yes, absolutely.

ELLA:

Okay, so you are, if I understand this correctly, combining Eastern medicine, Western science, and then a mix of technology to really get to the root of migraines. And that's why I wanted to have you on today, Diane.

Diane Ducarme:

Yes. So you see, the problem is that migraine is one word that fails completely at describing what's going on in a woman's body when she says, hey Ella, I'm sorry, I'm going to have to leave work today early because I start to have a migraine. And as non-migraineur, we think my colleague is having a headache and is going to go and lie down and rest. She may be coming off of a cold, whereas what's going on inside of her body is completely different to what we hear.

ELLA:

What is a migraine, Diane?

Diane Ducarme:

So a migraine is actually a full body experience. It may or may not come with head pain. And if it comes with a head pain, we're talking the level of, we're closer sort of to labor than to a head pain. That head pain will be accompanied by other symptoms in the body, such as it can be dizziness, nausea, vomiting, seeing dots and prisms in the vision, having blurred vision, losing complete eyesight. having half of the body paralyzed, trembling sensations in the arms, trembling sensation in the legs, spasms, sort of a half paralysis, being completely lying down on the floor, you know, throbbing sensations. And so all of these sensations will accompany the attack, which oftentimes will look a lot closer to a heart attack than a migraine. And a lot of women will end up in the emergency room thinking they had a heart attack, just to wake up three days later after a lot of rest and a lot of medication, just to be told, oh, you just had a migraine, go home, which is quite a shock for them.

ELLA:

Yeah, and the word just doesn't really belong in that sentence from what it sounds like. There's no such thing as just a migraine, right? From the sound of it anyway.

Diane Ducarme:

Absolutely, absolutely. Because what I just described you is one attack. A woman can have multiple attacks a week. multiple attacks a month, and it can be many, many years of their life. And so the disease starts to completely condition who they are in society. It starts to remove time with family, time with loved ones, with friends. It starts to eat in their work. So a lot of them will have to stop working because of their migraines or stop even studying because of their migraine. And they will try and go and try medication, medication, medication, and sometimes having mild successes and then the migraine coming back. And so these are really women who are warriors and fighting and trying to lift themselves up each time, but also closing themselves and silencing because they're in such pain and they feel like they sound like a broken record. So over the years, they're going to develop this incredible ability to hide they're in pain and pretend everything is normal. So, if you are a sibling or a friend of someone who suffers from migraine and finds that your sibling is complaining a lot, they will usually complain way less than what is actually happening.

ELLA:

So I don't suffer from migraines and we've never really talked about it on the air before, but certainly I have friends who have this condition and it seems to come in waves. So it seems like they have some weeks or months of peace and then they sort of have, and this is a very small sample size, mind you, but they have like an attack and they suffer from migraines intermittently then for the next few days or even the next few weeks. Is that typical?

Diane Ducarme:

Yes, absolutely. So the migraine attack on paper can last anywhere between four hours to three days, that's sort of the average. But a migraine attack can also start one day and never finish. They can also start with gentle headaches in childhood and then become really intense migraine later. They can also start very abruptly with a traumatic brain injury. And so there's all sort of shapes and forms, and what is really hard for that given individual is they're most of the time unpredictable. So women will have intuition on, oh, it's usually before my menstruation, it's usually when I have wine, it's usually when I'm stressed, or it's usually after I'm stressed. but not always, and the not always makes life super chaotic. It's just such as if for your business, you had to cancel every third appointment, just, aha, we're not gonna tell you which ones, and sometimes it's gonna be in a batch. It makes it impossible for you to function. You're gonna be really reliant on a group of support that is extremely important in your life, but that you feel indebted to in a way that you can't really pay back, and so you start to feel smaller and retract

ELLA:

Well, one of the reasons I thought this topic was important, Diane, is not just for the people who suffer from migraines and you sharing some things that you know to be effective in order to help them, which is certainly of use and of interest to part of the population, but also for our own awareness, for those of us who might not suffer from this condition, so that we can have more understanding and more empathy for the people that do and possibly even be some kind of resource to them. So I hope everybody will share this show with somebody who needs it. And in that vein, Diane, can I ask you just a series of rapid fire questions just to just to get a bunch of information on the table?

Diane Ducarme:

Absolutely go for it.

ELLA:

Okay, why women more than men?

Diane Ducarme:

Because that we produce children, and they produce sperm, and therefore we are a much more complex system. Okay, that's not fair. So if you think, you know, there's this joke that circulates online some time ago, where you have the brain of a man and there's an on off switch, and then there's a brain of a woman and there's all of these, you know, complex buttons. That is why, you know, as women, we produce children with full brain, full eyes, heart, liver, bones, flesh, collagen, and all of that comes from us. We produce 23 to 28 liters of menstruation that we lose and we have to reproduce. So if we were comparing a man to a woman as a factory, the factory of the woman, many more things can go wrong. And so there's a lot more buttons to press. And so the migraine is a genetic, because it's genetic, fire alarm that signals that there is a problem and the prevalence or the possibility that a woman has problems or difficulties is much bigger because the system is also a lot more complex. Does that make sense?

ELLA:

That makes sense, Diane, in theory. Let me ask you this. Is it genetic? I think you just said that it is. Is it passed down from the maternal side? Do we have any idea where this is coming from and why?

Diane Ducarme:

No, it's actually nature is very fair. It's 5% of boys and girls. But then the incidence triples to quadruples for women at puberty. So it's the moment the woman becomes that more complex human, and that is able to recreate life, then a lot more migraines kick in. So before puberty, it's only if there's trauma, abuse, or very weak gastric juices, essentially. Once the puberty kicks, then everything becomes a lot more complicated. From a Western science perspective, they say we can't attribute the delta of 5% to 18% to hormones, because not 13% of migraines are hormonal. So from a Western science perspective, the answer is, we don't know. From an Eastern medicine point of perspective, they say, of course, the woman is just. When you have cured 10 men, you still haven't cured a woman, is a sentence that they say in Chinese.

ELLA:

Wow. When you have cured 10 men, you still have not cured a woman. Okay, so can we please share some of the most common triggers for migraines? And I'm going to go ahead and assume that periods of intense stress can bring on migraines. I'm assuming that there's a relation there. But are there very specific triggers, Diane?

Diane Ducarme:

Yes, so let's first talk about stress. For some people, it's the stress moment that's going to trigger the migraine. So for some people, it's the relief. The people will say, I always have a migraine on Friday night, on Saturday morning, and during my holidays. Whereas some people will say, each time I'm about to present to my CEO, like I go in full stress mode and I have a migraine the day before. So it's two different ways that the body, so either the body has, from an Eastern medicine point of view, excesses or deficiencies in the kidney system, but there's also a lot of foods that will be triggers. The only Western science foods that is accepted and tested over and over again is wine. Not even alcohol, just wine. It's the only food in the world that is a trigger for everyone. Now, in practice, for some, ginger is a relief. For some, ginger is a trigger. So the food is very complicated.

ELLA:

Okay, so I want to make sure I understand that. Western medicine says we can agree that wine's a trigger. We're not going to go whole hog on alcohol. We're not all in on alcohol, but we're going to go ahead and agree that wine is a trigger. Okay, when it comes to foods, something like ginger can have completely different effects depending on the body that consumes it.

Diane Ducarme:

Yes, completely. So for example, if a woman has a lot of dizziness and she's in perimenopause and she has vertigo and her eyesight is not clear, ginger will be a disaster and will increase that problem for her. In spite of it being mentioned over and over in books and online as an anti-inflammatory, it will accentuate the instability, the imbalances she has underlying. her migraines, which is very, it will take her a really nasty downward spiral. Whereas you could have a woman who's really young, she has right side migraines every morning when she wakes up, and to help her body to get going and increase the speed of her blood flow, a bit of ginger is going to be very helpful. Same goes with caffeine, for example. Coffee, huge trigger for some people. Coffee, also a part of certain medication, like you have excedrin coupled with caffeine because it will help some people but will make it for other people worse. And so it's going back to that one word, which is this one word, it's such as if you were designating all pains in the body, pain. I have pain. It's like, okay, are you giving birth? Have you eaten something bad and you want to throw up? Or did you break your leg? And the body would reply, pain. And you have to guess, what is the body trying to say?

ELLA:

Gosh, okay, that sounds very complicated. I'm glad that people like you exist. I'm going to go ahead and put out there that you have an entire podcast dedicated to this topic. So if somebody is suffering, there are resources available. I will tag Diane's podcast, Migraine Heroes, in the show notes for this, of course. But let's stay in the problem for a minute. Is one way that you figure out which foods work for you as anti-inflammatories, as helping you reduce the pain, is it just trial and error, or are there other signals or signs that you can be aware of?

Diane Ducarme:

It is a trial and error, but what is really hard is there's other things that come into place. For example, weather is a huge trigger for people who suffer from migraines. Weather? Weather, yes, yes, weather is, and they will all know and smile. Yeah, weather is. So, for example, when there's a storm about to come, when the barometric pressure changes, then it may induce migraines. Yeah. So if you say, oh, I had a migraine, oh, I had wine, yeah, I think it's a trigger for me, or like I had coffee, but there was also a change in weather, and I was also preparing a presentation. So was it the combination of all three, or was it that food I ate that day that didn't suit me? And also, triggers in the West is seen as something on-off, like something that gives you instantaneously a migraine. For me, In what I see in my work, a trigger is something that makes an imbalance, makes something weak, weaker. So while initially the food or the contraceptive, for example, might not be causing harm, over time, it's going to make your balance shift and start to give you migraines.

ELLA:

Sure, like it's not necessarily an acute event, an immediate event, but it's something that accumulates over time. Exactly. And did you say contraceptives? Are you talking about birth control and that impacting your predilection for migraines?

Diane Ducarme:

Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. So for example, you could be having a copper IUD, for example, and you bleed for a couple of years. And the first year, you're still gonna be fine. But over time, as you bleed more and bleed, bleed, bleed, well, think about it. Your tank is no longer full. So it means that your brain, which is 2 to 6% of your food consumption, 20% of your energy, is like, mayday, mayday, send us blood. There's not enough while you're eating something that requires a lot of digesting process. And so your brain is gonna come in competition with your digestive system and therefore complain. And so, because when you put the copper IUD, you didn't have migraines instantaneously, you're not gonna make the link necessarily. But over the years, as you have less and less energy, you're more and more lethargic and you have more and more migraines, for which you're told to medicate, then you're gonna have just more migraines and they come from that copper IUD, which initially was just fine for you. Same goes with a Mirena IUD, by the way, like a woman who will stop bleeding for a while and will feel, Oh, I have more energy. I feel good. I feel good. I feel good. And then two years into it starts to have migraines that become over time, completely debilitating. And she might feel it's the Mirena IUD and she might ask their doctor to remove them. And the doctor might say, no.

ELLA:

And what is the word you're saying before IUD? Are you saying myelin?

Diane Ducarme:

Myelin. So these are hormonal IUDs. So you have like two types, the copper one and the hormonal ones. And the hormonal ones will usually, usually stop the menstruation altogether.

ELLA:

Okay, all right. I want to ask you about things we can do that may or may not help us. And I'm going to throw a bunch at you. And then of course, I want you to tell me anything that I haven't asked you about, that you know, helps resolve this issue for women, for men, for anyone who suffers from this condition. So the first question I have is, does movement or walk any kind of exercise, walking, getting in the pool, does any type of movement help or hurt a migraine sufferer?

Diane Ducarme:

Brilliant question. It is a trigger and a relief. So for some people, movement is going to help. If you have morning migraines, typically, movement is going to help. If you have evening migraines, sweating and exercise is going to be a huge trigger. And so really follow your intuition on this one, because only you know.

ELLA:

This sounds like an extremely frustrating condition. It's like one thing that might help you at one time of day is going to put you in the ground at another time of day. Like my heart really goes out to people who suffer from this. But okay, we'll keep going because we're going to land on something that helps. I just know it. How about a cold compress? I've heard that cold compresses on parts of your body or even putting your face in ice water can help with a migraine. Can you speak to that one?

Diane Ducarme:

Yes, absolutely. When you do that, you numb some of your nervous ramifications, and so you calm the intensity of the pain, you calm the blood flow, you calm the inflammation, if this is what caused the migraine in the first place, absolutely. So if that works for you, keep doing it. Even if people tell you it doesn't help, if you find it helps, it does help, period. You are the chief, you are the boss.

ELLA:

Yeah, if it helps you, it helps.

Diane Ducarme:

Exactly. If it helps you, it helps.

ELLA:

Okay. I've heard chatter about essential oils helping, but people who sell essential oils basically say that they help with absolutely everything. So I never know what to believe. What's your take on essential oils and how effective they are for helping with migraines?

Diane Ducarme:

Great question. Smell can be a huge trigger for migraines. So certain smell will trigger people, like smoke, it will trigger. So it's part of the kidney system in Eastern medicine. And so if the kidney system is quite weak, so let's talk about, you know, someone who would be quite stressed. the sense of smell and the sound can both be triggers because they link to that system. And so when that system is weaker, these things will be triggers. However, if it's a very invigorating essential oil that makes your blood circulate faster and you don't have enough blood volume, then you may feel some form of relief. Yes. So again, it's going to depend on what's the underlying root cause of your migraine.

ELLA:

Sure. Okay. Now I'm going to go ahead and make an assumption that we want to make sure in periods where somebody may be suffering from this or having a bout with migraines that sleep, the big rocks are still really important. So sleep, hydration, not overdoing it on caffeine, maybe avoiding alcohol altogether, making sure your nutrition is dialed in. Like I'm just going to go ahead and assume that that is table stake. But what else can we add nutritionally that may or may not help? For example, I've heard that magnesium and riboflavin or riboflavin, I don't know how to pronounce it, that both of those might be effective supplementation. But again, Diane, you tell me.

Diane Ducarme:

Yeah, absolutely. So there's a couple of supplements in the Western science that have been proven to help. Magnesium, indeed, riboflavin, so vitamin B2, absolutely. Omega-3s are excellent as well, and they will help

ELLA:

What type of magnesium, because you know there are like 10 kinds of magnesium, what type?

Diane Ducarme:

The best way to know what type is good for you is the impact it has on your stool. Your bowel movement should be like a banana shape, requires limited wiping, comes out every day, ideally before breakfast, once a day, okay? That's the ideal to converge to. the more you'll have that bowel movement, the less you'll have migraines for sure. So if that magnesium throws you out of balance by making you having really runny bowel movement or really dry bowel movement, then this is wrong for you and change. And so really the answer to that is look at your bowel movement.

ELLA:

Okay, and people can do their own research, but I can say right now that magnesium oxide is not the type of magnesium that you're going to be recommending for migraines. It's more like the glycinate or the basically all of the other ones are worth doing your own research on. Magnesium oxide is intended to help you flush out your gut. So just a little footnote there. Yes. Okay, Diane, how do you manage migraines effectively? Anything we have not talked about yet?

Diane Ducarme:

So I think you have to do all of the above, everything that you've talked about. So staying hydrated, exercise in the way that suits you, eat well, go to bed on time, watch for your bowel movements and supplement in the things that your body lacks. In addition to that, I think you really have to look at the other symptoms that your body has. Those are the ones you're after. Those are the ones that you want to remove. Let me give you a few examples. Are you bloated? Do you have a distention of the belly area? Do you feel fatigue? Do you have sugar cravings? Do you have a dry skin? Do you have an oily skin? Do you have acne? Do you have trembling sensations in the hands? It's by correcting these other symptoms that your migraines will go away.

ELLA:

Yeah, at the end of the day, we're just one big, complicated, connected machine.

Diane Ducarme:

Yes, and that massive, massive connectivity comes from the vagus nerve. So think about this massive tree that plants its roots around your heart, around your stomach, around your liver, and then has a big trunk that goes along your spine in your neck, and then plugs in a bit like a test line in your brain with a beautiful foliage. And so that is, you know, the one massive nerve that connects the hundred billion nerve cells of your body and connects everything. And so indeed, when you have pain in the brain, which are your leaves, You have also pain in your roots, which are the trembling sensations in the hands and in the legs. And so what you cannot remove one without removing the other, you have to remove the two together and you have to stabilize the system inside. But once you do, the amazing thing is once you do, not only do you no longer have migraines, you also lose all of these other symptoms. And that's the beauty of it.

ELLA:

Wait, I want to understand that better, because you're saying that there is hope. So people who suffer from migraines can move past them? Can they move through that phase of their life and get past them?

Diane Ducarme:

Oh, completely, completely. So that's what I do every single day, is I ask about a hundred questions on all of the symptoms. I want to know everything going on in your body. From everything going on in your body, I have a really, really good sense of what are the different root causes, what are the imbalances inside your body, and I solve them then two by two. I have a whole app that does that with a chat with access to me inside the app, and we do that. And inside the app, we have this community, and this community is just beautiful, you want to cry. And we also use migraines to massively boost fertility. In fact, I always have to warn women, Careful, moving forward, you're a lot more fertile. Okay, so you have to use protection. And it's just, it's wonderful. And so that's what keeps me going. You know, I've had a beautiful career before that, but nothing beats to give someone just their life back.

ELLA:

Okay, I want to understand this better because I know my listener family and they're going to be saying, okay, but wait, wait, wait, wait, how if there's hope for me, then I want to connect the dots for where they are today. And a few things that they can do to know that there's hope on the other side and possibly experience it themselves. So what I'm understanding from you is that you're saying that you work with people essentially one on one, like I understand you have a community, but you're working with them one on one to understand exactly what is manifesting for them. And I hear you. This is an incredibly individualistic journey. Like I fully understand that. But if someone's listening today, and they don't yet have access to these resources, what can they do right now to possibly start working toward a migraine free life?

Diane Ducarme:

Journal, like if you know when you have your migraines that helps massively. So for example, if you journal, you need to put the date, you need to put your migraine level, your migraine location. You can also put your menstruation and you start to see what's the pattern. Do you have the migraines before your menstruation? in which case it's a sign that your liver system is a bit loaded. So deloading it and gently detoxing and stimulating it's going to help. If you have migraines during your menstruation, chances are you have a few blood clots in your menstruation that needs to be gently removed naturally with some food. If you have migraines after your menstruation, chances are you lack a bit of blood volume and maybe you have all of the above, which is extremely common. And so you have to unpeel the woman like an onion, layer by layer. But the more you remove the layers, the more women are like, oh my God, my menstruation came and I didn't even see it coming. People comment that I've lost weight. My skin's gotten so much better. Because the migraine is a, there's a beautiful article that has been written by Elizabeth Loder from Harvard. And she talks about the migraines being an evolutionary advantage to protect population. And that is what it is. She writes a brilliant article on why would it be a fifth of women having a genetic predisposition for migraines, because it makes women a lot more intuitive to follow their body. Now, in the fast-paced world where we medicate for everything, well, adding medication is going to add toxicity to the liver and therefore migraine, which is called rebound migraines or medication overuse headaches. And so women get lost and they're told they have a neurological disorder when they just have an incredible longevity genetics.

ELLA:

Diane, will you send us that article so that I can link to it?

Diane Ducarme:

Absolutely. Yeah, it's brilliant. Yes.

ELLA:

OK, I know I already know that anyone who is suffering from this or love someone who is suffering from this is going to go connect with you. I will make that dead easy for them to do. All you have to do is open up wherever you're listening to this show. It'll all be linked right there in the show notes. I am so grateful to know you, Diane, as a resource. Thank you so much.

Diane Ducarme:

Thank you. Thank you, Ella.

ELLA:

Okay, if you enjoyed today's show, please share it with someone you care about. And be sure to check out our new YouTube channel and head to onairella.com for today's show notes. You can also learn about how to work with me there, onairella.com. And I would love to hear from you, so if you DM me on Instagram, I promise I will reply. P.S. All the links you need for us to connect are right here in your podcast app in the description for today's episode. Check them out. Thanks for listening, and thanks for inspiring me. You are, quite simply, awesome.