Migraines - Triggers R Not Root Causes - Part 1

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Transcript

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Welcome to the functional medicine and natural healing podcast where we share the secrets to upgrade your digestion, improve your hormones, restore your immune system and detoxify your body. I'm your host, Dr. Houston Anderson. Now let's get started. The following discussion is for educational purposes, it is not intended to diagnose or treat. always discuss medical treatments or medical interventions to your personal physician. Alright guys, welcome back. This is Dr. Houston Anderson here. And today we're going to talk about migraines. If you haven't seen me around on the podcast it is because practice is pretty busy. And we're doing a ton of actually Instagram right now. So if you want more answers or more information for me, go check me out on Instagram. We're doing Instagram lives, we're doing Q and A's, we're doing interviews, things like that. And my aunt or my follow there is Dr. Houston Anderson. So spelled out D o c t o ar Houston Anderson. So go follow me there. And I'll kind of go through some things there in addition to this podcast to answer some questions that you may have after listening to the podcast. So stay tuned to the end of this podcast, actually, we'll answer some questions that people asked previously on Instagram as kind of motivation to inspire this podcast. As we saw chronic migraines was a huge problem that people were suffering from when I asked, you know, the general population, what are some things that you're just really having a hard time covering, recovering from? Okay, so let's talk about chronic migraines real quick. In the clinic or in the office, the biggest thing I see when people fail to get results with migraines is that they're using a single dimension approach. Okay, so one person thinks that, oh, it's just when I get dehydrated, I get migraines, and other person thinks it's foods. And everyone thinks that stress, maybe they think, Oh, it was just my job, or it's just my spouse, or it's just my kids, when I moved through this, I'll be fine. And I find that with any chronic condition, you want to address it from every angle possible, in order to get the body back to what I call balance or homeostasis. So if you can get to that basic balance, then your body has a much easier time maintaining, then you may be able to figure out what your triggers are oftentimes with some of these chronic conditions, specifically migraines, and headaches, is that you don't really know what's causing it. Sometimes it's bright light, sometimes it's not. So what you need to do is get down to where your body is healthy enough for you to even understand we see this a lot with gut health too is that you know, someone's got is so irritated that something can irritate it. One, they can eat McDonald's and feel just fine. And they could eat broccoli and be sick the very next day. Now there's patterns in this that us doctors know. But otherwise, people are really confused as to like what is really causing it because there's not a consistency or a theme. Okay, so the one thing I can tell you from my experience in the office about chronic migraines is that 90% Of those, whether they've lasted 10 years, 20 years, 30 years are very treatable. So I'm not here to downplay the severity of your migraines or say that it was easy, but rather say that even for the patients that are super suffering, the conventional medicine approaches or the standard approaches you're gonna get from your doctor's office. And a lot of people think they go to a neurologist and think like, that's the end all be all, as if that neurologist knows everything about the body. No, they assess your neurological system. And they looked at what tools they have. And so oftentimes, they don't have many tools other than drugs and surgery, so you're stuck where you're at, right? If they don't need to cut out your brain, then you may not have as many options from them. If you don't want to take a medication like a lot of my patients do. Don't, a lot of my patients don't want to take that medication, then you're going to be kind of stuck up the creek without a paddle. So let's talk about understanding migraines from a basic perspective. But I want you to focus on this because it's really important as far as when you understand the way it really works. Because like I said, many people don't understand what their migraine is or how it goes about. But to oversimplify the concept of what's happening with a migraine, it's multifactorial, and so once again, that neurologist isn't going to be able to figure it out in and have in and of themselves, right they can't be the only one that works with you on this model. But the best model that understands the root cause of migraines is that your brain is in what we call a hyper excitable state or an overstimulated state. The overstimulating state changes how your nerves fire, how frequently they fire and how long they stay on and how fast they shut off. It also changes your blood flow, so how much blood too much not enough, and also changes your glial system when you're in a overstimulated state so that your brain immune system. So with your brain immune system, that's going to create a lot of inflammation. When the vascular blood flows less you can have a build up of lymphatic tissue of lymphatic waste, and that lymphatic waste can lead to one of the reasons why it takes so long to get over a migraine where they can last, you know, 72 hours or longer. And oftentimes if you're someone that suffers from migraines for like, weeks at a time, like you have one that lasts like a week and a half or something like that, you're having two or three migraines and you just haven't really been able to separate the difference between the two. But that's not as common as you think. usually lasts a day, three days, something like that. And they kind of go away as your body finds the mechanisms to, to uncomplicate, that inflammation of the brain, or that hyper sensitization. So, once again to over over simplify to simplify that whole thing. So you guys understand nerve stimulation, blood flow and your immune system are the three things that are at the root of the migraine. So like I said at the beginning, if you're looking at like, if you're looking at migraines from a single perspective, like, oh, it's probably just a food allergy. Well, yeah, that food allergy would fall into the category of specifically stimulating nerves if it's a histamine thing, or the immune system, if it's a food allergy thing, to where you could have either one that that stimulates that nervous system. Okay. So triggers versus root causes is what I want to talk about next. triggers for migraines are rarely root causes of migraines, which is why people get so confused on the treatment and why many patients suffer, even though they're trying really hard. Okay, so let's look at some of the triggers alcohol, wine, caffeine, coffee, even decaf, loud sounds, bright lights, strong smells, perfumes, lotions, cleaners, things like that. Smoke stress exercise in our course, barometric pressure changes, barometric pressure changes or weather changes. Really any medication like birth control any kind of pill, like a blood pressure pill, salt, cheese and tyramine which we'll cover in a second, aspartame and msg. So those are all common triggers. Though, though, I wouldn't say that most of those minus one of those would be a possible root cause, which is that cheese cheese can be a root cause of migraines and very common in the migraine population. Okay, let's talk about another one are migraines, genetic, I always say they lie to you, right. So they're gonna tell you that everything that your mom has is genetic, it's not true. But a lot of people are held other dealt a hard handed genetics, which means that essentially, you're like running a race, and you have to start like a mile behind the other person, it's possible to win. But it's harder for you than others, for sure. And that's the bad genetics, but the migraine themselves, we don't find a ton of genetic correlation as much as we find different systems in the body that might be genetically inferior to say, the person that can get away with anything. So we all know those people, right? The person that can do whatever they want to their body, and they feel great, or at least we think so. I think recently, we've seen a lot of those people have some more health problems when you introduce things like injected toxins and things like that. So but I would say there's there's two main genetic components that you want to pay attention to, that make it a little bit harder for people to stay away from migraines. And the first one is liver detoxification. So a lot of people have different inability. So you tox from the liver, that can be a genetic factor. And then the other one actually funny enough is the part of your body that controls sodium, potassium. And that story of sodium, potassium, and calcium. If you're either prone to that either from an adrenal kind of inheritance issue, or from like a parathyroid or thyroid issue, you'll find that those problems will often have a familial connection, though, once again, it's not a causative connection. So I'm not I'm not saying that because you have genetics that you're have to have migraines. But if you have these bad genetics, you may be more prone to them, which means you have to be more careful about your lifestyle, which if you have migraines, and you're not willing to be careful about your lifestyle, the honest truth is you probably won't see very good results. It is something that takes awareness, it takes something that that requires healing and then once you have that healing, then you have to go and kind of live that lifestyle for quite some time, if not forever. So let's talk about that root cause that I mentioned before the the overstimulated or over sensitized nerves that you have. So to just explain that I have a couple analogies here that will go through your nervous system rests at a specific level, it should be essentially cool, calm and collected most of the time, and then an extreme step stress situations, it should be able to be ramped up and on high alert immediately, okay? In migraine individuals or sufferers, the nervous to close to being irritated. Okay, so the examples that that I want you to imagine for me, so imagine this, imagine you're driving your car, because today's the day after Christmas, imagine driving in your car with your family and friends. Everyone's laughing, having a good time. Everyone's happy about the Christmas season, everyone got gifts, and they're their favorite gifts, and they didn't get anything they didn't like, and you're driving home from an event and then someone cuts you off and slams on their brakes, right. So you have a little bit of a scare, you slow down within a couple of seconds, you're back to laughing with your friends and family and enjoying the rest of your holiday season. And this is an example of where you're in a low stimulation state, the person cuts you off and you're able to get back to your normal self pretty quick. In a second example, that's probably maybe even more common we would say, say you're driving home from a long day at work. You know you You have a you have a sink full of dishes that you didn't get to last night because you were too tired. The rest of the house is a mess. You forgot to go shopping for food and you're sitting here trying to eat healthy. So now you have to, like, have this like what can I even eat and you're starving because you didn't have time to, to eat at work. You and your spouse might be in an argument over like you know, the holiday presents to buy, how you're going to pay your bills, how many credit cards to use, how many credit cards not to use. Maybe you have kids that are failing their classes at school, they waited, you know, all semester to finish their project like the night before. And now someone cuts you off in your car on your way home, what do you do? So first, you slam on your brakes, of course, maybe use a few choice curse words, you race forward, you show them some sign language that's not nice. And lets them know that you don't appreciate them cutting you off, then you speed off ahead and maybe you're upset for 510 15 minutes, or maybe you don't even calm down before you go to bed that night, you're like I just got to go to bed. In a lot of scenarios, this is where the hyper excitable or overstimulated nerves are in a migraine patient. So you're right on that edge all the time, it really didn't matter if someone cuts you off. Or if someone said, you know, ask you to help them out with something you were so irritated and on edge, that you weren't really going to recover from that event. Anyway, this is the way the nervous system works. So your nerves should be sitting much below that threshold is what we call it. So is that threshold is at what point you become irritated or stimulant at what point that nerve fires, and it should be really low. And so with migraines, your goal is to do whatever you can to get your nerves, the individual nerves as far away from that threshold as possible, so that you can handle a stressful event, you can handle any of the triggers. If you think about light being a trigger, obviously light is not a dangerous thing in most scenarios. But a bright light sets off a migraine why is that? Because the nerves in the eyes are so very powerful. And they receive a lot of light that as soon as that happens, it sets off the nerve, it begins to fire and all of a sudden you go into your phases of the migrant. Okay, so essentially what I can say about those two scenarios is it was the same person, it was you the same event, it was someone cutting you off, but the reactions of the body can be very different when you're in a hyper excitable state. So sometimes that could take hours days, or it actually takes works to cool it down. Now you got to do some meditation to calm down from that guy cut you off well, or you gotta do meditation to keep yourself from having a migraine. Now this is very true meditation does work from migraines, but I always say like, Why do you have to meditate and no one else does to keep the migraines away. This is important information for you to know. Okay, so so back to once again, this is root cause the nervous system being hyper excitable, while it's at resting state, your vascular blood flow changes and your immune system, which is your main inflammatory system that affects your nerves. Those are the things that are that are inflamed. Now I do have to say like the elephant in the room for all migraine sufferers is if you don't know that you haven't Googled ever and you don't really have intentions but of healing. But MSG preservatives and food dyes like these are standard things that have to be cut out. If you're trying to eliminate migraines, you think you're going to eat Cheetos and process lunchmeat every day, you're not going to be successful. So some of the common triggers, obviously you do have to avoid yet once again, the triggers aren't root causes. Nearly all the patients I've treated the migraines have a food allergy or food sensitivity at the root of their migraines. And that's probably arguably one of the most important things that we have to address and anyone that comes into the office. I always say like if you're if you're young, when your migraine starts a five to 12 years old, or even really before 20 You're looking at things like eggs or dairy creating some of those migraines is a food allergen. And then if you're an older person thinking 2530 Plus, you're thinking corn and gluten as more of your food allergies. Now, of course, there's a million different things you can do. But there's a lot of foods that can set you off. So for example, like say garlic sets you offer or an organic apple could even set you off. It's probably not the root cause if it's like, you know only red apples after three o'clock in the afternoon on Fridays, it's probably something else that's getting your hyper excitability to that point. But But in general, you do want to avoid your triggers, you just want to find something more that's bigger. So in food sensitivities, I would say, there's no real like, Hey, I'm hit. A good example. It's really common in the office that I probably don't say enough is, there's really no such thing as lactose intolerant. You're either dairy intolerant, or you're not lactose intolerance, and you have an altered gut. That's a whole different thing. But think about that for a second. It's really true. So you know, if you're like, Oh, well, if I only eat sourdough bread, well, you probably don't have a gluten sensitivity. If you can get away with sourdough bread. Though sourdough bread is a great health food if you can tolerate it and you're not actually allergic to the gluten from it. So just something to pay attention there. There is an exception that I think I should mention when a food is in a sensitivity that you may not have heard of, because once again it's another big word and so sometimes medicine likes to use big words to to Thank you. So the word is tyramine so high tyramine foods are something that people react to a lot while the tyramine isn't a root cause while you're trying to calm down your nerves and get them away from that resting potential that's wrong. Bank brain chemistry can take a second or two to adjust so it's not like it's not like instantly everyone leaves the office and tomorrow their migraines are gone. I always tell them they will slowly start to decrease and as soon as they start to decrease, you know you're on the right path. It'll just take a couple months and then those migraines will slowly but surely fade and disappear. Definitely an intensity. Sometimes they go from migraines to headaches and then headaches down to less frequent headaches and then all the sudden you forget that you didn't have one this month, or this week, but foods that you might not know for example, I just want to throw out here that are high and tyramine that you think are health foods or things like avocados, okay, liver, raw liver, okay. So if you have like a migraines and you're trying raw liver to get your liver healthier, that can be a set that can be a trigger because of the tyramine in it, even though technically it's healthy. Soy sauce, cheese, right. So the more age the cheese that can be a problem. Fermented foods, a lot of people go that route and they end up with migraines, processed meats, chocolate, red wine, sour cream, yogurt, K, once again, even if it's organic yogurt, but you're looking at this concept of, of where these are some of the triggers with tyramine, and I just want to throw them out there because a lot of people don't understand that. And so how that really the tyramine essentially stops the breakdown of serotonin, adrenaline, dopamine, and histamine. So it kind of leaves this kind of mess of chemicals in the brain that you have to deal with, once again, changing the hyper excitability state of the nervous system. And then you're kind of stuck there. Okay. Let's talk about now probably, you know, the second factor. So if you ask me, like the first factor of migraines, I would always go to like, there's probably a food sensitivity that needs to be avoided. So I don't want to underplay that I want to make sure that you understand that the food is really, really, really important. And then the next step is really important, but it's kind of complicated, it's a little more complicated than just avoid eggs or avoid corn or avoid gluten or something like that. So that is liver congestion. So really quick to get the myths out of the way. Liver congestion cannot be solved by a liver detox a liver flush or a magical liver cleanse, right no matter what you read online, it can't be cured by just to know not to mention names here. But liver liver is liver detoxification is not solely dependent upon celery juice or anything like that there's more to a liver cleanse than just drinking your celery juice every morning. But liver congestion is first solved more importantly, not by what you add, but why what you take out by figuring out what's congesting your liver. And so this is once again, this is a secondary thing. A lot of people miss this because they're not really understanding how to get to the root of things. They're trying their best. Trust me, everyone that comes to my office has tried something very few people come in and say No, I've never tried anything to get rid of my migraines. Okay, so the first thing that we want to worry about that overborne is the liver the first part of a gut D two, sorry, the first part I gave it away there, the first part of the liver detox is to fix your gut. Okay, so toxins released from your gut microbiome are the first things that you need to do to heal your liver. So you need to address those. And I have lots of other podcasts on the gut. So make sure you listen to those if you're really interested in some of the details about those things. But to keep it simple, the gut organisms in the microbiome, they release all these chemicals every day, these chemicals need to be detoxified. And if you listen to my other podcast, I don't use probiotics in my office hardly ever, maybe after a stomach flu. But this is another reason why even the good guys in your microbiome release chemicals. It doesn't have to be good. They can be good chemicals, they can be bad chemicals, they can be useful chemicals. But the good bacteria, aka probiotics release chemicals that the liver has to then detoxify. Now, if you have other things going on bad guys in there too, then then you have things that you have to detoxify and kill first before you can actually take that burden off of the liver before I would add probiotics. So my stance on probiotics is for more fun is always we kind of balanced them out after we take care of the more important problems, which would be killing aggressive and infectious microbiome agents. So whether it's parasites, bacteria, fungi, or viruses that we have to address. So the second most important thing for the liver detox is actually hormones. I have a podcast on estrogen dominance. I have articles on our website and estrogen dominance. But for females, this is huge. But likely in today's day and age men have too much estrogen too. And whether that's due the fact that they're eating excess sugar, or whether it's just environmental exposure or the chemicals they're using, or they've just gained a few pounds over the years, due to like not perfect diet and exercise regimens. And then that belly fat actually makes estrogen so that's an important thing to know. But once you fix your gut and hormones, that's when you go and start doing your liver work. Okay. Now while you can do both at the same time, if you're not at least addressing the hormones and the liver, the hormones and the gut at the same time you're gonna run into a problem detoxifying your liver, you're just gonna run into like, hey, every time I detox my liver, I feel amazing. And then you know, a month later you feel horrible again, want to throw out one other thing that's really common that you don't hear about in your in your doctors offices. Because there's a fine line when there's problems that aren't pathology and medicine, they don't really have many things that address them. And so what does that mean? That means like, if you have an upset stomach, but you don't have stomach cancer, like they don't have a lot of things for that. One of the big things in the brain and migraines is that we have these things called micro embolisms or micro clots that a lot of people don't talk about. And in Chinese medicine, they talk about this a lot as like blood stasis or blood stagnation. They're often caused by bacterial infections, or blood vessel inflammation. And then you develop these kind of micro clots, these tiny little coagulation of blood cells, red blood cells, and that blood clot goes through the tiny vasculature of the brain, and then it reduces blood flow. So as soon as you have less blood flow, so anytime you have a bacterial infection or inflammation of the vessels, you have this chance, and then all of a sudden, you have reduced blood flow to the brain. And all of a sudden, sodium and calcium have to like come out to make the vasodilation happen. And then sometimes they'll do vasoconstriction. And that's why there's no consensus on migraines of how that really works. I had one guy one time, actually, it was a great example of this. He ended up having amnesia, but he had 24 hour amnesia, so he forgot everything. For 24 hours, he couldn't remember if he was married or not, he'd only been married about a year couldn't remember if his dog was alive or dead, things like that basic things that you would definitely know. And he went to the hospital because he couldn't remember anything. And then all of a sudden, it all came back to him 24 hours later, and their stance was simply that he was just fine, right? Like, it turns out, sometimes these things happen. Okay, they did not investigate that cause likely what he had was a microclimate at the time, which essentially decreased blood flow to the brain. Now, once again, that's not even a diagnosis. I'm just saying there was a problem in his brain at the time that he forgot everything. And that when it comes back in 24 hours, he wasn't magically healed. And we hear that a lot. A lot of you guys out there are actually putting off taking care of your health, because you're just saying, Yeah, I had an upset stomach last week, but it's good this week, okay, it's off this week, then it's good next week, it's like, you'll find that like you're back and forth, but you're putting it off because you're saying I'm probably fine. The reality is oftentimes, we're not probably fine, and we keep putting off something that needs to be addressed. So in the next episode, I'm gonna cover like supplements for like the micro clots and things like that, like protocols, actions, ways to kind of like self diagnose yourself. But this migraine one may end up being like three episodes, because I don't want these to be too long. But let's, so So those are kind of the basic mechanisms, right? The micro clots is a vasculature issue. So definitely you got to address the inflammation of the arteries, if you know you already have heart issues, then you're going to be more prone to migraines. But as we get older, the immune component actually kind of dies down. So you don't find a lot of 80 year olds that have migraines, because the immune system is not as vigilant as it used to be. So it's kind of happens in these in these peak years when we're more prone to these things. So when are you more prone to hormonal fluctuation, you know, somewhere between when life hits hormones is you know, somewhere between 20 and 40 for females, sometimes 45. Oftentimes menopause will kind of calm down the migraines for men, same thing, when are they busy, stressed have liver problems, drinking too much things like that, that's all going to be you know, 20s to 40s, something like that. So let's pay attention to some of these questions. Once again, I got the question over at Instagram, which you should follow me there because I'm going to do a follow up on this podcast right there. But but in for information that's really important there is is I like to ask q&a. So what's your problem? What can I help you with? What is no one answering for you? And where's conventional medicine and even maybe alternative medicine failing you? And so here's what I would say. Here's the first question is really cool one because it's from way over in Kenya, right? So the question was, how to boy in the clinic that had Naegleria fowleri, which is a brain eating amoeba, right? And you guys thought your migraines were a problem. But this this amoeba actually can kill up to 95% of people if it's not addressed within a few days. So it turns out that in this scenario, the infection is gone. But headaches, probably migraines, I assume, still remain. How would I go about treating this patient? That's a really good question. And obviously, this is not medical advice, because you have to like go through a full history and figure out what this guy's story was. But and ages and things like that. But when something like this comes up, I usually tell people, I'm going to assume that the infection is still there. At some level, it may only be one organism, it may you know, your brain may be able to take care of not allowing it to eat more brain tissue, but it's really common for an infection to remain even after it's been treated. Most common in conventional medicine is gonna be like ah, pilot already, they give you an antibiotic and then they're like you're better but it's still there low levels. In fact, it infects, you know, most infections are with us at all time. But if there's like 2% Extra, no one's gonna say anything but 2% can create a lot of problems in the body, if you're looking at it functionally, not pathologically. So I would probably assume that that infections there. I'm saying H. Pylori is like that C. diff is like that giardia and other parasites are like that, to where they're still there. And so I'd go around with a tritium, obviously naturally with herbs. Some common herbs like Neem leaf, Wormwood, thyme, and oregano oil would be ones that may be available in Kenya versus America where we have a lot of things here. And then the second thing that I would do is I would treat the brain inflammation, one of the inflammatory components of the brain is called xanthine oxidase. Xanthine. And then it requires xanthine oxidase to actually detox. And the sad thing is xanthine oxidase cycle is actually really hard for the brain to go through. So with concussions that linger long standing, you know, post concussive syndrome that lasts forever PTSD after concussion, really any PTSD, any long haulers that exists with brain or neurological symptoms, you're looking at doing any oxidants that help with the Xanthine detox and olive leaf works really well for that. So that's probably my go to in high doses, not the extract, but the whole olive leaf. And then we use a OPCs, which the big word is too hard for me to say right now. So long story short, you can look up OPCs, they're a little bit expensive, but they're great at crossing the blood brain barrier and decreasing that nerve inflammation that is likely still there. Quick note on Wormwood, just because I mentioned it, you won't hear me mention Wormwood too much, because I feel that Wormwood is really slow. It's really good for blood based parasites and amoebas. But it's not as good for intestinal amoeba. So that's a whole nother story. So I would say like with a blood based one, it is good for it. But you may have to be on worm one for six to nine months before you see a benefit. And some of like the kind of chronic diseases that go on. Alright, here's another cool question. newly approved drugs called CRPS. What do you think about them? So these are calcitonin gene related peptides? My first thought is no way. Right. So CGRP medications are calcitonin inhibitors. That kind of alter the mobilization breakdown absorption of calcium. Now once again, calcium has to do with how sensitive your nerve is. So if you're under is kind of thought to be like the main mechanism of pain and migraines. So while it will reduce the pain, it also affects like bone metabolism and things like that. So three things to think about when anyone asked me about a drug is one, if you're masking the pain or masking the symptom, the drug will stop working eventually, and when it breaks through, okay, that's my second thing when the drug when the when, when the pain breaks through. First of all, that drug stops working. Second of all, the drug suppression creates the body to create another inflammatory pathway. And there's multiple pathways, it could be oxidation, it could be leuco trains, it could be prostaglandins. But it's going to create a whole nother level of inflammation that makes it worse, and it's going to make you in a harder spot to treat. So unfortunately, everyone on a migraine medication is a little bit harder to treat, the more often you use it, the more often the harder it's going to be. So that would be the second thing. And then the third thing to really think about holistically is when you stop the body's protective mechanisms, you end up with other problems. So your brain is creating inflammation changes in the nervous system, blood flow changes to essentially save your life, right? So because it's taking care of your brain, but what you're finding is your body's taking care of your brain. And what you're finding is that you're stopping what it's trying to do, or masking it. So in some scenarios, your body can still do it. But usually you're stopping a process and that process was important, either for revolute resolution of the migraine, or for getting the blood flow back or for changing the resting potential of that nerve or for these are there's a lot of things that it's important for. So whenever you take a medication, you're stopping a pathway and that stopping the pathway always has consequences doesn't work forever, and you're gonna be stuck looking for more answers. Okay, so that's kind of my stance on all drugs, but specifically the CGRP makes me wonder about how messing with calcium absorption works for females over the age of 50 and 60, as osteopenia and osteoporosis start to creep in. And once again, you're gonna be up a different creek without a paddle in a few years. Okay, last thing, Why are women more prone to migraines than men? This is a really good question because you find that women are about three times more likely likely to have migraines than men. And there's two things I want to talk about. One is the estrogen dominance story. Like I said, Go listen to that podcast if you haven't already. And if you have estrogen dominance or hormonal symptoms, you aren't on MGR shook extract yet. It's time to start right so it's a powerful thing that we'll talk about on supplements in the next episode, I'll link in the bio section i'll put a link down below on the show notes just so you can understand How to get it if you want to get out but it's probably my number one migraine go to supplement. Okay, but that's a whole nother thing. But long story short, we want to address the estrogen issues females especially if you're noticing that they're cyclical meaning once a month, or if they're associated with ovulation or menstruation, or both. And then honestly, like with migraines, it can be the week before leading up to the ovulation and they can be the fall down and the week after. And so really, you're looking at like three to four weeks of the month. So almost all for females, almost all of them that have migraines are dressing estrogen dominance at some point. So we use the artichoke a ton. They're not the only product though. So I had someone messaged me the other day, hey, you know, I'm already on artichoke. Now what do I do? Well, there's if you've been doing it long enough, so if you didn't been doing it six months, and you didn't see a result, then then it's probably not the supplement for you. And we're looking at a different mechanism. And that's why I say you have multiple mechanisms that we're looking at here. It may not be the estrogen dominant story for you, but for for most women and why women have it more than men, estrogen is definitely at that root. Okay. The second thing that on the on the reason why women have more migrants than men, and really more autoimmune disease and all sensitivities and symptoms, is because anything that affects the myelin sheath is going to be more sensitive. And females females have a thinner myelin sheath. So the myelin sheath is essentially the fat that goes around the nerve that protects you from outside inflammation, stimulation, irritation, right, so all of those things, three things are going to be addressed by having a nice thick, fat, kind of myelin sheath. So it protects your nerves from sensitivities keeps that resting point really good for the nerves. But in women, it's a little thinner than men. So men are going to get away with in general more things that irritate their nervous system. The other thing was gonna be fatty acid composition, women are gonna be more sensitive to the Omega three omega six balance, which we'll talk about in the next episode. But then men, but as paying attention to those Omega ratios, where men may be able to get away with french fries and women, one French fry or two french fries might disrupt that imbalance. And once again, these are things where it's like, unfortunate, but it's true. But those are one of the reasons why women are going to suffer from MS more. Anything that affects that nerve, anything that affects that nerve sheath. So even like chronic epstein barr infections, you're looking at chickenpox, or shingles, you're looking at any virus, really, you're looking at COVID going to be more long haulers and females than men, because they're less protected. All right. So once again, thank you for listening today. That's all we're going to cover hop on my Instagram, and we'll do a q&a As soon as I post this on the episodes podcast for this week. And then I'll take questions that we can kind of cover in your next in the next episode. So I can help you do some self diagnosis so I can help you know what supplementation I'd recommend. And that way we can control some of the migrant madness when I did my research for this podcast I was looking for what are people saying out there? What are the medical doctors, even the functional medicine doctors saying? And honestly, to tell you the truth, there was very, very little information that I could find with us because Google was suppressing me or not, I have no idea. But even on my DuckDuckGo searches, I didn't find much as far as what you can do for migraines. And it's really one of those things that like I said 90% of people are going to be able to get a dramatic improvement in their quality of life if they take some of these basic steps. And we'll see on the next episode. Thanks