Show notes
In this episode, Functional Medicine Practitioner, Dr. Meg Mill, PharmD, talks about headaches and migraines. Today, Meg talks about headaches and migraines, what causes them, and how to get to the root of your headache to treat it. What are the major contributing factors to chronic headaches? Hear about treating headaches as a functional medical practitioner, controlling stressors, and get Meg's advice to her younger self, all on today's episode of The Healthy, Wealthy & Smart Podcast. Key Takeaways Environmental triggers: Heavy metals, mold, allergens. Solution: Putting an air filter in your bedroom, doing mold testing. Food triggers: High-histamine foods. Solution: Avoiding aged cheeses, fermented foods, shellfish, avocado, foods with tyramine, citrus, MSG, aspartame, and caffeine. Hormonal triggers: Estrogen-dominance, rapidly changing hormones, and hormone-enhanced products. Solution: Visit ewg.org to rate your products. "There is hope to make a change in your life." "Be open. You never know what road it's going to take." More about Dr. Meg Mill Dr. Meg Mill is a Functional Medicine Practitioner, bestselling author, podcast host, and speaker. In her virtual Functional Medicine practice, she works with patients worldwide to heal the root cause of their health struggles through advanced diagnostic testing and personalized support. She has been seen on Fox News Channel, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and in Reader's Digest, Health Magazine, and has appeared on many podcasts. She is particularly passionate about helping people end headaches and migraines, increase energy and restore mental clarity without drugs or overwhelming protocols with her proven E.A.T. Method. Suggested Keywords Healthy, Wealthy, Smart, Headaches, Migraines, Stress, Environment, Hormones, Triggers, Allergens, The Strictly Business Roadmap: Create the Foundation of a 6-Figure PT Business Working 25 Hours a Week Resources: www.ewg.org/skindeep. FREE Gift: 8 Step Guide to Say Goodbye to Headaches Naturally. Live Group Program Head Strong. To learn more, follow Meg at: Website: www.megmilll.com. Podcast: A Little Bit Healthier. Instagram: @drmegmill. Facebook: Headache Healing Club. Subscribe to Healthy, Wealthy & Smart: Website: https://podcast.healthywealthysmart.com Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/healthy-wealthy-smart/id532717264 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ELmKwE4mSZXBB8TiQvp73 SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/healthywealthysmart Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/healthy-wealthy-smart iHeart Radio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-healthy-wealthy-smart-27628927 Read the Full Transcript Here: 00:05 Welcome to the healthy, wealthy and smart podcast where healthcare meets business with your host me, Dr. Karen Litzy. And just as a reminder, the information in this podcast is for entertainment purposes only, and is not to be used as personalized medical advice. Enjoy the show. 00:29 Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. I am your host, Karen Litzy. Thanks so much for joining me, I really appreciate your ears on the podcast. Now before we get started in today's episode, I have a couple of announcements number one announcement. If you are listening to this podcast on October 17 18th, or 19th, for that matter, I have a big announcement I will be running a workshop. That's right, not a webinar, but a workshop. So be prepared to do some work, called the strictly business roadmap create the foundation of a six figure PT business working 25 hours a week. In this workshop, we will cover the human resources needed for a successful business, the organizational resources needed to keep your business running smoothly the surprising amount of technology resources you will need. And finally the financial resources and knowledge that are imperative to pay yourself and your business. So the details it will be Wednesday the 19th at 8pm Eastern Standard Time on Zoom. Of course, there will be a link in the show notes for this podcast. So if you head over to podcast at healthy, wealthy smart.com You can sign up for that workshop. Just do it by Wednesday. All right now the other announcement is we are placing the podcast interviews up on YouTube. So if you want to see the podcast interviews, watch us interact with each other head over to YouTube to my YouTube channel, just Karen Litzy. And you will be able to see us talking back and forth and I'm sure one of these times you will also see a big orange cat hop up on to the screen on my screen. Alright, so today's episode is all about headaches and migraines and the treatment of them. And to help guide us through that today is Dr. Meg mills. She is a functional medicine practitioner best selling author, podcast host and speaker. In her virtual functional medicine practice. She works with patients worldwide to heal the root cause of their health struggles through advanced diagnostic testing and personalized support. She has been seen on Fox News, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, in Reader's Digest health magazines, and many many more. She is particularly passionate about helping people and headaches and migraines increase energy and restore mental clarity without drugs or overwhelming protocols with her proven eat method. That's e period, a period T method. And for all the listeners of the healthy, wealthy and smart podcast, she has a free gift eight step guide to say goodbye to headaches naturally. Again, go to podcast at healthy, wealthy smart.com. And you can click on that and get her free guide. So a huge thanks to Dr. Meg mill. And if you are suffering from headaches or migraines or know someone who is please listen to this or refer them to this podcast episode. Thanks. Hi, Meg. Welcome to the podcast. I'm happy to have you on today to talk about headaches. So welcome. Thank you so much for having me. So headaches is something that affects millions of people every day. Sometimes it can be a little headache, or then you have people with more chronic headaches and migraines. So where did your interest start for treating people suffering from headaches. So I'm a functional medicine practitioner. And whenever I start working with people, they fill out a really detailed intake questionnaire and symptom questionnaire before we start working, just then we really review their whole health history. And what I started noticing as a pattern was that either people were coming to me suffering with these chronic headaches and migraines, or they were coming to me for other reasons. And when I'm going through their health history, and they're really going through these forms, I'm like, Oh, they're suffering from regular headaches. Oh, they're taking Advil once a week. Oh, that, you know, and, and normalizing and they didn't even even really realize like, Okay, I'm coming to you because I'm having this problem. It's just that that's been such a part of my life. I didn't even really think about it as a problem. And so I saw this happening, particularly with women, really in both directions, and then we would start working together and they would say, oh my god, 05:00 As my headaches are gone, I never believed this was possible, I didn't even think I couldn't, wouldn't have them. And I just kept seeing this over and over again. And I wanted to get the word out. You don't have to suffer with headaches and migraines, you actually it's actually your body giving you a message. And when we put all the connections together, we see this dramatic decrease in both incidence and severity. And, in your experience, what have you found as major contributing factors to people living with chronic headaches, so we want to look at, you know, there's there's two aspects of that. So we want to really put the connect the dots. So that's what I always say, we're trying to connect the dots, your head pain is giving you a signal. And so we're looking at connecting all those dots and you and really like digging, sort of down through the layers because it could be the top layer and we could fix it right away, we could just get you some supplements that give you the right nutrients, and it might go away, but like you may be layers down to all the connections that are going on. So you know, we want to make sure we have the right nutrients, we want to make sure that we're not eating foods that can be triggered. We want to make sure our hormones are balanced that our stress hormone, you know that our stress is managing our stress hormones, we want to look at our environment, even sometimes, like underlying gut issues are different things that are happening that are that can be causing like this inflammation and immune response to that can trigger headaches. Okay, so let's drill into a couple of those a little bit further. So you mentioned stress. Everybody has stress. Not everyone has headaches, thankfully. But how does stress contribute? And what advice do you have for people that maybe they can do right away? To help control their stress as it relates to their headaches? Because I hear it all the time. Oh, I've had it just when I'm really stressed. Yeah. So what happens what I call it the chain of pain, actually, because, you know, when we think of stress, we think of like, Oh, our to do list or you know, we're busy, we're in this fight or flight because we have so much going on. And stress can actually be physiological can be biological, there can be a lot of reasons that our body's responding to stress, and one of which is pain. So it's like this cycle, when you have pain, you can your cortisol can increase your stress hormone, which can actually increase another hormone called prostaglandins are called prolactin, excuse me. And then once prolactin is released, that can actually increase pain sensitivity. And so you can get stuck in this like pain causing stress causing pain. And we see this, the cycle happen a lot with people. And so we just need to do things, like you said, to get out of the chain of pain to really get your body to relax. So one of the things I think you could start doing right now is really just practicing breathing, because our breath can bring us back to the parasympathetic nervous system, we often breathe through our chest, we're breathing like high up in our body. But if you can take a couple minutes every day, it doesn't have to be anything drastic. But just like set a timer, you know, a lot of our watches even more, say, take a deep breath, you know, sit and take a minute or two out of your day and really practice that deep breathing, because we know that those deep breaths can bring us back into that parasympathetic nervous system. So that's just like a simple place to start. Yeah, so I think a lot of people, when they think of stress reduction, they think of mindfulness techniques and meditation. And they think, well, in order for that to be helpful, I have to do it for 20 minutes. And then I don't know, 20 minutes, and then they're stressed out because they don't have the 20 minutes in order to do that. And it keeps going and going. So I like the recommendation of hey, let's just take a couple of breaths. Keep it simple in the beginning. Exactly. I agree with you, because a lot of that feels like another stressor. So if I say to you, like we have to meditate, then you have to you know, and then it's like, Why can't meditate, my thoughts won't slow down. I don't have 40 minutes, I don't want to do so. So just if you can say like, Hey, I'm gonna do it, like we do anything else, put little chunks in your day, you can start to build and then if you practice that breath, when you are stressed, you can bring it in. It's very hard, when you don't aren't practiced that it to use it when you need it. And so that's I think, like building that muscle of being able to do it, get the practice and then being able to bring it back when you need it. Yeah, just like anything else. If you can practice something and build up like muscle memory, I use that in quotations 09:22 so that you can tap into that when you need it. I think is so important, rather than just maybe doing some breath work once a week, or once a month. Kind of when you think not even when you think about it, but maybe if someone mentions it to you then you're like oh yeah, I thought I was supposed to do that versus making something a habit right? Because habit building is something that human beings can do. We can do this. Yes, yeah. And you just put it in you just get it as a part of your habit and then you'll and then you'll really see the advantage when you're a 10:00 But when it is a habit, you're able to use lies it when you're in that stressful situation, because you can really actually feel your body calming down. If you're stressed and you think, like something happens, and you can get to that breath and really use it, it's actually just, you can physically feel the relaxation, we know physiologically that it does, you know that your breath really can bring you back into the parasympathetic nervous system, it's just a matter of being able to actually do it. Right. Okay, great. Now, another thing that you mentioned in all these contributing factors to headaches is your surroundings. So can you explain that a little bit more? Because I think a lot of people if I'm playing devil's advocate advocate, would say, Well, how can I change my surroundings like I live? Where I live? I do what I do, what are you talking about? So go ahead. Yeah, so we there's a, there's a couple of things whenever we talk about our surroundings, so we want to say like, actually, heavy metals can be a trigger for so if you have heavy metals in your body, sometimes even things like, like a lead could be in your bones from when you were younger, and sometimes as well, more women and we age, our bone density changes and actually can release toxins later in life that you may have absorbed when you were young. So it's just in some of those loads, or maybe not even what you're around right now. But we know some of the heavy metals, then we you know, mold can be another factor. So if you do live in a moldy house, we could look into that and see if you're surrounded, that's like also something if you see like, oh, I moved and my headaches started, after I moved or you know, at a certain location, some of those kinds of things, but then just also environmental. So when we look at our environment, sometimes people that have migraines, can have a genetic variant and this enzyme called Dao enzyme, and that's an enzyme that helps us break down histamine. So we want to think of that when we're eating foods that have histamine. But if you also have, you're also exposed to environmental allergens, you know, you're you're getting this allergic response, you know, this immune response. And so just actually also cleaning up your environment can make a big difference. We I one thing I would say is even if you're going to pick like something in your environment, you can't change where you live, obviously, you can, you know, clean up, but putting an air filter in your bedroom can be helpful. And you don't even have to go to the top of the line, you know, you can start out with something that you you know, find anywhere. 12:23 And just put it in your bedroom, because it's hard to get them in every room in the house. But we spend a lot of time sleep is so rejuvenating. And just if that's like one thing you can do, I think that is a help often for people just to add that. Yeah, and air I actually bought an air filter last year wit…
Full show notes at the publisher 
Our TOPPODCAST Picks 
Stay Connected
