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,
Resources:
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 with the all concerns of like air quality and COVID and things like that. And so I have one and it wasn't very expensive. It's not like you said you don't have to go top of the line or anything you can get they have some really good basic ones that can fit the square footage of a bedroom really well. And I'm glad you say you know, even if you have an ingest your bedroom, that's good, because a lot of people might think well, what am I supposed to put one in every room in my house? It's gonna get really expensive. How am I going to do that? But now you're saying listen, at least have it in your bedroom where maybe you're sleeping and spending eight to maybe nine hours a day in that room? Yes, yeah. Cuz it is, it's hard to say like, Okay, I'm gonna put it everywhere. But you're, you know, you're gonna be there a ton of time, and it will be good while you're sleeping. It was funny, because when I was going to buy, like the first air filter that we bought in our house, my husband's like, we have a filter on our furnace. We don't need this. And I was like, you know, I just want to have it I you know, I think it's important. And then the first time we change that filter, he was like, Oh, it was shocking, because you think your air is being cleaned by your furnace. But when you really see those filters, and when you get their filter, there is a lot that's coming out. So yeah, yeah. And I I live in New York City. So if I just opened my window for half a day you're getting God only knows what blowing into the apartment. So yes, air filters very easy to do. What about you had mentioned mold? So there are obviously ways to clean mold. But let's say you're going to look at a house or an apartment or something like that. Can you ask about mold in the structure? Yes, they do. You can do mold testing. So that is something that you might want to look at because there can be black mold under things and so if you are looking for a new you know, a new home that is something related to take we you know, we check radon, we check different things, but are we actually checking mold and the you know, the people aren't I had a plumber come in one time that was like, I had a leak in my sink and I was saying like, is there mold is it and he was like, Oh, it's fine. That's not a problem. And I'm thinking yes, it is a problem. I actually know that it is. So I my point there is that you could have people just brushing it off that are saying like, Oh, that's not a big deal. Oh, we don't even need to look for that. But you know, that's always something that you can ask for it.
15:00
Yeah and you had mentioned that foods can also have an anti histamine effect is that right? What can you give some examples of foods one can eat like what would be considered a low histamine diet? So you want to be you want to avoid things like aged cheese's fermented foods sometimes shellfish even like avocado is a high histamine foods so you want to avoid foods that but I think if you try to you know stick the big classes would be like aged cheese's fermented you know, fermented foods have a lot of prebiotics in them so we're really hearing a lot about things like sauerkraut, kombucha things right are feeding our microbiome in a positive way and so you can hear that and you hear things about like avocados or healthy fats and all these things so that's what kind of gets tricky with with headache foods or migraine foods because they're often foods that maybe you're hearing are healthy for you but they're just not like they may be healthy in certain ways, but they can be potentially triggering your your headaches or migraines and you're not even knowing it. So we want to look at foods that are getting high in histamine. This is the one I mentioned. You also want to so some of the other categories of foods that we know are foods that have tyramine so think of like cured foods, aged foods, they're the foods that have nitrates. So you think of like hot dogs and foods like that. You also salicylates and that that can be like citrus foods. So things like lemons, sometimes oranges, those are, are ones that you wouldn't necessarily suspect. So then we have like MSG, aspartame, MSG would be like in canned foods, box foods, aspartame, diet, foods, and then even caffeine. So that's an interesting one, because caffeine can be helpful sometimes for people with headaches, but you can get rebound headaches, if you you know, are withdrawing from the caffeine to so so that so I'm gonna give you like their buckets. So like that those are foods we know actually have data, we know that those are they can cause the headaches and migraines. Now, it's not the same for each person. And there can be a threshold. So you may eat that food at one point. And like let's say you have a glass of wine and it has tyramine in it, and you're like, I hear this, like people say, well, sometimes wine, I'll get a migraine after but other times I can drink it. So it must not be the wine. Well, it might be the wine with some of that aged cheese that you had, or something else, that the combination of those two foods together was enough to like put you over that threshold to have the headache. So that's where it kind of gets confusing, I think because you you're it's harder to pinpoint your exact foods sometimes when you're trying to think about it, because you're not always getting the headache with that food. Right. And so that flows very well into my next question. And that's how do you know what, if any of this stuff is causing your headache, whether it be the food, you're eating your environment, your hormones? How do you know? Because that's a lot of buckets. Yes, right. Well, that's why when I work with people, I have like roadmaps. So no one you find a practitioner that you can that you trust that can give you a roadmap, but one of the things that because Because yeah, you get the guide to know like this, and this and this means this and that's very helpful. But one of the things you can start doing right now is printing out, I have people start by printing out a blank calendar, and write foods down like if you get a headache, or if you get a migraine. Wait, what you ate that day and the day before, and then just start to look for connections. So you know, start to look for like, okay, you know what, every time I get a headache, it's three days before I get my period, or every you know, like my migraine or every or it's mid month, maybe you're ovulating, you know, or I didn't sleep last night, but uh, you know what, I don't sleep. If I don't sleep, well, I get it, or I'm dehydrated or the ate these foods. So once you start to like, just you don't have to do it every day. But if you just do it when you're getting the headaches, it can start to show you patterns. Oh, that's a great idea. And then you can address them accordingly. Yes, right. Right. Right. Got it. Now, you had mentioned days before period ovulating. So obviously, advice for women who suffer from hormonal migraines. What do you got? Yeah. And that's one more thing I didn't have to worry about. Right? Yes. Yeah. So the two most common reasons that we get migraines associated with hormones are estrogen dominance, and rapidly changing hormones. And that's why with estrogen dominance, you often get it right before your period because estrogen and progesterone are both dropping, but sometimes then progesterone is lower than estrogen. We were having the dominance now. We really do. Test testing can be really helpful for this because if you have estrogen dominance, why, like do you have low progesterone or do you have I have estrogen or I see a lot of people that have normal estrogen, but maybe some of the metabolites that estrogen is going into are higher and they're not there. You want to look, we want to say use it or lose
20:00
that when we talk about estrogen, you want that to really be in your body, but you want it to be able to be metabolized and excreted. And if it's not being done that way, then you're getting the these higher levels of metabolites that actually have a little bit more proliferative effects sometimes, and we're getting these symptoms. So, you know, really one, if you can get the testing the right testing done, then, and you have to be careful, because if you just see the extra dial, like if you just get a blood draw, that's not really the whole picture. Because you're not seeing all like I said, all these metabolites in the way, you know, that might be okay, but the way they're processed, but you so if you're looking for something you insert, right now, you can look out, there's a lot of products in our life that have what we call Xeno estrogens. And so those are estrogens that are outside of our body, and things like BPA, so think of all the plastic containers in your kitchen, have BPA in them. And what we do is we eat out of those, but we also often we'll put those in the dishwasher, sometimes we'll microwave them. And when that happens, they're also like decomposing, you know, they're breaking down their structure and they can leach into the food. So then you're eating that food that sitting in that plastic that so we're getting some of these estrogen components outside of the body. So you know, just really taking a look at that. We look at that in you know, your skin is a giant mouth and skin products, hair products, all the things that we're using, so that's just a good place to start. And yeah, I actually have I can say I switched to glass for all of my food storage needs, or I'll just put it in like a regular bowl and just cover it with which is probably not good. But I cover it with
21:41
with aluminum foil. Okay, I don't think that's good. Well, that's not touching. Yeah, you don't want to high levels of aluminum either. But yeah, you know, might not be touching the food. No, no, no, no. Yeah. No, usually it's like in the bowl like, yeah, yes, for the most part, I decided last year, I'm like, I feel like I should switch to glass. You know, storage instead of using like the Tupperware or Tupperware like storage. So I guess that's good.
22:11
And when you're looking at things like what you're putting in your hair on your face, are there things that are you're like, do not buy this product, if it has this ingredient in it, or is that a little too broad. So what I would suggest that you do is actually go to ewg.org Skin Deep website, so they rate all products. And so you can actually tell you just tight, it's really easy. Just type in what you have. And you'll see a rating. So you'll say like, Okay, if it's a one or two, you're you're feeling comfortable. If your products and eight or nine, then you know, replace that product, it would be a good idea to really try to, you know, try something else. And I tell people to like, for cost purposes, if you just replace one product at a time, it really doesn't, you know, it add up so much. So yes, if we're going to say I need to go get all new makeup, that's going to be expensive. But if you're like, Oh, my foundation ran out, let me think of what you know, let me really think about that. Be mindful of what foundation I buy, or, you know, the next time your shampoo runs out, you do the same thing, you're spreading that cost out. And then you're just replacing one thing at a time. And it's just lowering your overall toxic burden. It's lowering those, you know estrogens that are coming in. Another thing I guess with that is also like looking at beef and dairy because we're you know, the animals are often given hormones. And then when we eat them, we're also getting that, so really paying attention to those those foods to to make sure you're not getting any extra hormones. Got it? And can you say that website one more time? Well, yes, sure. It's Ew, g.org. And then in that that's Environmental Working Group. And within that there is a section that specifically for products and it's called skin deep. And they have a whole bunch of products. They have sunscreens and makeups, and you know, shampoos and all sorts of different things. So it's just a nice resource, because I think it's just nice to be able to, you know, you look at the back of the shampoo bottle, and you're like, what does all of this mean? So it's sometimes hard to figure out on your own, but it's just nice to be able to put that product in and you know, put it in and then find a ratings like gives you like a little bit of a clear guide. Yeah, no, this is great. I mean, all your tips are amazing. So hopefully people if you are someone that suffers from headaches or know someone who suffers from headaches, then definitely get them over to this podcast so they can listen to all these great tips on how to not suffer as much because I know headaches can be just absolutely debilitating. I have several friends who've had you know, a history of a long history of migraines. And I'm lucky to be a person that doesn't really get that many headaches.
24:54
But now when I do I'm going to kind of be thinking about you you're going to be in the back
25:00
Could my head I'm going to be thinking about all these tips and seeing what I can do to help mitigate the headache when and if I get them. So thank you so much. And now, how, you know, you had mentioned that you're a functional medicine practitioner. So how does a functional medicine practitioner differ from
25:19
a medical doctor when it comes to the treatment of headaches? Like what do you guys do differently? Yeah, so I'd like to actually take use an analogy for this, because it kind of points out the way we're treating headaches in the conventional space. So if you took your, if you took your car to a mechanic, and you said, it's making noise, and the mechanic walked away in it, they walked away with your keys, and they came back and handed you a pair of ear muffs and your keys back and said it's fixed. Would you be comfortable driving your car? And we wouldn't, we'd say like, No way, it's so broken. And that's kind of what's happening a lot of times in the way that headaches and migraines are being treated. Conventionally we're giving, we're given medicine to cover the pain. So you're treating your pain, but your headaches are still coming back. And we see that happen all the time. You know, people are saying, Okay, well, I take this for my pain, but that they're never going away. They're just being covered up. So what we do in functional medicine is we flip it around, I say, like we do it actually the opposite. And we're really putting all the connections together, outside, sometimes even of your head, and putting everything else that's going on in your body together and really kind of diving into why you're getting a headache. So it's not as much about the pain treatment, which we do still want, you know, we still want to treat the pain, obviously, because we don't want you to experience that. But we want that my goal is for you to get the incidence and severity down because I want you to not have them so that you're not having to take the medication. Right, that makes sense. And
26:52
I think I like how you said you want the incidence and severity to go down because sometimes it may not be complete elimination for the rest of your life, like people may have flare ups, I work with a lot of people with chronic pain. And oftentimes, you know, they may have chronic low back pain, we've gotten them to the point where that back pain is no longer burden burdensome, but you know, every once in a while they may have little flare up. Right? So how do you explain that when you're speaking with your patients that like, hey, sometimes you may have a flare up, it doesn't mean that you know, all is lost. You need to give up what kind of what does that conversation look like for you? Yeah, so generally the people that finally get to me have had chronic you know, or severe headaches so they're just thrilled to not wake up like I you know, I get one of my favorite quotes is one of the people I work with when I patient said I just love the fact that I don't wake up wondering if it's going to be a headache day like she you know, she everyday was living her life like, is it going to you know, wait, I get you have that fear waking up like is today going to be a headache day, if I plan something? Am I going to be knocked out with a migraine? And so yes, I can't promise you that you'll never have another headache because I can get a headache. You know, because of you know, maybe I'm dehydrated. And I've slept weird on my neck and you know all these things. But I can't promise that but that's when we see this dramatic decrease in both incidence and severity that they're not really affecting your life that you're not taking medication, they no longer have to, you know, sometimes we were on prescription medication, Botox injections, all these you know, there's, there's a wide variety of things that peak cocktails that people were taking, and they're still coming. And so it's it's really saying you don't have and I think like deeper than that all these medications have side effects like we're getting they're not without consequence. They can, you know, have good purposes, but there's always the consequence. So you're still getting the headaches, you have the consequences. So we want to pull get you in a place where, okay, you're not relying on that. And you're you're not suffering from any side effects of having to take regular medications. Yeah, I think that's great. And the the biggest part there is like they feel like they're not suffering anymore. So you know, when people come in and you ask, Oh, what are your headaches or your pain on a scale of zero to 10? And people are saying it's a 20? It's because it's so they're suffering and it's affecting their life in so many different ways. And so if you can bring that down for them, I mean, that's a real blessing, I would think and they must be like, super excited about it. Now. Yeah, it's life changing. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, it's life changing. So now, what, what would you like the listeners to kind of step away with from this conversation? If you can distill it down into your main points? What would it be? Yeah, I just like them to know that one. You know that if you are someone who has, I think people feel that they've had these headaches for you know, a lot of times people had them since childhood even. And so you feel like well, I've always had this. This is something that I'm not going to change. I'm managing it. It's
30:00
You know, but it's, it's just who I am, I see those people be able to make that change and not have them, you know, so I think or if there's something that you're dealing with all the time. So I just think knowing that there is hope that you don't have to live this way that if you just maybe take a new perspective, I think we can get stuck in that same pattern of like, oh, this is just what I do, oh, this is how I treat it. But I, I think if you can be open to a different perspective, then you there is hope to really make a change in your life. And then I also would say, you're just really maybe dialing in and listening to your body and listening, you know, if you can be more in touch with, like, what food you're eating, if you're dehydrated, if you're not sleeping, if you're you know all those things that we talked about, and like really just kind of put a mirror up and see like, where are you on some of those spectrums? Excellent advice. Now, where can people find you? If they have questions they want to consult, they're having headaches, they they need you? Where can they find you? Yes. So my website is Meg mil.com. So that's just my name M eg mi LL. And then I have a podcast called a little bit healthier. So I'm talking about headaches and migraines, but all different ways you can add be a little bit healthier in your life. And then I'm over on Instagram, and Facebook at Dr. Meg mill, just Dr. Meg mill. Perfect, perfect. And now, last question. It's one I ask everyone. And that's knowing where you are now in your life in your career, what advice would you give to your younger self?
31:33
Oh, that's a good one.
31:38
I just think that, you know, so I started out on the conventional side of medicine. So I guess I felt like, Okay, this is the this is the way to go, although I always was into more prevention than treatment. And so I, I think my path is different, it's veered a lot. So I think maybe in some of those times that I was really frustrated with the system and the way things were going even though I knew all the protocols, I knew why it was happening, that that I was that I wouldn't be able to find another way. So I would have to say that's probably the advice that just be open, you never know what road it's gonna take. And I did think of one more thing, I have a freak, I forgot to tell tell, say this, when you asked me Yes, I do have a free guide that you can go to just called help my headaches.com. So if you're looking for some steps to get started, you can look at that guide to I should have mentioned that earlier. No, that's perfect. And we'll have links to everything. We'll have links to your website, your social media, and help my headaches.com so people can go on and get this free resource to help their headaches, which would be wonderful, because man, I
32:46
I always, I feel I have so much empathy for people who suffer from headaches, because I think I had like maybe two or three in my life. And I was like, Oh my gosh, this is how do people live this way. So I have a lot of empathy. And I have a lot of gratitude for people like you who have chosen to really work with this population, because it's vast, and they need the help. So well done on you.
33:08
Yeah, and again, what's the name of your podcast again, it's called a little bit healthier. So it's just about taking tips too, that you can do every day in your life to be a little bit healthier. Love it. Excellent. Well, thank you so much, Meg, for coming on and sharing all of this great info so many good tips. I was like looking down and taking notes and I'm definitely going to that website and I'm going to put in all of my skincare and
33:34
hair products to see what I have going on and and then I'll take some deep breaths so then I won't get stressed out about it. But thank you so much for coming on the podcast. This was great. Thank you for having me. And everyone. Thanks so much for listening. Have a great couple of days and stay healthy, wealthy and smart.
33:57
Thanks for listening. And don't forget to leave us your questions and comments at podcast dot healthy, wealthy smart.com
