Not to be confused with the SNL character. I think I’m funny… clearly.

Everything I’ve shared to date has been mostly related to food – because, to quote Hippocrates again, “everything begins in the gut”

However, as I’ve mentioned, getting to the point where your gut is clean, fixed, and feeling good again can take time – especially if you had a leaky gut.

In the mean time, your headaches will probably get worse before they get better. Why? Because your body is used to ridiculous amounts of processed sugars and foods like soy that mimic hormones. Long story short – your body will be on freak out mode for, I don’t know, a few days or weeks, depending on how big of a hot mess your diet used to be.

So during the freak out mode, you’ll probably want a non NSAID (tylenol, ibuprofen, etc) way to relieve pain.  Probably the only good that came out of the Diamond Headache Clinic for me, was a referral prescription for Cefaly.

I know, I know, I just got done telling you that pharmaceuticals are bad, so why would I be advocating a prescribed drug? 

Because it’s NOT a drug! 🙂

Cefaly is a super cool, Star Trek type medical device that basically provides stimulation through electrodes right to the part of your face that hates you most: your temples.

This device is especially good for people with tension headaches, and it’s similar to the stim you’d get at a chiropractor on your shoulders,neck, or joints. It’s an over the counter device in Canada and I think Europe as well, but of course the US wants a prescription so they can charge absurd amounts and whatever other stupid reasons.

All you need is a prescription from a Dr., scan it to them when you check out on the http://www.cefaly.us website (make sure it’s the US site hyperlinked above) and it will come in the mail a few weeks later!

I was addicted to this thing for a while – to the point where I couldn’t fall asleep until I’d done a quick session and would usually do one right when I woke up (as those are the times I would have the 2 worst headaches). It’s probably not going to prevent headaches as much as fix existing pain, but I did notice frequency going down when I started to use.

I’ve only used in once in the last 2 months because I don’t need it anymore (which I’m not complaining about) but I have to say, IT’S FABULOUS.

Friendly Warning: the first time you do it, you will panic. Hard.

If you are like me, when you go the chiropractor and they say “tell me when” for the electrodes, I let them click like 4-5 times and chicken out.

There is no “tell me when” setting on Cefaly. It’s all or nothing, and it’s STRONG! Don’t worry, though – if it gets to be too much, you can just press the start button and it will stop at that intensity for the remainder of the session. However, I warn you to power through, because once it gets past the ridiculousness, it turns into the weirdest, most awesome head massage you’ve ever gotten. (If you’ve ever used those wire “tinglers” before, it feels like that)

It makes absolutely zero sense to me how it works. Eventually, you feel like someone is rolling massage balls up and down the top of your scalp, into your hair, and behind your ears in a circular motion in combination with your moms super long fingernails scratching your scalp. But then you remember you are just wearing a single electrode in between your eyes, so that’s not possible. And then you freak out that you are starting to hallucinate, because you clearly feel it 5 inches from where the electrode is, so how can that be possible?

Oh, and if you get it, try scratching your nose, or your eyebrow. The smallest touch of your nail to your face will make you feel like there are 100 small porcupines massaging the base of your neck.

Just typing about it makes me want to go use it, even though I don’t have a headache. I would find myself drifting off to sleep from it because of how crazy good it feels.

So, it’s expensive. Yes. Very expensive actually. Just like functional medicine doctors are. Why? Because insurance doesn’t cover things they know can fix you. They want to keep problems the way they are, so you come back. But the way I look at it, I used to go to about 3-4 doctors monthly. a gastroenterologist for my GI stuff, a neurologist for my headaches, a dermatologist for my psoriasis, and an ENT for my allergies. Now I don’t see any of them anymore, and all of those problems are gone or severely diminished. So if you add up all those bills, I say it’s worth the upfront cost.

I mean, look at how happy this chick is. Cefaly even gives you the perfect selfie duck lips.

Are those even her hands? And why is she naked?

Looking back on some of my recent posts, I suppose I should let you know what the hell they found wrong with me, so you can ask smarter/better questions with your doctors.

Brace yourself. I’m f’d up…

So one more time, in case you didn’t read previous posts or need a refresher. I went to a new hip, functional medicine practice where they do a ton of lab work to benchmark you to against normal healthy people, instead of sick ones like they do at normal doctor’s offices and labs. They did a 24 hour saliva test (spit into vials at 4 different points throughout the day), a 28 day saliva test (spit 1X a day into vials for the 28 days of your cycle -females only duh), a urine test, a traumatizing stool specimen, and a crap ton of blood work.

After all that, here are my blood tests’ results. I’ll post the other ones separately. And most importantly, below are the reasons why I’m doing all this diet and taking so many botanicals. I have:

1. Reactive Hypoglycemia (aka too low of blood sugar).                                         Which is hilarious if you knew how many bags of Skittles I used to consume in a week.  Low blood sugar is a HUGE trigger of migraines. There are 2 organs running your blood sugar: Your adrenal glands, which produce cortisol hormone and your Liver, which breaks down store glucose in your body. My doc explains this WAY better than me. HERE

Ways to help blood sugar levels:

• Eat every 2-3 hours – no problemo
• Never eat carbs by themselves
• Eat LOTS of proteins and fats. Even though Coconut Oil has way more fat than Olive Oil I only cook with Coconut now. And I eat probably 2-3 times more meat than I used to
• Snack before bed. This was a surprise to me, being the person who was religious about not eating 3-4 hours before I went to bed hearing horror stories of acid re-flux and fat storage in the belly. Little did I know that’s why I would wake up with a headache each day

2. Hypochlorhydria (aka too little stomach acid)                                                          Your stomach should be so acidic that if you could somehow put your finger in there it would disintegrate. Why? Because it’s job is to break down your food and make you not fat. If you don’t have enough acid in your belly, 1 of 2 things happens. 1 it goes through not fully broken down, which causes gut inflammation and triggers an internal freak out OR it comes back up in the form of Acid Re-flux, which I suffered from for years. This can lead to SEVERE malabsorption and nutritional deficiencies. (which we’ll get into later, but I was basically taking vitamins for years, and they were doing nothing for my body because I can’t activate them)

Ways to help with hypochlorhydria (it’s gross but works):

• Gag yourself. You heard me – I told you this man is a loon but it works. If you use a tongue depresser or something similar – gently pressing it against your uvula until your eyes begin to water (don’t fully gag yourself), it will trigger a reaction for your stomach to produce acid. Werd.
• Gargle. Just like your grandma told you to when you were sick, but without the warm nasty salt water. Just the act of gargling when brushing your teeth twice a day will help
• Hum. No clue why there but this singer’s got it.
• Betaine Plus HP – botanical pills you take in the middle of meals to encourage stomach acid production – remember NO prescription pills again

3. Genetic Mutation of the C677T Gene. hehe.                                                                This one’s my favorite. Not just because I can finally relate to the teenage mutant ninja turtles, but because that gene just happens to be the gene that makes MTHFR in your body. Yes, we all have a “MTHFR” in us. Don’t believe me? Google it and Dr. Kendal Stewart

So this MTHFR (hehe – it never gets old) activates B6,9&12 in your body. And it just so happens that these 3 vitamins are used in over 250 processes in your body and brain – so that explains why I’ve been taking B Complex vitamins for 10 years and still getting migraines. That MTHFR won’t activate! 🙂

PS. if someone could please buy me this t-shirt, I would love you forever.

Ways to help a MTHFR mutation:

Unfortunately, while most of the other things listed above and below are fixable, you can’t really fix a genetic mutation, so I will be on the following for lyfe:

• NeuroImmune Stabilizer –  cream MTHFR activator
• 5-MTHFR botanical pills – to help trick my MTHFR into activating shit.

Have I said MTHFR enough? I kind of want to say it again. MTHFR.

4. Food Insensitivities                                                                                               

• Gluten
• Dairy
• Rice
• Quinoa
• Eggs

Well fahk. Will I die if I eat them? No. But my blood reacted so poorly to them in panels that they came up in the “danger” zone. So I won’t be eating them any time soon.

I had 3 more things we went over but we aren’t working on them yet in the program and I don’t really remember the significance, so I’ll post that stuff later.

Once again, the reason I love functional medicine is that it’s 100% customized to YOU, YOUR BODY,and YOUR DISEASES. So I don’t recommend buying these supplements until you’ve had the blood work done yourself and have confirmed you have these issues. First, they are expensive as hell and second, I don’t want you to hurt your body.

Here are the labs used for the tests – I actually called Great Plains Lab to refer me to Dr. Beyer – so if you don’t know of a functional practitioner near you, call the labs up!

1. Great Plains Laboratory – the dreaded poop test
2. Diagnos-Techs, Inc – the 1 day and 28 day saliva test
3. Cyrex Laboratories – Food Insensitivity panel
4. LabCorp– crapton of bloodwork (the blood sugar, genetic mutation, etc)
5. Still waiting on the urine test. I’ll let you know

Until tomorrow!

After the 30 day RepairVite and 21 day ClearVite, all I wanted to do was dominate some spaghetti, pizza, pumpkin scones, and beer.  Everytime I went out to eat, I would mutter X-rated expletives at my husband and friends/family for eating their f’ing crusty bread with olive oil and parmesan cheese at Rosebud (clearly still not over it)

But the good news is after the diet comes re-introducing some goodies back into your life. Not all the goodies like the ones listed above, but specifically high-glucose fruits (bananas, mango, pineapple), nuts/seeds, legumes, regular potatoes, and gluten-free grains. It may not seem like much, but it was enough for a small tear of joy to trickle down my cheek (not exaggerating).

I felt like Helen Hunt at the end of Castaway – too shocked at first to try it, but then I had to dive right in

Ok ok you might think I’m being dramatic (and I haven’t actually watched the movie but heard they don’t end up together anyway), but we are talking to one of the biggest foodies of all time here! This isn’t like I just had to give up drinking caffeine for 30 days and then could start injecting Starbucks through an IV, this was a complete lifestyle change that involved eliminating some of my favorite activities (eating), and most of it is for LYFE, yo. 

It’s funny though, how going through such a restrictive diet as that one makes you appreciate a simple kidney bean or friggin tomato (oh, how I missed tomatoes).  The thing is, though – now that I know about what these inflammatory foods do to my insides, I’m still trying to limit consumption.  My diet prior to this journey consisted mostly of tomatoes and grains (spaghetti, pizza, spaghetti again, maybe a calzone), and that was the days of 2-3 headaches/migraines a week.

Not to mention, the whole weight loss thing – which again was an accidental and welcomed side effect. I was never huge or even big, but looking at the difference in pictures is crazy.

          MAY 2015                            SEPT 2015

So now what do I do? 

Well again, I can’t encourage you enough to go see a functional medicine practitioner, because everything I am doing is catered to my blood/spit/pee/poop results, but since I have a heavy intolerance to Gluten, Dairy, Quinoa, Rice, and Eggs, I will mostly be off of those forever (balls). BUT the good news is that I’ve gotten super creative with recipes using corn tortillas (which I can have), coconut flour (which is NOT the same to bake with as a warning) and beans. I’ll post a ton more, so make sure to check out the MIGRAINE FRIENDLY RECIPES section!

Have a question? Please post a comment below and we can start a discussion!

Ok, so how did I lose 17 pounds? Well it waddn’t fun, I’ll tell you that.

I’ve had to sit through many a wedding, barbeque, and pizza party salivating while I forced a bare chicken breast in my mouth.

Why do functional doctors put you on a diet? 

Well most of us were raised on the standard American diet. Aka crap food (gluten, dairy, etc). We were tricked into thinking that Nutrigrain bars are healthy and that oils like Coconut Oil are bad for us because they are high in fat.Therefore, myself – along with most American’s have what’s called a “leaky gut”. What is a leaky gut, you ask? Essentially what it means is that you’ve been feeding your body crap so much for so long that your cell membranes in your intestines break down and release food into the bloodstream, which is a no no and can result in other more scary and serious issues.When you have foreign invaders in your bloodstream, back to the sympathetic “flight or flight” response and migraine city. This is a great explanation for how the gut can be related to other underlying issues internally as well: 9 Signs You Have a Leaky Gut

So the program I did was a 30 day RepairVite powder and restrictive diet to repair the Leaky Gut, followed immediately by a 21 day liver detox with ClearVite. (51 days of dieting, now you see why I wanted to crawl in a hole and die?) However, what kept me going was that, after week one – I didn’t have another migraine. I barely even ever had a headache, maybe 3-4 total, and minimal pain at best.

Here’s the 30 day Repairvite plan.

Let’s just say it. It feels like you basically can’t eat anything 🙂 So you really have to plan, shop for, and focus on what you can eat in order to stay sane.  I should say at least 12 times, that this isn’t for everyone. This is for people who are suffering from chronic headaches and migraines, have tried various treatments like chiropractors and otherwise and still cannot find a solution. Because it’s tougher than tough, and it will test your determination.

What can you eat? Meat. Grass fed, and lots of it. I probably have eaten 5 cows, 10 turkeys, and 20 chickens in the last 2 months myself. Vegetables, bring em on. Load em in Coconut oil and saute in salt and pepper. And some fruits (low glycemic ones like cherries, apples,peaches and pears)

Keep in mind that you are doing these diets to repair your gut – eating low inflammatory foods to give your body a “reset” of sorts. So cheating even with one small bite of tomato throws your entire system off for weeks

Your gut lining is similar to a snake’s skin, in that it sheds a cell every day and produces a new one. It takes days for that new cell produced to get to the end of the thread and shed off, so cheating once can affect your body for a long long time. This funky picture below shows the bad cells in green and how even when they reach the end and shed off, they can re-enter through any other previous leaky gut cells (INSANE!)

After you’ve “reset” your body, you can start slowly introducing some foods back in the 21 day Clearvite diet (some high glycemic fruits, nuts and seeds, legumes/beans, and gluten-free grains) giving yourself 72 in between each introduction to note how your body is reacting. And if you go to a functional medicine practitioner they will test your body specifically against all common types of food insensitivities to see if there are others on there that you should always avoid, regardless of the diet.  Pretty much just know that Gluten and Dairy are most likely going to show up as an intolerance, because most of us cannot digest these structures the way we need to, thus causing our fat and/or perpetually ill American society.

All people in my doctor’s program go through this “reset” regardless of their food insensitivity results, because it’s important to fix that leaky gut before you are able to heal anything else. They way they worded it to me is you can get some temporary relief, but without fixing the core issue (gut) you will never get a lifetime of health back.

I’m not a scientist. Not even close. But I’m learning a little more and more each week about the actual long-term dangers of food and it has awakened me to what goes in my body. If you are sick of being in constant pain, look up the closest Functional Medicine doctor to you and ask for similar lab work done!

To be fair, it wasn’t me that decided to get rid of all pharmaceuticals. It was my hippy husband who was sick of watching me become more and more of a robot each day.

We would like to start a family sometime soon, so I decided to start caring about my body and ridding myself of all things pills. (even our friends Tylenol and Excedrin). At first it was NASTY. I missed a lot of work (thanks Doug for not firing me 🙂 ), and I was miserable. But then my body learned to cope with a higher pain tolerance.

A colleague of mine referred me to the Great Plains Institute. They are a lab that does extensive (and disgusting might I add) lab work to help identify possible causes for chronic illnesses. And that’s how I found Dr. Beyer.

Dr. Ed Beyer is a functional neurologist in Tinley Park, IL. You can watch his many chronic headache and migraine videos here. I will warn you, these videos are cheeeeee-zyyy. However, I’m 17 pounds thinner with no migraines in 50 days, so listen to him.

Functional Medicine is different from Traditional Medicine in that it’s designed to find the root cause of the problem, rather than treating symptoms.

Holy shit. You’re telling me that the doctors I’ve been going to for 30 years aren’t trying to fix the problem? No, why would they? Then you don’t come back.

If they treat enough of the symptoms that you are relatively happy but still miserable enough to come back, they profit.

Super sad, and super true.

I shouldn’t bash all doctors. I’m not saying all of them are doing this consciously, but many of them are so trained in higher level acute issues like Heart Attacks, Brain Tumors, etc that when a patient comes in with a lot of headaches – if the CT scan doesn’t show any lesions – they just prescribe a pill and get rid of the patient so they can focus on more pressing issues, as they should.

The cool thing that I love most about functional medicine is that treatment is 100% centered around you and your body. They do an insane (and I mean insane – like pooping into a cardboard box insane) amount of lab work before even coming up with treatment ideas to make you better, which I really like.

Then from the lab work, they decide where you are in relation to healthy people. With traditional medicine, if you had a blood test done at a lab at a doctor’s office, they compare your results with other people in that lab. But if you think about it, what’s the one thing everyone in that doctor’s office has in common? THEY’RE SICK! So why would you benchmark yourself against a sick person. Instead, functional medicine looks at the functional range before you are shit out of luck to see warning signs and red flags

Another thing they taught me, which I thought was interesting, is that almost all diseases begin in the gut. Ok, Hippocrates taught me that – but I forgot. And it makes sense to me – in college I gained the freshman 40 (yes 40) – but not from beer bongs and pokey sticks like I wished. I was in and out of hospitals trying to understand why my metabolism just stopped overnight and food hurt my stomach so bad. They never really figured out the cause, and when I removed high stress it went away, so I never thought anything of it again.  Turns out, years of inflammation have caused my body’s “fight or flight” hormones to supercharge like Keanu Reeves on speed in the movie Speed getting a speeding ticket.

The 3 main areas they are looking at for me is:

1. Food Insensitivity (Blood Panels) 
2. Hormonal Imbalances (28 Day and 1 Day Saliva Test)
3. Gut Flora Imbalance (The traumatizing poop test)
4. They also did some Urine work, but I’m not sure what that was for, so I’ll let you know when I learn

What I’m learning, which makes sense and is really cool, is that everything in your body relates to everything else.

Fixing or treating one problem or one area will never work long-term until you address the entire ecosystem.

It makes sense, right? Of course if I were to fix one area (say stop eating foods that I’m insensitive to) and my body doesn’t fix the hormonal issues I have, then my hormones are going to keep over-producing and triggering migraines to my brain. And visa versa, if I fix the hormone problem and eat Gluten (which I’m so saddened to know I’m insensitive to), my gut will flare up so much that it will trigger my midbrain to freak the f out, and we are on the first train to migraine city.

More to come on specifics / what I’m learning, but basic Functional Medicine knowledge is important to know the WHY behind they do what they do (because 90% of the time they sound like looneys).

Hi, my name’s Amanda. I’m a chronic migrainer. (or should I say WAS). From the age of 16, I started getting very bad headaches, which turned into migraines in my college and adult years. Over the course of the past 6-7 years, I’ve had a 5-6 at least every other day, and a 10 probably once or twice a month.

I’ve been to just about every type of specialist in the world for my headaches. From Neurologists, to “world-renowned” headache clinics (hint: the Diamond Headache Clinic blows – don’t waste your time), to ENTs, to even Gastroenterologists.  What do they do for you? Prescribe, Prescribe, Prescribe.  Why? Because traditional medicine is pharmaceutically driven.

Wait…Doctors are incentivized and PAID more money when they prescribe us pills? WTF

I know, right? It’s beyond stupid. But knowing this makes you question – are they in it to fix you or keep you coming back for more?

I’ve been on Beta Blockers, Anti-Depressents, Anti-Convulsants, and even suggested intense Opiates for my pain. And yet, somehow – miraculously – my headaches seemed to be getting worse. Why? Because I was training my body to become immune to these drugs, and poisoning myself with their ridiculous side effects. Think I’m kidding, check out these side effects for Divalproex, an anti-convulsant drug I was on for 2 years! (Yes, they prescribed me an epilepsy pill for headaches – hmm red flag #12)

But don’t worry, that’s not the complete list. Contact your doctor or pharmacist for the 200 other things it could possibly do other than LITERALLY KILLING YOU! It literally says on side effects that you could die, and I took this drug. That’s how desperate I was to get rid of these.

Were my headaches less frequent and less severe? Yes. But I wasn’t myself and I knew it – and my poor, poor husband did too.  Oh, and when I decided I had it with pharmaceuticals and quit taking it (without weaning off) I was almost hospitalized for the most ridiculous vertigo and dizziness I’ve ever experienced in my life.

It was like tripping on acid while riding a unicycle upside down (or so I’m guessing).

Ok, so that’s my fault for being an idiot – but my point is, why should we educated people keep mindfully and willingly putting drugs in our body that are so incredibly horrible for us that they give us dangerous withdrawals?

I think my favorite hot mess that I tried was an anti-depressant. Something in the way it enters the brain has shown a positive response in migrainers, so I thought – what the heck – if my Neurologist is prescribing it I’ll try.

I’m pretty sure that if you take a Bi-polar drug when you aren’t Bi-polar, it turns you Bi-polar.

May the Lord have mercy on anyone’s soul I encountered during my brief stint with those drugs. Holy Canoli I was a raging lunatic. And I’m an actor, so public speaking is usually my forte. I had a presentation at work one day that I prepped weeks for. Got up to speak in front of 3 of our VPs and couldn’t even form a sentence. I ran out of the room crying (another thing I would NEVER do in an office setting) and instantly cut myself off the pills.

So why am I telling you all this? Because pharmaceuticals are the easy way out. They require essentially no work on your end other than raising your hand to your mouth and swallowing it down, they are usually super cheap with insurance coverage, and they treat enough of the symptoms that you can live with the rest of the pain you are in. But I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to live with a headache every day. I had just given in to the fact that for the rest of my life I would be in pain, but that’s not the case anymore.

Check out my next blog post on Functional Medicine, and I’ll introduce what I’m working on! Today is day 49 migraine free, and I’ve lost 17 pounds since June 30 (and I wasn’t a person who considered myself in need of losing weight, that was just a lovely side effect 🙂 ) It’s not easy, but damn it’s effective.