Wow, it’s been 4 months since my last post!

Why? Because I’m 264 days headache and migraine free, and really stopped having anything to talk about!

So much so, that my weekly doctor’s appointments were no longer centered around headaches (because I wasn’t getting them anymore) so I said “what can we fix next?”

As I mentioned in earlier posts, functional medicine looks at your entire body as an ecosystem, with everything relating to one another. They look at food insensitivities, chronic illnesses, inflammation, hormonal imbalances, etc. Since we pretty much handled the chronic illnesses (psoriasis, GERD, and Migraines) all with one quick diet change, I then said, “what about my hormones”

I started the program in June of 2015, and all of those horrible saliva, stool, urine and blood tests were completed that month.  When I received the saliva test results back in early August, and my hormones from that test in June were WAY out of whack. In fact, my cortisol levels were through the roof, and my sex hormones were basically non-existent (try telling my hubby that 😉 ). From the test results given, they concluded that I did not ovulate in that month of the test (my first month going to this doctor) and didn’t show signs of previous ovulation prior.

Absolutely crushing news when you are young, been married a year and just decided you are ready to start trying.

I remember crying on the phone with my mom and my sister, being so frustrated with my body that even after getting healthy and fixing a majority of my issues I still always have more problems going on that anyone else my age doesn’t have.

Fast forward to September. I went up the stairs to tell my hubby about a hilarious cat video I just watched (I have a problem), and made it about halfway up the stairs before I lost my breath, was all out of balance and almost passed out. He made me sit down on the bed, worried that something was seriously wrong.  It happened every time I went up the stairs for about 3 weeks. Now we had just gotten back from a trip to Colorado, so I thought maybe my body was just re-adjusting back to low altitudes (who knows). Until my hubby looked up what causes shortness of breath – and we concluded it was either a hernia or I was pregnant.  I brushed it off as neither and told him I just haven’t worked out in 7 years and am pathetically out of shape.

BUT, when he went to school that night, I snuck over to Mariano’s to buy a preggers test. At first the 2nd line didn’t appear, so I threw it in the trash. I was reading the box as I was walking upstairs (out of breath still) to hide it from the hubs, and it said “wait 3 minutes as the line may appear later, and even a faint line still implies pregnancy” so I ran back down just to check the garbage one more time. Holy mother of Mary a second line appeared, and my heart literally stopped. That is the most hilarious moment I can ever recall, thinking 1) wait, I can’t be – they just told me that only 3 months ago I wasn’t ovulating and 2) could it be? 3) am I dreaming? 4) I’m not dreaming 5) holy crap 6) I’m holding my own urine covered device once again.  It was so surreal and I was so out of it, that I actually remember going back to the couch and sitting down to finish my episode of NCIS! Ha.

Then all of a sudden it hit me like a ton of bricks. This is real.

I started literally running around the house. Cleaning, throwing, freaking out and realized I had to find a cute way to tell my hubby when he got home in an hour. Enter Pinterest. Thank God for Pinterest. It was awesome, and he was not surprised at all (he had been calling it for a few weeks).

I have to say though, pretty much the entire first trimester I didn’t believe it was real. My first OB appointment they kept coming in to congratulate me and finally she asked why I wasn’t excited, and I said I won’t believe it until I see him/her because I was told I wasn’t ovulating. She ran a transvaginal ultrasound and actually couldn’t detect anything, so I knew I was right. (Turns out I was just REALLY early, only about 4 weeks along).

Today I’m 28 weeks and 1 day. We are having a boy, which I’m incredibly excited about, and I’m now the poster child for this doctor’s office. I’ve gone back to be a speaker at his seminars and workshops because of how quickly I was treated for migraines and how fast we were able to move on to other things (i.e. pregnancy)

I truly credit my conception to their practice – fixing my chronic inflammation, my hormonal imbalances, my headaches, my skin issues (that is until pregnancy ruined me all over again – ha). Both Dr. Beyer and I got a little teary eyed in the migraine workshop I spoke at last month, because with my genetic mutation and chronic illnesses, even if I had gotten pregnant miraculously before seeing him, chances are it would have been a really long road, with my baby not getting enough gut flora from me (which can lead to autism, chronic disorders, etc) or something worse. I’m so grateful for finding functional medicine, and I truly believe that it was the reason I turned around all of my issues so quickly and was able to get pregnant. I have not taken so much as a Claritin or Tylenol in 264 days, let alone the heavy pharmaceuticals I was once on.

So thank you so much to the team at Beyer Natural Health Solutions, you’ve made this the best year of my life.

Now back to designing the Pinterest Nursery of the Year…

Long time no see! I’ve been traveling the country visiting customers (shout out to my 2 new favorite customers in Ft Washington!) and quite often forget to update this blog with the latest and greatest.

Since I travel 2-3 days a week for work and am not often home to cook, it’s tougher to stick to a healthy eating plan. I’ve found that cooking at home where you know the ingredients and you know what they are being cooked in is always the best bet, but I thought I’d at least try and share with you some of the “best practices” I’ve been learning from my nutritionist.

Somehow the 2000’s became the era of the lists. Every article I read whether for work or fun is “10 Ways to Sound Smarter,” “10 Foods to Eat for Great Hair,” “8 Reasons Your Cat is Trying to Kill You”….

So I thought I’d make this a little fun and provide 10 easy nutritional habits that if you start doing today, will make a HUGE impact on your health and well-being.

By the way, in case you were keeping count… today is day 109 migraine free and I’m down 20 pounds, so it’s working 🙂

The way that I started making changes over a year ago was from the good advice of my girl, the Food Babe. You might know her as the girl who outed Subway for using the yoga mat material, Starbucks for poisoning us with Caramel Coloring in the coveted Pumpkin Spice Lattes, and got huge corporations like  Anheuser-Busch and SABMiller to list their ingredients publicly.  I quickly became obsessed with her ability to move mountains with a small army of concerned citizens, and followed her blog – only to be highly disturbed with the craziness that is the American food industry today.

However, her book – which my amazing hubby purchased for me for Christmas last year – makes a good point that most people “fail” at FAD diets or lifestyle changes because they try too much too fast. I was guilty of that several times – yes, I knew pizza is horrible for me but it tastes so good and goes so well with Sunday afternoons, football and beer.

If you can commit to making 1-2 changes a week, a month, or even every few months, it becomes WAY easier to actually follow that lifestyle shift. And the best part, is now almost 2 years into diet changes, I don’t die when I see a pizza anymore because I know I just avoided an evening of egg farts and my husband dutch-ovening me in my own filth. TMI? probably.

So here’s the deal. If you can make these 10 changes (hopefully not all of them are changes) slowly throughout the year, so that by this time next year you follow all of them, I guarantee you’ll feel pretty damn good.

1. Read Ingredient Labels Diligently. Food Babe came up with a good rule I liked that I started over a year ago… ” if you don’t know how to pronounce the ingredient or what it is, put the product down.” Over 70% of our grocery aisles are filled with processed crap that should be burned. If there are 6 brands of applesauce, find the one where the ingredients are “apples” and move on. Even if they aren’t organic, at least it doesn’t have caramel coloring, ascorbic acid, and other nastiness. It’s the hardest thing to find the good brands, but they exist in every grocery store. Try to limit everything you buy to 5 ingredients or less to start, and only items you recognize.
2. Stay away from Gluten. It’s the hardest one and maybe not the first one you try. But here’s why: the human body was not meant to digest gluten, so it learns to either store it, dispose of it, or attack it. If you are someone like me with an autoimmune disease, I attack it – hence why it hurts me so much. Even if you don’t have immune issues, do you really want to store it? The great news is that so many companies have mastered the art of Gluten-free breads, pastas, cereals, flours, etc that it truly isn’t that tough. Not to mention almost all restaurants now have gluten free menus or at least options. The only challenge for me, is that those are all made from rice flour -which as I mentioned before came back on my blood work as also something I’m insensitive to along with quinoa. So what do I do? Lettuce wraps, corn noodles, corn tortillas!                                                                
3. Eat grass fed meats. “But they are like 2 dollars more in the grocery store, Amanda!”  To that I answer, “would you rather pay 2 dollars more a week or thousands on hospital bills” 🙂  Yes, eating organic and GOOD is a little more expensive but 1) not that much and 2) worth it considering I haven’t been to a doctor since June when I was visiting several monthly.  So why the grass fed meats? Grass contains Vitamin K, a super duper important vitamin to humans – essential in helping blood to clot, preventing osteoporosis, cancer and other crazy stuff with you can read here (which is ironically another LIST article ha). Obviously humans can’t digest grass (the literal kind) or we’d be taking clippings from our lawn and sauteing for dinner. So, the only way we can get this essential Vitamin K is through grass-fed animal meat. Grass-fed animals also have much higher levels of Omega-3 fats, which are anti-inflammatory essential fatty acids. I’ll tell you now, it’s virtually impossible to find grass fed chicken, so you have to know that you are eating corn and grain fed chicken which could be gluten. No way around it unfortunately unless you find a good source, and if so PLEASE SHARE!
4. Eat regularly. YEAH BABY! Finally one that’s music to my ears. Food all day? No problemo. Believe it or not, since this crazy diet started in June, I eat probably double what I used to in terms of calorie and fat content, just good shit and not processed crap. Why is it important to eat regularly? So many health issues stem from spikes in blood sugar levels. Hormone imbalances, migraines, fatigue, restlessness, pooping issues all tie to spikes or dips in blood sugar. So the only way to regulate is it eat often so as not to deprive your body of sugar and dip into a panic state.
5. Avoid added or refined sugars. That being said…keeping your blood sugar regulated does not mean by pounding a 16oz bag of Skittles the old Amanda way. We’re talking natural sugars that are healthy and not too high on the glycemic index. So while bananas, pineapple, mangos, and potatos are tasty as heck – be cautious of their incredibly high glycemic index (they will cause a major spike in blood sugar level). And avoid ANYTHING processed in terms of fake sugars, white sugars, high fructose corn syrup, etc. If I have to explain why to you, then you shouldn’t be reading this because we won’t get along. Stick to raw organic sugars, cane sugar, ALWAYS unrefined, and it should never be white. If it’s white, they bleached it. Do you want to eat bleach? Me either.  Watch out for “turbinado” or that brown “sugar in the raw” packet too -it’s deceptive but refined. Good words to look for: “rapadura” “sucanat” “whole cane sugar”
6. When you do consume sugar, pair it with a protein or fat.  It’s why doctors are always a huge fan of apples with peanut butter or banana and cashew butter, or why restaurants have salads with fruit and nuts together- it makes up for the spike in blood sugar with something to absorb it and resets it back to normal. *Keep in mind, I’ve been instructed to stay away from peanuts on this diet due to their high mold content and cashews because they are hard to digest, so I have apples and bananas with organic sunflower seed butter from Marianos. Delish!
7. Don’t be afraid of fats. As long as they are good fats. I cook all of my vegetables in a crap ton of bacon fat or grass-fed beef lard. I cook all of my meats and otherwise in coconut oil. Yes it has a higher fat content than olive oil, but it burns at higher temperatures, while olive oil releases free radicals into your food…yummy. The avocado is one of the fattiest foods out there, but sooo good for you. Don’t count calories or fat content, just don’t put dumb food into your body. Just remember, as with sugars we never want refined. Always unrefined and cold pressed coconut oil.
8. Snack before bed. This might not be for everyone so check with your doc, but I was an acid refluxer for years and swore by not eating 4 hours before bed for that reason. Turns out I was contributing to my low blood sugar levels, which is why I would always wake up with a headache.  What I’m learning is that acid reflux is actually caused by Hypochlorhydria- which is too little stomach acid to digest foods, so it shoots it back up. If you eat fermented foods like sauerkraut in the middle of the meal you can help increase stomach acid production so you can naturally ease those symptoms. OR there is a nifty botanical by Biotics Research that you can take in the middle of a meal.
9. If you have an auto-immune disorder or any sort of inflammation in the body (pain, weight, etc) limit or avoid nightshades.  Nightshades are a group of foods like potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, spicy foods, eggplant that are toxic to humans and contribute to chronic inflammation. This one is hard for me as I LOVE tomatoes so I try to limit as much as possible. I can tell you that while I cut them out for the 60 days I felt incredible.
10. Organs. Eat Them.  Yeah, I can’t either. So I take Liver in a tablet form because I’m a pus. But liver has more vitamins and minerals per gram than any other food on the planet. It is the richest source of Folate, important for child-bearing women (the active form of Folic Acid), contains all of the B Vitamins, and contains all of the fat soluble vitamins like A,D,E,K (if grass-fed) and Iron. I get these dessicated grass-fed liver tables from Radiant Life. 3 in the morning and 3 at night is your daily serving. Or just don’t be a chump and hide some liver sausage in your ground beef tacos one night 🙂

Sooo, now that you hate me as much as I hated my nutritionist week 1, I promise if you start slowly making some of these changes, you’ll feel great in no time. Here’s to a liftetime of no migraines!

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.