Introduction to Histamine and Migraines

Welcome back to our reversing mast cell activation syndrome and histamine intolerance summit. I'm your host, Dr. Meg Mill And today we are going to talk about the connection between histamine and migraines.

To talk with us today we have Dr. Tanya Paynter. She is a naturopathic doctor and the founder of the Migraine Mastery Program. And both Tanya and I are very passionate about migraines.

And this connection because you, as we get through this talk, you'll see there are just so many things that we can do to reverse migraines. And it's not talked about enough.

So I am so happy to have you. Dr. Paynter, thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, I'm excited for, for our discussion today. We do. Well, let's just give the audience a little background about what made you so passionate about migraines and this topic in general.

Yeah, it probably started when I was 16. I was rear ended in a car accident and that started my headache migraine journey. and fast forward to when I went to med school, you know, I had been through all the things, the medication, and they're just like, well, I'll just manage it with, you know, this and that.

And the other thing and it's like, well, that's fantastic. But now I have I'm having a headache every day, but then flares into these. I wasn't even diagnosed with migraine.

But now looking back, they were absolutely undiagnosed migraines. You know, the nausea and the intense light sensitivity and all the other symptoms that come along with it.

And so as I went through med school and I started understanding more about the human body and how it's so interconnected and all the things that impact our, our headaches and our migraine symptoms, I started kind of treating myself with what I was learning through those four years and, came out the other side migraine free.

And I was like, this is amazing. So then as I started treating people in clinic, my favorite patients to see were the ones that came in with their main complaint being headaches because I knew what to do for them.

And so we would work on all the things. And, I would see you know, extreme improvement. And so it's just really rewarding to be able to, to actually have something that works for somebody.

And and knowing that I can give them back their life when they are struggling so much because I know what that was like. So I know that's wonderful. And I and I feel like it's not shared.

And that's why I hope people watching can get that message from our conversation today that you don't have to suffer, that these are things that really we can make a difference about.

So absolutely. Yes. Well, let's start by talking about migraines in general. And I know there are over 50 root causes.

Dr. Paynteru2019s Migraine Journey

And it's about putting all the pieces together, histamine intolerance being one of them. So can we dive into that a little bit. Absolutely. Well and that's just the thing is, is science has found a lot of kind of root causes to migraines, which is why, you know, and a person can have 6 or 7 of these issues going on.

So I'm not a statistics person, but I know that it's in the millions of the combinations or maybe even much higher than that, of, you know, things that could be unique to that one person with migraines.

So because migraines don't fit in a nice little neat box, conventional approaches don't tend to work very well for a lot of people. And so that's why really getting to understand the individual, can be very helpful in determining how you're going to approach migraines for you versus how I approach my own migraines.

And so and it's very there's a lot of similarity, but there's also a lot of differences. And it depends on the person. So so do you want me to kind of go into migraine diagnosis or.

Let's just talk about some of the things that you see come up often. Yeah. All right. So you know some of the, the, the main things that we look at from a migraine standpoint is, there has been there have been studies that show over 90% of chronic migraine years.

So people that have a migraine day 15 days a month, that have and at least eight of those have migraine features for more than three months. Okay. That's the diagnosis for chronic migraine, 90 over 90% of that population has been shown to have mitochondrial energy dysfunction, meaning that their the mitochondria of their cell, which produces energy for the cells to actually work, is they're not producing enough energy.

And this is linked to things like chronic migraine, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia. They're finding the importance. And actually I'm excited to kind of talk about the migraine.

I'm sorry the mitochondria histamine piece. but so we know that that a huge percentage has this mitochondria problem. We also know above 90% have chronic depletion of their antioxidants.

And so with those two pieces alone and then working on diet and some lifestyle stuff, we end up seeing a huge improvement just in those things alone. And then then we want to look a little bit further.

So we're looking at, you know, your adrenal function your hormone and thyroid. We're looking at genetic, dysfunctions and genetic mutations. We're looking at potential infections like Epstein-Barr molds, Candida Lyme, things like that.

And we want to look at, you know, all of those things as it, as it works within that one individual because somebody might have, you know, an issue with mold, a food allergy, a histamine intolerance and sleep apnea, whereas the other person has a hormone issue, doesn't process their neurotransmitters properly, and has a, you know, a genetic dysfunction that's contributing to their migraines.

So you can see how it's just such a complex picture. And that's why conventional, like one size fits all approaches don't work for over half of the chronic migraine errors out there.

Yeah. And that's so interesting because it's you know, when you're saying these things, they're the same things that when we're even talking because we're talking about histamine and and mcas the same things that are contributing to the mcas.

And that's why you see a lot of migraines in this population, too, because we're expressing in some one of the main symptoms that a lot of people will express.

And we talk about how that's so different for a lot of people. exactly. I love how you mentioned that histamine might occur. Andrea, can we go there? Yeah.

So, so there's been some interesting research on mitochondria in general and how that works. just within our health. And so what we're finding is that and there are a ton of mitochondrial toxins out there, right?

many of which are medications used by chronic migraine users.

Common Root Causes of Chronic Migraine

They're triptans, they're SSRI, a lot of the gut stuff, you know, the, p, PPIs, acid blockers, you know, antidepressants, things like that that are used commonly in the chronic migraine population are actually mitochondrial toxin.

So it damages the mitochondria. And, and this actually will make a chronic migraine picture worse over time, which is why I tend to hear the story. You know, it started sporadic in my teens or 20s.

And then, you know, it seemed like it got worse and worse. And now I'm having them every day with migraines, you know, three, four, five, seven days a week.

So I'm not saying the medications are causing that quantification. There's a lot of other things that happen, but it's definitely a piece that's contributing.

So understanding that we also know that mitochondria will actually stimulate histamine release and histamine will break down mitochondria. So there's this weird cycle that starts to happen.

So if we're already looking at a population that has mitochondrial deficiencies or energy production problems because their mitochondria isn't functioning properly, and then that is kind of worsening this histamine response, which then breaks down the mitochondria.

There's this big cycle that happens. And so we want to make sure that we're getting in there and stopping that cycle, which there are some things that we can do.

We'll talk about some of those, you know, those treatment options. but that can be you know, it can and who knows if it's a chicken or the egg, right.

Does the mitochondrial dysfunction cause the mcas? Does the, mcas is does the histamine exposure cause the mitochondrial dysfunction? I don't know if we know the answer to that which comes first, since it all seems to kind of come at the same time.

but definitely stepping in and stopping that that negative cycle can be really beneficial. Yeah. That's important. I know I love how you say we don't know which one you know, does you see, with a lot of people suffering these cyclical things that start to happen and and it's hard to break down sometimes where that started.

Absolutely. Yeah. So when you're working with these, this population, where do you start. So you know we we really want to start understanding that the person's individuals individual symptoms.

So the first thing you know, it's hard when you're having migraine symptoms every day. And my my migraine population tends to be people who are having either a pre-term or a postmortem or an actual migraine of like 24 over seven.

So it can be really hard to kind of pick out those symptoms and what's triggering things. So where we want to start is working on supporting that mitochondrial piece, working on supporting the antioxidant and detoxification piece.

And then we go do some, you know, anti-inflammatory diet stuff. And we work on doing some electrolyte balancing. And then we allow their body to just kind of do what it's going to do, and that will start to really clear things up.

So we kind of go in this four stages, I think of it four stages mitochondrial piece inflammation piece, detoxification piece and then individualization.

And so as we're working through those first few things, the energy production, the the inflammation reduction and the antioxidant status, the detoxification, we start to see those everyday symptoms starting to resolve.

And now we're having, you know, cyclical symptoms that are happening as a result of hormone imbalance. Or we're starting to notice, well, my migraines, I actually am not waking up with migraines anymore, but they start becoming bad around noon and, you know, progressively get worse through the evening.

Now we're starting to understand some patterns that are happening that can contribute to those. Or at least give us an idea of what some of those underlying patterns are.

And then once we're starting to identify those, we're able to hone in on, okay, these are the labs that we need to do to really understand the biochemistry that's happening.

Here are some dietary things to specifically work on, you know, gut healing or hormone balancing or whatever, whatever the case may be. And then we can really start to individualize that to take them the rest of the way.

I see do you see this. I see when you do heal the gut, a lot of these symptoms especially when we're talking about the histamine issues. So you know like we're talking about migraines and histamines that component of migraines.

But when you have that histamine related migraine when that's one of your main triggers I see gut healing as being foundational because of the Dao enzyme processing.

And really being able to eliminate. I always give the example of the bucket. You know, we're filling the bucket, and it keeps getting fuller and fuller and fuller until you're having the symptom, which might be the migraine.

And when the drains are plugged, we're not able to drain out the bucket and we overflow.

Mitochondria, Histamine, and the Migraine Cycle

So the I see a lot of difference even when you're not having gut symptoms, it's still, you know, people say, well, why not having those days? I guess it still makes a huge difference. How about you?

Absolutely. So gut healing and gut health is is one of the foundational things that we need to work on. There is a huge link between the gut and Marcus, the gut and and migraine, as you mentioned.

And so if we're even if and I get that a lot like, oh, I don't have any digestive issues, I have a regular bowel movement. It's not a problem. Like no pain, you know, whatever. And, I always have to teach if you have an issue with migraines and if you have an issue with histamine intolerance, you absolutely 100% have a gut issue going on.

And we have to treat that gut issue, because if we don't, nothing else that we do is going to really make a difference because we're finding how important the gut is in our immune system. Right?

Which obviously is like the foundational piece of what's going on in Marcus that that granulation that happens over the mast cells, that releases the histamine, that can start in the gut and usually does, and then just kind of ramps up from there.

So if we're not paying attention, it's not just a matter of eating the right foods. Right? I have a lot of people who come and they're like, I know, I know, histamines will trigger my migraine.

So I stay away from histamine related foods. But it worked for a while, but now it's like it doesn't seem to matter. But if I eat it, then I'm ten times worse.

So I'm stuck on this histamine free diet or low histamine diet, I should say. And and so we know that just restricting the foods is the tip of the iceberg.

Like you have to have that gut healing piece in, in order to kind of overcome the, the intolerance specifically. I was like laughing when you were saying not laughing because I it happens all the time with the histamine foods that.

Can we talk a little bit about that? Because I do see that sensitive, you know, that balance between bringing them back and really lowering. We want to lower the load.

But you do have to be careful because then a lot of when we're not addressing those underlying issues, a lot of people just start reacting to more foods and then have to limit their diet even more. Exactly.

And I see that so often where, you know, I have somebody come in and they're literally only eating three different types of food, which then leads into a malnourishment picture.

And we're depleted in a lot of our essential nutrients that we need. So it can be a slippery slope. so yeah, so, you know, looking at the first, one of the first things that I do when I hear that someone absolutely knows that they have a histamine issue is I want to do some food sensitivity testing.

I want to see if there are foods that are causing inflammation in their diet. That's kind of perpetuating this in this system or this these symptoms. So so we'll do that, will identify some of those things, will work on an anti-inflammatory diet.

And then also as part of that evaluation piece I want to know what probiotics they're on. Because nine times out of ten they're on probiotics. And I don't know if this is a topic that's going to be addressed in a different talk.

But, there are probiotic strains that promote histamine, and there are probiotic strains that reduce histamine. And so I want to evaluate, I'd say probably 80% of, people that come to start working with me have been or are on probiotics because they know how important gut is in that gut brain connection.

And so we want to take a look at, you know, making sure that the strains that are promoting histamine are not in there because that's going to worsen that histamine response and increase inflammation in the gut and drain the dough that you're trying to make and or taking to help you tolerate the histamine foods more.

So, you know, supplements are not always benign, right? They can actually be causing a problem, a worsening the problem. Yeah. That's really that's a really good point because you're right.

And I, I would say I hear that a lot like we are we're hearing all of this information online. And we know, you know, the probiotics and the fermented foods and all of these things that are gut healing.

But then for people with histamine issues, they're not always the right choice. And I think that that's hard because we're bombarded with so much information.

It can be confusing and we're trying to do the right things, but they're they're backfire on a lot of people. Yeah. a great example of this is, you know, a far as a very big topic right now, which is a genetic, a genetic snip that plays a role in a lot of different chronic issues.

And so, you know, I have a lot of people coming to me with migraines that know that they have an mph of our mutation on at least one, if not both of their genes.

Gut Health and Histamine Intolerance

And so, you know, they've been on, they've been on Methyl Foley that's helping to support because that's, you know, the active form and that's the treatment for them too far is one of the first treatments is to be on a methyl B12 or a methyl folate.

But here's the problem is if somebody has a histamine issue methyl and they have an MT of RH issue not and or other genetic, you know, snips that are contributing to that problem, they, they can't break down that methyl histamine.

And so what happens in order to break down histamine is histamine then turns into methyl histamine, which turns into something which then gets out of the body.

And so what we end up seeing is if there are if there's specific genes along that pathway that are not working properly and they're taking a methylated B vitamin, then what they're doing is they're turning their, their moderate, histamine, just regular histamine, which is already problematic.

And they're turning it into methyl histamine, which I call histamine on steroids or super histamine. Right. It's going to exacerbate all of those symptoms.

and and then it gets stuck because they can't drain it out properly in the first place. That's why they're having these histamine intolerance issues. And so, you know, the first thing that we need to do is kind of evaluate what supplements are taking and if that's contributing to that histamine problem.

So anyone who has mucus, anyone who has an histamine intolerance, you absolutely cannot be on methyl anything without talking to your doctor first. Now there are there are times when it's appropriate.

You have to have a little bit of methylation in order to get histamine out of the body. But you can't be on the high doses that are usually prescribed for more of our issues, because that's going to make this problem worse.

So that's definitely not one of those, supplements to dose yourself. You need to have somebody who understands that connection helping you figure out, you know, what what dosing.

You should have to prevent any worsening symptoms. Yes. Well, I want the next thing I want to know is what people should do. You know, we a lot of people I agree.

So, you know, you get the buzz things and everyone's talking about methylation and I have this I you know want to know about this. And then you jump on that methyl because there's a lot of podcasts and things that are telling you to do that. What.

And you have a histamine issue where what do you recommend. Because I think people are nervous. Well what if I'm not methylated. That's going to be bad for my health and other ways, right?

Yeah, and that's absolutely true. Which is why I say, you know, we don't want to completely take you off. But there are different forms. There's four different forms of B12.

So when we're talking about an MD of our issue where you're having problems muscle eating, there are things that you can do to kind of work around it.

so we probably don't want to be on actual methyl folate, methyl cabal amine, which is methyl B12. we probably want to be on hydroxy cabal amine or a Dennis Silkeborg amine.

So those are two different forms. Hydroxy. All I mean is one step before methyl carbon means. So your body will have to turn it into methyl cabal amine, which you can do by helping to support other things.

But here's the key. It's not just about the form, it's about working on that methylation pathway in order to allow your body to process it and get it out of your system more effectively.

So in order to do that, we need to do things. We want to start from the bottom up, and we want to work on helping to open up that clogged drain. Right.

If you have a clog at the end of the drain and you have a clog at the top of the drain, you can work on the top of the drain. But then all of that water is going to get stuck getting actually out of the drain at the end, because we haven't worked on that first.

Right. So we need to work on the clog at the end of the drain and work ourselves backwards before we start methylated. So what that looks like specifically for histamine, we want to work on that step from methyl histamine into histamine, aldehyde, which is the part that gets taken out of our body.

We want to do that with magnesium, B6, vitamin C and supporting the amino energy. And then once we've worked on those pieces and that's functioning better, you'll start to notice less histamine related symptoms.

Now we want to start gently turning on that methylation so that we can start to kind of clear out. So then that's the B12 and folate the methyl groups there.

And you know if we approach it from that backwards a backwards approach, then we end up seeing that you can still work in the methylation piece, but we just have to take a pause, work on that downstream piece, which usually, in my experience, takes 4 to 6 weeks, to kind of make sure that it's moving cleanly.

And then we can start working in the methylation as well. Now this is where that individualization piece comes in, because there are some people that absolutely cannot be without their methyl at all, because then they'll go into severe depression or they'll have, you know, restless leg or any of those other symptoms that will flare massively if they don't have any of our support.

So that's where it comes in. All right. How much is enough without overdoing it from the from the histamine side. And so that's kind of the balancing act that needs to to be tweaked for each, each person.

and also individual. And that is that's a key point to make because everybody's different. And I, I think that that's something that we need to look at in all situations of finding, okay, what do you need to do for you individually.

Because at it, like you're saying, it's different for each person. And we can see people respond, you know, when it comes to this population, when we have the histamine issues, when we have activated mast cells, we often see that people aren't tolerating supplements that they normally could.

And so you just have to be, you know, slow and steady and do the things that you need to do and not think, okay, I need to have this all right now. Because if you actually take that time, it comes it just as doing it and a slower pace.

Absolutely. Yeah.

Probiotics, Methylation, and Supplement Pitfalls

And usually my in our in our population I always say we're going to start like the max that I'll start is a quarter of the dose I want them on in. And in a lot of cases it'll be like an eighth or, you know, less depending on how sensitive a person is.

So it's that's a really good point. Like we have to go nice and slow because if we try to do too much too quickly, if we try to treat it like a normal dosing, that ends up flaring things out of control and you're like, oh, well, I obviously can't take, you know, XYZ because it doesn't work for me.

Well, it will still work for you. It just was not dosed properly. And so it flared everything. And that's not the same thing as you not being able to take it.

Yes. Yeah. I had someone, you know, message me and say I got to my full, you know, my full dose of the because it was like weeks and weeks and weeks. But we she got there and it was so rewarding.

It is last week when you get there and it's so rewarding because you've, you've done that and then you actually you're like, oh wow, I got the value of taking the time to get it to come in and we start to move on and that's that.

It's exciting. It is a time to celebrate. Yeah, it is absolutely to want, you know, another food. We're talking about histamine today. But another food with migraine specifically is tire I mean food.

So I know that sometimes you know there's confusion between histamine and tire means and the reaction there. So could you talk to us a little bit about that.

Yeah. So you know tyramine is another amine right. And so the confusing thing. So a lot of times I'll have people come in and say, you know I've got an issue with histamine.

but then after I get to know them a little bit and they're taking antihistamines, they're doing the Dao and they're like, it's it doesn't seem like it's really doing that much.

I hear other people feeling way better, and it just doesn't seem to do a whole lot for me. So then that kind of throws up some red flags. Okay. Is it really more of a timing issue because I actually side by side compared the symptoms of both of them.

Them for are are watchers. Symptoms of histamine include diarrhea headaches nausea rapid heart rate flushing sweating itchy. Watery eyes. Congested. Runny nose nose.

Right symptoms of tyramine include headaches, nausea, sweating, diarrhea. Rapid heart rate right so there they're almost identical in their presentation with the exception of a few things.

So obviously the congested runny nose the watery itchy eyes that is a more histamine specific thing. If your body responds well to an antihistamine, that's a pretty good indication that there's a histamine component.

If you do all of those things and you're like, well, it helps maybe a little bit, but not a lot, then I want to dig a little bit further into knowing.

All right, well, maybe you have a bit of a histamine issue, but maybe a big issue is your tyramine. And so then the best way, in my opinion, to be able to tell the difference is to do your blood pressure after you're done eating in histamine, your blood pressure will drop because that's what histamine does to the blood pressure.

It drops it. It makes your blood vessels leaky so that the immune system can get out and do its thing. into the main part of the body. And in tyramine, induced symptoms, we tend to see a spike in blood pressure because tyramine is contributing to, our, our catecholamine neurotransmitters, which are adrenaline, noradrenaline.

So, so if we take our blood pressure and we're noticed, like we, we need to know what our baseline is. If we take our blood pressure and we see it drops after we're eating.

Yeah, that's a histamine response. If you're taking your blood pressure and it's increasing after eating, then we know. All right. This is less histamine and probably more tyramine.

And because the foods are so similar. So again we have aged meats and cheeses cured cured and processed foods, fermented foods and sauces, dried fruits, citrus, older foods, or, you know, all of those are histamine.

No nos. They're also tyramine, no nos. And of course, there are some differences in the food groups. But again, it can be like everybody knows about histamine.

Nobody knows about tyranny. And so that can be a key, differentiator. And again one of those individualization pieces that happens when we start to understand okay histamine.

Sure. Maybe a little bit. But tyramine is actually more of your problem. And this is what we need to do to effectively treat it. So I always like to make that, that differentiation for people so they understand there's something there's more than just histamine to look at.

If you're having a lot of symptoms after eating or you, you know, you think it's a food related histamine reaction. Yeah. That's that's wonderful because there is a lot of intricacies here and a lot of differentiators and people and another with me sometimes people also and migraines will also react to salicylates.

So there is a lot of I find a lot of food, investigate ation that you do. I would say like we become health detectives because that's different. I think one of the most confusing things for people with food and migraines and histamine and you really like mix issues sometimes are that your you're a detective in some ways because it's not this like blanket everybody is going to respond to the same thing.

It's very individual and they're different foods and they're often healthy foods. So it's you don't want to just pull everything out. Cold turkey. I'm like, you're saying you're gonna have nutrient deficiencies.

We have to actually individually evaluate what foods are triggering. And if you take that time, I think the light bulb goes off and people start to realize the things that are actually triggering them, and then you're empowered to really be able to eat around it.

Absolutely. And I always like to to just add on to that, it's not just about finding those trigger foods and removing them. Absolutely. You have to do that at the beginning to help yourself feel better.

But as anyone who's done that knows, within 3 to 6 months, you're reacting to different to other foods, right? So that comes back to working on the gut health, right?

Gut healing. Absolutely foundational. And then on top of that, you know, there's a lot of genetics that are involved in how we break down histamine, how we break down our neurotransmitters.

And so there's a lot of genetic support that we can do to help our genes function optimally. So that and also, you know, ensuring that we're supporting the right pathways so that you can start opening your diet back up.

And we're not just eating on a restrictive diet forever. Should we all be eating an anti-inflammatory diet and not having those cookies and processed foods and things?

Absolutely, 100%. Does that mean that we can never have them? No, it does not, because that's not fair.

Tyramine vs Histamine Reactions

But you know, we want to make sure we're doing the work that will allow us to make those choices and be able to to enjoy the eggnog with your husband on Christmas or, you know, the pancakes with your kids, or that birthday cake at the party.

you know, we can get to a point where, and I'm speaking from personal experience because when I first went down this road, I was gluten free, dairy free, soy free, egg free, sugar free.

Like all the free nightshade free. Like, I felt like I couldn't eat anything. But as I did the work and my gut was healing and I worked on stress, and I balanced my hormones and all the things, then I was able to start adding these foods back in.

And now I don't have any stress, anxiety or, you know, anxiety around eating. I'm allowed to enjoy that, you know, cupcake with the dyes and stuff that I don't have happen doesn't happen very often, but every now and then it's nice to enjoy a treat.

you know, and so then we can do that without having it be an instant migraine or an instant reaction. And then that that, like you said, totally empowers you to be able to make the decision.

There's still foods that I know if I have it, I'm not going to feel very good tomorrow. But is it okay for me to not feel very good tomorrow because I don't really have to do anything?

And right now I'd really enjoy being just a part of this? Yeah, sometimes I make that decision, but I understand what happens to me the next day. I understand that I'm feeling a little depressed, my energy is low and I can't think to save my life.

I understand that it's because of the choice I made yesterday, and I'm okay with that, because I made that choice, as opposed to feeling like I'm a victim to whatever is happening in my body.

And I don't understand. And so that is just from an emotional standpoint, is so empowering to know what's going on in your body and then to be able to take those steps to fix it and heal from it.

So then you can start having those freedom of choices without all the negative consequences. I hear here. I totally agree, that's always our goal, right?

That yes, I totally agree with everything you just said there. And you know, so you did bring up genetics and that is sometimes, you know, I've heard people say I have a headache gene.

And I say, well, you don't actually have a headache gene. You have a variety of genetic factors that are playing into this sometimes. So can we just dive a little bit into that?

Because I think that can be confusing for people too. Absolutely. Yeah. There is no one headache gene. There are genes that are correlated with increased frequency of migraines.

there are genes that can be passed down from, you know, family history that can contribute to that migraine syndrome. But we have yet to identify any particular gene that is present in every single person that has migraines.

So this is more of that constellation of uniqueness that is you that has the migraines. Right? We know that D. O. plays a role as it pertains to histamine.

So that is that can be linked to a migraine syndrome. other other genes that are related to both histamine and migraine, Natty H and MT and Mo. And then we also see com t being a gene that's frequently involved as well.

And that's responsible for helping to break down our hormones and our neurotransmitters specifically those catecholamines adrenaline, noradrenaline I talked about earlier.

And so that can have an indirect effect on our ability to break down histamine. Because if the calm T is not breaking down our adrenaline noradrenaline properly, the other gene that is responsible for that is mayo, which is also mainly responsible for breaking down histamine.

So we can see this interconnection where if we've got a calm t issue, even though our mayo works fine, then our mayo is having to take on all of the above and it's just getting overwhelmed.

So then we want to optimize function of the Calm gene, help to support the Mayo or mayo gene. And then we start seeing things evening out a little bit because you know, things are working at at an optimum capacity for what genes you have.

So again, this is another one of those complex things. And why with some of these complex syndromes like, cast like migraine, like chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia syndromes, we have to have somebody who can put all those pieces together because, you know, I had to go to med school to treat myself for migraine.

Genetics and Individualized Migraine Care

So unless someone wants to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in their medical training to figure out how all this fix, you know, interconnects, it's really important to find somebody who understands how they all do work together and then how they can, systematically treat all of these in a way that's going to make sense for you.

So I and I bring that up only because as I'm talking, I'm hearing how technical this sounds, and it sounds really confusing to someone who's like, what?

I don't even know what Conti is or Ma or like, I don't even know what these things are. So, so I just wanted to take a step back and say, you know, that the basic point of that little spiel was just to share that we know so much about how we can successfully treat conditions like, cast like migraine.

And it has all of this technical information, but it can be really hard to put those pieces together if you if you don't have that underlying knowledge of how the body works together as a whole.

Yeah, that's that's really important. I had someone that ID like a simplification way down is I was working with someone and she said it's like a sliding puzzle.

And you were just moving all these pieces around, and then they just all lock into place, you know? And I think. That's a great visualization. I like that.

It was someone I was working with and I thought, oh yeah, I like the example because it is like it's everything you're saying. You know, we're putting all there's so many moving pieces with a lot of these and it's looking at it as the whole picture and then moving the pieces around in the right.

And I always say to like in the right order, because I think exactly the thing, if you do the right thing in the wrong order, it's not always the right thing.

And that may be confusing. Yeah. And, you know, also to the right degree. Right. Because you can over methyl let yourself just like you can be under methylated.

So where does that Goldilocks middle of the road so that you're not pushing other pathways too hard. Yeah it can be very complex. Which is why sometimes it can feel like impossible.

But there are people out there who understand how to put all of these things together. And those are the those are the gems that you want to look for.

Those functional medicine doctors who really understand all these working components that can put together those that treatment plan for you as an individual.

yes. Yes. Well, and what would you say just for someone listening, like if they're, if they know that they have migraines or identifying with all of these things, the first thing that they can do right now that they can just maybe start, give them a little bit of like, hope.

Yeah. So are we talking about from migraine standpoint or from my standpoint or both. But kind of both I guess I can go I can go to both ways. You could, we could.

And actually so looking at it from, you know, from the both perspective, I'm not going to even go into the dietary piece and the Dow support and some of those supplements, because I believe that anybody watching the summit is already well beyond that.

however, that being said, I will say assessing your probiotics so you can Google a list, of, you know, histamine producing probiotics and histamine reducing probiotics and make sure that you're in compliance there.

Make sure that you're not doing any supplements that have the methylation in it until you've worked on that histamine pathway. so that's going to be important to talk to your doctor about switching to a different form of, you know, be support if you are on that.

And then things like needle like high dose vitamin C, curcumin can be really helpful in in my but then also in migraines that are contributing, you know, histamine contributing to migraines.

So those are going to be from kind of a supplemental standpoint, things to look at, working on starting a gut healing protocol, if that's not something that somebody has been done absolutely foundationally, start there.

And I would also encourage, if you can, having some food sensitivity testing done to see if there are specific foods that like for me it was flax, it was flax seeds, like I was eating flax seeds every day because they're so healthy for you.

My body hated them and it was causing me to have daily headaches. So as soon as I got flax seeds out, I started sleeping better. My headaches started to reduce, my hormones started to balance better so we can have some of those healthy foods that we have a have an inflammatory effect to us, even though it shouldn't.

so investigating that piece is going to be really important.

First Steps for Healing and Where to Find Help

And then and then finding somebody either locally or virtually that you can work with to help you work through some of these pieces is going to be, I think, really key, because when we're starting to talk about these complex syndromes, it's you you have to find somebody who like like I mentioned earlier, you have to find somebody who understands all these working parts, because if you do the right thing in the wrong order or you do the wrong things or you're dosing incorrectly for your body, then we can start to see, things getting worse and flaring, and then you start feeling like a hopeless case that nobody can fix, when in reality it reflects more on the person trying to treat you because they don't understand how everything is connecting.

And so I, I think that would be a huge, you know, source of hope, I hope for some people is to understand, like, there are not a lot of functional, even functional doctors who can look at this complexity, and know exactly how to go about treating it without flaring things.

And sometimes you can't treat something without flaring things. Right. Like that's part of the healing journey. So if you feel like you've tried all the things and everything flares you, it just means that it hasn't been done in the right order or the right dosing for your body.

It doesn't mean that you can't take anything. Those are all wonderful points and we'll put the resources. I know you mentioned some great resources. So we'll put all the resources on our summit resource page at just megmill.com/summit And we can list some of those things that you mentioned.

I agree with you on the food sensitivity test too. It's enlightening when you try some food sensitivity tests with migraines, because it's often those foods that you're saying, like the flags that you're trying to eat to be healthy, that show up.

And so that did some really very enlightening test. I think it definitely can be very shocking sometimes. yes. Well thank you. You've given us such helpful information.

Can you tell our audience where they can find you? Certainly. So, you can just find me at our homepage at psalmmedical.com That's psalmmedical.com And, you can also find us on Facebook at Migraine Mastery.

And, on Instagram @NaturalMigraineDoc Well, thank you so much for being with us today. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Have a great day, everyone.

Tanya Paynter, ND

Understanding Migraines: Histamine’s Deep Role