Transcript #471 How to Naturally Improve Headaches and Migraines with Dr. Meg Mill
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- Find out what’s in store for this Myers Detox Podcast with Dr. Meg Mill who joins the show to talk about the best ways to naturally improve headaches and migraines. Dr. Mill goes over all of the underlying root causes of migraines like food sensitivities, heavy metals and chemicals, stress, and sleep. She also discusses the problem with over the counter medication, and what to expect when you go to a medical doctor. So many great topics covered on todays show, so if you or someone you know is looking for natural solutions to their headaches and migraines, make sure to tune in!
- Learn more about Dr. Mill and why she got into the health field.
- Find out why Dr. Mill became so passionate about helping people with their headaches and migraines.
- Learn about some of the problems with taking over the counter medication.
- Find out some of the problems with prescribed pain medications.
- Learn why caffeine in medication like Excedrin helps with headaches and migraines.
- Learn about the top underlying root causes of headaches and migraines.
- Find out the top heavy metals and chemicals that are contributing the headaches and migraines.
- Learn about how hormones, like estrogen dominance, can be a leading factor in people experiencing headaches and migraines.
- Learn about some other factors that lead to headaches and migraines like allergies and off gassing.
- Find out how stress and cortisol play a role in headaches and migraines.
- Learn about how blood sugar regulation plays a role.
- Find out why sleep is essential for preventing migraines and headaches.
- Learn about the tops things you can do to address migraines including natural techniques.
- Find out what to expect if you go to a medical doctor for headache and migraine issues, and what to avoid.
- Find out where you can learn more about Dr. Mill and her work.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Hello everyone; I’m Dr. Wendy Meyers. Welcome to the Meyers Detox Podcast, and on this show, we talk about all different kinds of topics related to heavy metal and chemical detoxification, but we also touch on specific health conditions as well, and the underlying root causes; and just all kinds of things to help you upgrade your life. And today on the show, we have Dr. Meg Mill, and she’s going to be talking about how to naturally improve headaches and migraines. This is something that plagues so many people, so I wanted to give you guys some tips from a medical doctor that specializes in this particular topic. And on the show today, we’ll talk about the number one underlying root cause, which is food sensitivities. We’ll talk about heavy metals and chemicals, we’ll talk about stress as the underlying root cause, and we’ll talk about just a lot of different topics.
And also, what are the issues with over-the-counter and prescription pain medications? And some of the side effects of those, which may surprise you. And we also talk about just what to expect when you go to your medical doctor. There are all kinds of things that they try, but they’re not addressing the underlying root causes. They address the pain but not what’s actually causing the migraines to get rid of them forever. Like hormones, people have hormonal migraines as well. A lot of different things we touch on in the show today, so stay tuned.
I know you guys listening are concerned about heavy metal and chemical detoxification. And so, I created a quiz that you can take that’s super, super quick, where you can determine your relative level of the body’s burden of toxins based on some lifestyle factors. And so, after you take the quiz, you get your results, and then you get a video series totally free about different topics related to detoxification teaching.
What are the first steps you need to take in detox? How long does it take? I answer a lot of your frequently asked questions about the detox that I’m getting all the time in our support, so it’s good to take that quiz to get a little mini-education on how to detox your body. So check it out at heavymetalsquiz.com.
So our guest today, Dr. Meg Mill, she’s a functional medicine practitioner, bestselling author, podcast host, and speaker in her functional medicine practice, which is telemedicine, so virtual. She works with patients worldwide to heal the root cause of their health struggles through advanced diagnostic testing and personalized support. With her two decades of clinical experience in conventional and functional medicine, she can help people improve their health naturally while still understanding and respecting conventional practice protocols.
She’s been seen on Fox News Channel, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and Reader’s Digest Health Magazine. She’s appeared on many podcasts, and she’s particularly passionate about helping people end headaches and migraines, increase energy, and restore mental clarity without drugs or overwhelming protocols with her proven EAT method. And so you can learn more about Meg and her work at go.megmill.com. So go.megmill.com. Dr. Mill, thanks so much for coming to the show.
Dr. Meg Mill: Thank you so much for having me.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into the health field?
Dr. Meg Mill: Absolutely. So, I started out on the conventional side of medicine. I have a little bit of a different background, and I was in this space just seeing people get sicker. I felt like I was seeing people put on more and more medications and really in that place where they’re surviving and not thriving and then getting side effects from the more medications. And I understood the protocols, I understood why that was happening, but I really felt like I never believed in it. I felt like it was backward. We need to be really more preventive, looking at root causes. And I was having some of my own health issues at the time, and I was going from doctor to doctor myself and getting told like, “Oh, you’re fine. You look great.” And I’m like, “No, I feel terrible.” There was a point where I was like, “I don’t even know what I can eat without it making me sick.”
So I started looking for my own answers, and that’s when I came into functional medicine, and I found a way to heal myself. And then, I was like, “Okay, I need to make a total career shift.” So then that’s when I went back to pursue certifications in functional medicine and really opened a practice that way and helped more people because I wanted to spread the word. And when I started this, I had a virtual practice where I saw people from all over the world. When I started my practice, I started noticing a pattern where I started to see so many women, particularly, coming to me either coming to me for headaches and migraines or actually coming to me for a whole different reason.
But I do this really detailed intake questionnaire and symptom questionnaire when we start, and when I’d go through that, they would write that they’ve had headaches weekly or as long as they can remember, but they were normalizing it. They weren’t even coming for that. It was something else, and they just felt like, “Hey, that’s a part of my life that I just have to live with.” But then we’d work together, and they would say, “This is great. I don’t have headaches anymore. This has changed my life.” People with chronic migraines would be able to come off their medications.
And so, I just really started to be passionate about spreading the word that this isn’t something that you have to live with. I think in conventional medicine, we use a bandaid approach for headaches, like other things, but I see this regularly. So you’re just really covering up the pain, never really getting to the root, and so they never really stop. And so, once we really dig in and get to the root cause and put some of the connections together, we can see them actually decrease dramatically in both incidents and severity.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Why did you become so passionate about helping people with chronic headaches and migraines and specializing in that?
Dr. Meg Mill: Because I just felt like that, it can be so life-changing for people when you are actually in this place where you have to really think about what you’re going to do based on your next headache. I heard so many stories like, “Okay, I missed my daughter. I planned this whole birthday party for my daughter, and then that’s the migraine day.” Or, “We were going on vacation, and I spent my whole week in the room with a migraine,” or just all of these things. And I felt like the people in this space aren’t getting the answers they need to really know that there is potential that they don’t have to live with headaches and migraines. By putting those pieces together, we can find the root cause and really stop normalizing it because it is just sort of something that’s like, “Okay, you know what? You have this; take some medicine, and we’ll try some other medicine if that doesn’t work. You have to live with it.” And you don’t have to live with it, so I want people to know that.
Dr. Wendy Myers: So a lot of people listening to this show have product headaches and migraines. So what are some of the issues with taking over-the-counter medicines habitually? Because some people just take them every day like they’re candy, and they don’t have any health consequences. So what are some of the problems with doing that and not addressing the underlying root cause?
Dr. Meg Mill: That’s a great question because I think we also have this false sense of security that something just because it’s over the counter means it’s safe to use, and that’s not the case. So we can look at pharmaceutical data, we can look. It’s research. It’s not even like, “Oh, on this holistic side,” there’s clear data supporting health risks of medication. So, let’s take Advil, which would be ibuprofen. Aleve is the brand name for naproxen in that category. So these are anti-inflammatory drugs and these drugs are known to tear your gut lining, so they cause GI effects, they can cause leaky gut. Even so much so that back in the early 2000’s. They’re a drug class called COX-2 inhibitors. And so, we have this billion dollar push in the pharmaceutical industry to switch them selectively to COX-1 inhibitors because they inhibit both COX-1 and COX-2 receptors.
And so, we did this push for the COX-2, and then we started seeing more cardiovascular effects because we know that’s a side effect. And really then that industry clap, you don’t see people on Mobic or Celebrex. Some of them are totally gone. Celebrex is still there. They’re not used very much, but because we were seeing all these cardiovascular incidences go up and so, they were trying to change it because they already knew that there were gut health issues, we knew there were problems, but we’re still using them regularly. We also have kidney problems, liver problems. I mean, then we look at Tylenol, which is one of the leading causes of overdose and liver damage. And so, we just really need to be careful, just because they’re over the counter does not mean that they’re safe.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah. And then, not to mention the hydrocodone and other pain medicines that people maybe can graduate to when the over-the-counter doesn’t work anymore. What are some of the problems with those? Like Vicodin and the others, the name brands?
Dr. Meg Mill: What’s scary about opioids is that you can become addicted to those medications pretty quickly, and sometimes they’re given so freely that it’s like, “Oh, okay, here, use this to treat the pain,” but some people can even take them for a very short period of time, depending on your genetics, and become addicted where you can’t get off of them. And we have this whole opioid epidemic where then we’re graduating into potentially other drugs or having to stay on these medications long-term because you can’t get off and you have to go through some program to be able to not have to take the medications anymore. So it’s not everyone, but we don’t know how long that takes, and it’s an individual thing. So even post-surgery, when they’re just given out long-term, it’s like, okay, we just have to be really careful because you don’t know the potential for having to be dependent. And that can happen to a lot of people.
Dr. Wendy Myers: And people on opioids can also get rebound headaches, as well, ironically, and then they have to take more, and it’s like this vicious cycle.
Dr. Meg Mill: That happens for sure. And that happens with caffeine, too, because caffeine is in some of the preparations of headache medicines. And so, there actually is a treatment aspect to caffeine, a treatment mechanism, but also when you can get rebound headaches even from caffeine. So that’s another thing individually that you just have to be careful of. You have to always watch and do things in moderation.
Dr. Wendy Myers: As I drink green tea here.
Dr. Meg Mill: Yeah.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah. And so, can you talk about that? So Excedrin is the one people typically take with caffeine. How is that helping people with certain types of migraines and headaches?
Dr. Meg Mill: Well, there can be an aspect of vasodilation and constriction, so that’s where the caffeine comes in. Sometimes particularly with migraines, we can have this vasodilation and constriction that is causing the pain, and so, that’s where the caffeine can come in, but then you can get the rebound. You have to watch, and you want to look for things like. Pay attention here. And that’s part of what I work with people on really starting to pay attention to things in their life. We want to really think about when you’re getting headaches and what’s going on around you.
So sometimes, with caffeine, you can think, “Okay, well, I have my weekday routine, and every day I get up and I have my cup of coffee and I do this,” but then maybe if you’re someone who, “I’m getting more on the weekends, I’ll get a headache,” and it could be like, “Hey, your routine is different. You don’t get up and do the same thing.” So sometimes what we’re starting to do is look at patterns and pictures in our life. It can be so enlightening for things that people realize and discover once they sort of open their eyes and start to take a look at things they never saw before.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah. What are some of the main underlying root causes of headaches and migraines?
Dr. Meg Mill: So the first thing we want to look at is your food because we know there are certain food groups that are triggers. We know things like histamine-containing foods, so these can be foods like aged cheese and fermented foods. And sometimes, while those can be healthy, we even know that some fermented foods are good probiotics, but some people process histamine differently. So if you’re someone who doesn’t process histamine as well, we can get overloaded there. We have tyramine-containing foods, and those are foods like aged and cured foods when you think of them. Salicylates or citrus fruit foods, so things like lemons and limes. We also want to look at nitrates which are hotdogs and bacon, and things like that. And then, sulfates are wine and dried fruits. We look at MSG. You can find it in prepared foods and sometimes aspartame, which is in diet sodas and things like that. So we have buckets of those statistically, which we know are triggers for some people, but it gets a little bit more complicated than that because not all of these foods are going to be triggers for all people.
Sometimes it’s all about the threshold or the combination of the food. So you can actually eat food or drink a drink that has these components, and you can feel like you’re fine because you can maybe not reach that threshold or maybe not have the combination that puts you over your threshold. So we need to look at them individually and then in combination and start to look at how they’re coming into our diet. We also want to look at food sensitivities because when we have these IGG antibody responses, we can get inflammation, and then we can also get headaches and migraines from food sensitivities. They’re a little more complicated because that can happen four to 48 hours after, and sometimes people don’t identify food sensitivities because they may be non-specific. So really, looking at when you have the symptoms of the headache. What I have people do is write down If you have a headache, then you write down what you ate in the last 48 hours, and then we start to look for patterns.
Dr. Wendy Myers: And it’s amazing how some of these underlying root causes can be very simple or very easily removed from the diet, very easily changed, removed from your lifestyle, or what-have-you. Can you talk about some heavy metals and chemicals that may be the underlying root causes of migraines?
Dr. Meg Mill: Yeah, sure. Two of the biggest culprits that we see with headaches and migraines are lead and cadmium. And so, we want to see what is interesting about it. I know I had you on my podcast, too, and you really gave us such great information because we were talking about some of the things with history. So, you can have heavy metal exposure in your history and not even know it or not be having symptoms right now, but maybe as you’re reaching, let’s say, a woman in perimenopausal age where your bone density’s changing, then you’re starting to leach some of the lead that had been stored in your bones and things like that.
So sometimes that’s why I like going back and taking a look at your whole history, even if you’re not in a place right now where you have heavy metal exposure, if you have been exposed to heavy metals, it’s important to really keep that in mind in some of the factors that we’re thinking about. Because maybe you think, “Well, I haven’t had headaches my whole life.” Well, maybe there are things changing that are releasing some of these things at this time.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah, they’ve accumulated to a certain point. You have a tipping point where a certain amount didn’t cause issues, then you reach a tipping point, and it starts causing problems finally. And I mean there’s a lot of metals, the iron is a big culprit, copper, there’s an overload of it; mercury, aluminum, thallium, tin, bismuth. There are a lot of metals, in addition, to lead and cadmium, too, that can contribute. So, it’s a huge problem. It’s a huge underlying root cause. And guys listening, there’s a lot of information on how to detox this stuff in articles. We won’t get into it too much here, but I just wanted to touch on that. Are there any other top causes of headaches and migraines?
Dr. Meg Mill: Yeah, so another big one is hormones. We need to look at hormones, and we need to look at the two most common causes we see when it comes to hormones and headaches, and migraines are estrogen dominance and a rapid change in hormones. You want to look If you’re particularly someone who’s having migraines monthly and you think they most often happen the week before your period or at ovulation time where you’re like, “Okay, I just know clockwork, I’m going to get this migraine before I get my period,” then think that yours very likely have a hormonal component. And so, what we need to do is figure out why. So we need to look at, let’s say, estrogen dominance and think, “Okay, why are you estrogen dominant?” Hormones are all about balance, so we need to find that balance. Do you have low progesterone?
Do you have high levels of estrogen? I regularly see people with actually normal levels of estradiol, which you would see in your blood work, but high metabolites of estrogen. So we have to make sure, again, going back to detoxing and liver health, we have to make sure that you are actually able to detoxify the estrogen that’s in your body. We want to use it and then lose it and make sure that we’re not getting an overload of estrogen. So, we want to look at some of these components. So when I’m working with people, I will do a detailed hormone test. We’re also going to do the heavy metal test, we’ll do all the testing, but one thing that listeners can do right now is just really look at endocrine disruptors in their life.
So you want to look at your products, your face, your skin products; you want to look at plastics and what you’re eating out of. I think one of the simplest things you can do is switch from plastic containers that contain BPA to glass containers because our food is there. And so, I feel like so many people are actually eating out of plastic containers and then potentially microwaving or dishwashing those, and then they’re denaturing the molecules in the plastics when they heat them, and then it’s leaching into our food. So just making some of those simple shifts, I think it can feel really overwhelming, but if just every time you’re getting a new product, just replace it with something clean. You can go to ewd.org/skin deep and check your products and, see what’s in them, see the ratings. There’s easy access now to find out what you’re using and how it’s affecting you.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah, here are a lot of things we can do to detox your environment. Anything about your surroundings and changing your surroundings and how your surroundings can contribute to headaches?
Dr. Meg Mill: Yeah, so I mentioned histamine with regard to foods, and we also want to look at that. You want to look at allergies. I see a lot of people with a histamine intolerance of some kind and have headaches. So a lot of times, there’s a connection with congestion. So you could see, are you someone who has a lot of congestion and headaches? And even if you don’t, you could be getting things in your environment. We know that, again, toxins are everywhere. We know we can get off-gassing from our carpet and our couch and different things in our house. So we really want to make sure that we’re getting clean air and a clean environment. Even scents with headaches are a huge one. So fragrance also has endocrine disruptors; it has chemicals. So if you have fragrance in something, then you also can have the toxins and individually the smell trigger.
So we use a lot of free and clear organic products that are scent-free. If you like scents, pick something like an essential oil or something that is clean and not scented, so not burning candles or things like that all clean up. I do often recommend air filters and air purifiers for maybe your bedroom. I know you can’t necessarily get it for every room, but if it’s a place to start, just make sure you’re getting clean air. But also, particularly in the winter, if you are in a cold environment, open your windows and your doors once a week just to really clean that out and get a fresh environment.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Now I cannot tell you how many headaches I’ve gotten from perfumes and people just; it’s like secondhand smoke. And it’s just like this Pepé Le Pew cloud of perfume coming at you, and they give me a headache, and it’s one of those things that ‘s a trigger for me. And what about stress? Because of stress, sure, if I go too long without getting a massage, I build up stress in my body and my tissues, and I have to get a massage to relieve that headache. And so, I know for me that one way that I manage headaches is just at least getting a massage once a month, but for other people, how does stress play a role in headaches?
Dr. Meg Mill: Yeah, I call it actually the chain of pain because it can be complicated, especially if you’re someone who has a lot of pain on a regular basis. When we’re thinking about stress, we’re often thinking about just our to-do list, what we have going on, and if we’re stressed. We have plenty of that, but we also have biological stressors. And so, pain individually can be a biological stressor. Sometimes when people are in pain, then their cortisol levels are going to go up, and then when your cortisol levels go up, you can actually also get an increase in your prolactin levels. That can actually increase your pain sensitivity, so you can get stuck in this loop of the chain of pain where your pain is creating stress. And so, what we really need to do is focus on bringing those cortisol levels back down.
And so, we need to do things. Sometimes you can take supplements there to assist with that, but we really need to focus on finding the stressors in your life and finding things that will bring you back into that parasympathetic nervous system. We’re not intended to live in that fight and flight all the time, which a lot of people often are now. And so we need to really find what resonates with you to bring you back into that parasympathetic where we rest and digest. Even taking three minutes out of your day and just doing deep breathing, really, do a box breathing or some sort of deep breathing to really train yourself to be able to bring yourself. Because we can bring ourselves back into the parasympathetic nervous system with our breath. We just don’t use it.
And sometimes, when you’re already stressed out, it’s hard. It’s like you don’t have that tool available because you’re already in that stressful place. So meditation, journaling, walking in nature, anything that is calming to you. It’s really, I feel, like an individual. I feel like sometimes it’s like, okay, I could say, “Oh, do this and that and that,” but what resonates with you and works in your schedule and in your life are . Find things that resonate with you and really just focus on some self-care and some things that will bring you back into that parasympathetic nervous system.
Dr. Wendy Myers: And what about blood sugar regulation? Is that a contributor?
Dr. Meg Mill: Yes, it can be. And insulin can also affect. We’re so connected. So insulin, you can get headaches from hypoglycemia too, so that’s another reason. And then you can also have a hormone imbalance sometimes because of high insulin, so we need to regulate the insulin. Such things as adding protein to your diet, increasing your intake of healthy fats, and decreasing your intake of sugar and refined carbs can also make a big difference for people. When we’re looking at food it is probably one of the most complicated places, even though sometimes we’re looking at these hormone tests that are very complicated or we’re looking at the heavy metal tests, and we’re diving deep. But really, sometimes just going back to the basics and really focusing and changing your diet can really go a long way because we’re seeing these are all connected in so many ways.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah. And what about sleep? Can you talk about that?
Dr. Meg Mill: Yes.
Dr. Wendy Myers: How can that be? Because so many people have trouble sleeping. I mean, there are dozens of things that can impede your sleep, so how is that a factor?
Dr. Meg Mill: Actually, REM sleep, in particular, is an independent risk factor for migraines. And I think that that’s something that people aren’t always recognizing or acknowledging, their quality of sleep. We want to make sure that we are getting a good night’s sleep. You want to prioritize that; that’s not something you want to let go of. And I think just really finding some of the things that really can make you do a calming bedtime ritual. So really turning off blue lights. You can take your phone out of your room. It’s tempting sometimes to scroll and have that right there if you can’t sleep, but really removing the light, trying not to do anything that is intense or takes a lot of your mind and attention at night. Epsom salt baths are really good because magnesium is commonly low in people who have headaches and migraines.
If you do Epsom salts, you’re getting the magnesium, and you’re getting that calming effect, so that’s another good thing. Cutting out caffeine after 2:00 PM can be helpful , even chocolate. I think sometimes people think of coffee and drinks, but chocolate also has it. Sometimes people make an after-dinner snack with chocolate, and then that can potentially be keeping you up, and then even actually not eating a few hours before bed. Calming your digestion can help you sleep better. So we just really want to focus on that. And sometimes putting a mirror up and saying, “Okay, what am I doing? Am I sleeping?” It’s tempting in some cases to say, “Oh, I just want to get this done, or I want to have a little bit more time” Maybe that’s your quiet time, and you don’t want to change your routine, but really also, prioritizing sleep is so important.
Dr. Wendy Myers: And so, what are some of the things that people can do to address this problem? Some simple things that people can do to relieve headaches and migraines?
Dr. Meg Mill: One of the things that we’re trying to do is to decrease them, but sometimes you still will get one. I have seen people have a lot of success with essential oil. So you can actually put some peppermint oil on your temples, maybe some peppermint or lavender. You can take a cool cloth and put it on. So if you have the space, if you’re not out, if you catch it right away and drink a full glass of water, you know you’re hydrated, because dehydration is another independent risk factor for headaches. You want to make sure you’re hydrated.
And so, drinking a glass of water, then getting a cool cloth, and then putting some essential oils on your temples, and really breathing some of those. And catching it right away can help you not get into that full-blown headache. We also can try something like an anti-inflammatory supplement, something like curcumin can also be helpful. Now that’s not going to be the same potential as the effects you’re going to get from an Advil because they work differently, but it is an anti-inflammatory, and sometimes that can help take the edge off of it too.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Okay, great. And anything else that you do naturally to address headaches and migraines?
Dr. Meg Mill: Yeah, there are a lot of different things. When I said we’re working on the body as a whole, so we’re trying to go to each section, we’re looking at hormones, we’re looking at gut health, we’re looking at food, hydration, heavy metals, detoxification, all of that. But also what you were saying about your muscles. Even working out the muscles in your neck, getting a massage, or even getting a tool. There are even some tools where you can scrape the muscles in the back of your neck and just keep everything loose and really work on it. Another place I see it is the jaw. So sometimes, when you’re grinding or tightening your jaw and even actually loosening those muscles. So decreasing tension in the neck and jaw, and shoulder area can also be another thing that we can do. Sometimes I just say print a blank calendar and then see when you’re getting your headaches and then see what’s going on in your life.
See what you’ve eaten in the last 48 hours, see what time of the month it is, how much stress you have in your life, see how much sleep you’ve had, if you’re hydrated, and all of those things. And then start to look for patterns. And you might be really surprised at the patterns that start to show up before. And then, if not, you might need to see someone and dig deeper, maybe do some hormone testing, some gut testing, some heavy metal testing, and food. All those things, and it’s like layers. We need to see how deep we need to go in the layers. But there are so many things and patterns that you can get started on your own and see a huge difference.
I get messages because I’m trying to advocate for this, and I talk about it, and what people tell me it’s exciting. Oh, lemons were causing it. I never knew that I had an issue with lemons, and you might be drinking lemon water in the morning sometimes for health benefits, but that could be triggering you. So, it’s really individual.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah. And I know for me, even though I get massages on a regular basis, they’re not massaging your face typically or your temples right here. So I’d have to do that myself and do self-massage on my temples, above my ears, and on my jaw right here. And just do that really deeply with a knuckle just to get all that tension relieved in these areas that may be missed even if you are doing massages.
Dr. Meg Mill: Yes. I mean, I know, too; I think once you’re in touch with your body, I can wake up with that too. Oh no, I know I’m going to get a headache. You feel like the base of your head or where you know you slept wrong, slept funny, and it’s coming, so you’re proactive and can do those things to actually loosen things up before it can even get started.
Dr. Wendy Myers: When you go to a conventional doctor. That’s the first place people will usually start going if they have a headache or they are getting migraines. What kind of treatment approaches can they expect there? And obviously, we want to move people towards functional medicine. We want to be addressing the underlying root causes, all of which you’ve listed here. What can they expect if they go to their doctor, and why should they avoid that?
Dr. Meg Mill: Yeah, so what I see, unfortunately, is that it’s just going to be offered medication. So generally, what you’re seeing is like saying, “Okay, here, try this.” And then if that medication doesn’t work, we’re just going to go to another medication and another medication, and we’re just going to keep trying different medications until we see if something works. But where I see the problem with that is that people are still getting headaches and migraines. You’re taking these medications for the pain so that maybe you have a Triptan, and you can take that if it’s coming on, and that’s going to help you so you can get through your day, and you don’t have them, but you still have the headache. You’re still getting the migraine; it’s not gone. So I think that’s where the fault is, where it’s like, “Okay, we need to find out what’s going on and look outside the head.”
We bucket it, and it’s like, okay, we have the neurologist, and we have the gynecologist, and we have the gastroenterologist, and we have all these different doctors, and they’re just looking at their thing, and that’s their specialty, but really, we need to connect everything because you’re not just one part, you’re all parts, and they talk to each other. So sometimes you need to look outside of just your head into other things that are going on in your body because the pain you’re getting is a signal for something, and so you just need to figure out what that is.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Okay, great. Well, Dr. Mill, thank you so much for coming on the show, and I hope. I mean, that’s a big list of underlying root causes that people can be looking at to tweak and have some awareness of if they are getting chronic headaches. So thanks so much for coming on the show. Where can people find you and learn more about your work? You have a podcast as well.
Dr. Meg Mill: Yes, yes. So I have a podcast called A Little Bit Healthier, and the premise for that is just things you can do every day in your life to be healthier. I’m on iTunes, and I’m on all the major podcast networks. I also have a free guide, so if you are someone who actually has headaches and migraines and wants to know more, you can check out the guide at helpmyheadaches.com and download that. That gives you steps to get started right away. And then, my website is megmill.com, just M-E-G-M-I-L-L dot com, and I’m on Instagram at DrMegMill.
Dr. Wendy Myers: Okay, fantastic. Sorry, I mispronounced you as Mill.
Dr. Meg Mill: Yeah, that’s okay.
Dr. Wendy Myers: I apologize for that.
Dr. Meg Mill: No problem.
Dr. Wendy Myers: So Dr. Mill, so thanks for coming on the show and everyone, I’m Dr. Wendy Myers, thanks for tuning in this week to the Meyers Detox Podcast where I bring you experts from around the world to help you to upgrade your life and your health. Thanks for tuning in. I’ll talk to you guys next week.
