Finding Your Unique Path To Migraine Freedom (Shawna’s Migraine Miracle Story)

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Welcome to the migraine miracle moment. I’m your host, Dr. Josh Darknet. I’m a neurologist, migraines specialist, migraines suffer and author of the book The Migraines Miracle. In this podcast, you’ll learn all about how to find your path to migraines, freedom without pills. Let’s get started.

Howdy be slayers. I am delighted to be able to share with you today another migration miracle story. This one from Migrai-Neverland member Shawna. As is often the case, it is a story that will be familiar to many of you, especially her struggles over the years with migraines and with the conventional approach. She shares a lot of great wisdom. She also talks about the impact of the plan on her vestibular migraines, which is something we’ve gotten a fair number of questions about in the past. So definitely stay tuned for that interview. I know you’ll enjoy it real quick. A little bit of housekeeping.

So we are going to be launching our first ever mindset and meditation challenge in five days from the day I’m recording this. So August 30 first that will launch. I’m very excited about that. You have probably heard me talk about the critical role of mindset in success with my green miracle plan. So I’m very excited to have a deep dive into that topic for our 30 day challenge. And if you’re listening after that has already taken place, you can still see what upcoming challenges we have by going to my my great miracle dot com forward slash schedule that lists the schedule of our 30 day challenges for migrant airline members. And if you want to take part and you want to see more about what membership entails. Just head over to mymigrainemiracle.com and click on the resources tab, which covers all the resources that we have to offer.

And as I’ve talked about before, one of the major benefits of being a member is the community members themselves. As you’ll hear in this interview, also be sure to stick around to the end. After our conversation with Shawna, Jenny and I will share some of our favorite moments from the interview. So stay tuned for that. And now, without further delay, here’s our interview with Shawna.

Hi, Shauna. Hi. So Shawna is one of our Migrai-Neverland members and not too long ago shared with us some pretty remarkable successes and has been a very valuable and positive and enthusiastic member of our community and was kind enough to allow us to talk to her today on the podcast. So we’re excited to bring her to you. Maybe we can just begin by you telling us a little bit about yourself.

I am a mom of two young boys, that they’re a big reason why I needed to find a way out of this sort of migration nightmare that I had been living in. They were, you know, an obvious reason to find a solution.

Funny, I own a brownie company. So when we talk about not eating sugar anymore. Yeah, you can imagine. I mean, it’s it’s such a big part of my life. Yes. I have worked for myself for many years. Another reason why I needed to find help, because it wasn’t like I could just call out of work. I mean, some people might think. Sure you could, because you work for yourself. But really, it’s the that you know that for sure. So those things have led me to you.

Gotcha. So that’s. Yeah. We haven’t talked too much about the whole parental issues that come up, but we can certainly relate to that. Having two kids as well.

And just to just a level of guilt you feel when you’re when you got that point where you’re totally incapacitated and really you just can’t really be there like you want to be for your kids on those days. And that is incredibly hard thing to deal with.

Especially when you can’t anticipate them. Absolutely.

Plan and plan. But you don’t know when this is going to hit.

Yeah, absolutely. So then take us back to kind of when things started with your migraines, OK?

So I was those people who had diagnosed pretty much my entire life when I was younger. I would get super nauseous and get dizzy. And I was told I had vertigo or had inner ear problems. That was the diagnosis forever. So I’d end up in the emergency room a couple of times a year, just vomiting uncontrollably. I’d end up getting morphine to stop the pain. And this just kind of went on and I get these terrible headaches, but my brain was never even brought up. This went on my entire life. I’m now 43 and I’ve only been told I had migraines as of about two years ago, maybe three years ago. And it’s because I’d go to a neurologist after neurologist. And I have been very sensitive to medication. So they would give me these medications. And I just feel terrible. This wasn’t even the big step. This wasn’t even like the summer trip. And this was just more basic decongestant type of things. And I forget what it was for cars, for motion sickness and nothing so good. I would tell everybody I had vertigo.

I’ve always known I had vertigo. And it would knock me out sometimes, you know, for days at a time, or I’d end up in the hospital and get that morphine. And they would say to me, you know, oh, and I was feeling the horrible feeling I get when you give that to me. And they say, no, that’s what drug addicts, they liked that feeling. The only time I felt that feeling again was when I started to shift and injection. You know, when you inject it and you get that horrible, that rush in you, you can feel it, but then you feel better after. So. Or I used to feel better after. But I only found those as of as I said, like two, three years ago when I finally met this one neurologist who I I felt was like a goddess to me at the time, she at least shared a similar background. She was a college basketball player, as was I. She talked to me about how she would feel before games or after working out really hard, things like that.

And on which she said to me, you know, I almost can’t wait for you to get your next migraines because I can’t wait for you to take this pill and this injection. And I remember thinking, oh, gosh, please, no, please don’t wish me a migraines, OK? Let’s see how this goes. You know. Right. And so I got one. I took the pill and I do feel better. And I was like, oh, this is life changing. Here we go. I can get on with my life again.

And it really was a miracle for a little while. And she’s also the one who said that that feeling in your stomach that’s with extreme nausea then into a headache is a migraines. She was the first person to say that to me. And so that got me on this path of what I thought was a great path of sumatriptan pills. And then the injection was like the next huge miracle for me. OK, now I’d get nauseous. I would, you know, inject myself. And rather than going days with migraines, it would be several hours. I still feel bad the next day, but nothing like I had in the past. But then that starts wearing off and you kind of sense that it’s not working so well anymore. So you need to build. Oh, well, let’s try another injection.

And OK, if this doesn’t feel good, it’s expensive. It’s just doesn’t feel right. And then I think I told you that I got the one I got a year ago March that was really bad was right before my son’s birthday. And I was. Just done, and I had that hangover horrible. And that’s when I read your book. God just said I have to do something more. I could tell the tools were quite working hard to do something more. Went online, sort of researching. And that’s what I just found. This whole thing of, oh, do you have migraines when you get a headache coming on? I have a handful of almonds. The worst thing you could do is have a handful of almonds.

You know, it was just all across the board. Right. Using an upset.

And I found your book. And it was the first thing that resonated with me, because when I opened your book, I read the first few pages and I went, oh, my gosh, even more than my visit to that neurologist they told you about when I had never put into words what it felt like to have a migraine. And when I read the first few pages of book, I just went, oh, my goodness, this person has just described exactly what I feel.

That was too hard for me to find. On another Web site, I just couldn’t really pinpoint it. And it was so specific to how I had felt that I just knew I was in the right place. And I read your book cover to cover and no time and kept going back and started implementing things and was so happy to think in my mind that I could do this myself. I didn’t need a pill, right. The most exciting part, because I knew that I did not want to know with my sensitivity to medications. I just didn’t want to go going down that road. I’ve seen I’ve just seen how people feel on different medications and it’s often not very pretty. Right.

Yes. Sounds like so. Yeah. So that might be in your book and that that’s when this all started getting better.

And so back to when you started when you found that neurologist and got the official diagnosis for the first time, about how often were you getting these attacks at that point.

So unlike a lot of your other members, I have to say my attacks were much more spread out. I think my big attacks, I would get one maybe every four months, especially after a very stressful time at work, wasn’t necessarily going into those stressful times. It was right after. However, I had daily things every day. I woke up with some kind of headache or I go to pick my son up and I’d get up and fall to my knees out of dizziness or I’d call them brain zaps. God just never right. I’d look down and feel nauseous and that would get me into my grade or I’d go into periods of really waiting to get back into shape and working out hard. And then I’d get home again. So I wasn’t someone who was on the seamanship, 10 pills or injections daily, but I had I had symptoms every day.

Gotcha. There’s a lot of different faces to migraines. And so certain things predominate more than none of those. It can sort of delay anybody, sort of recognize it for what it is for a long time. Sounds like some of what you’ve described people may nowadays characterize as vestibular migraines if they’re given the migraines, migraines diagnosis with it, where there’s a lot of dizziness and vertigo and nausea and so forth, that predominates a lot.

And the anxiety. I mean, that was, you know, launching me further down into the my brain where I was, you know, just so ramped up and worried about it all of the time.

Right. For sure. So once you kind of started down this road after finding the book, what were you mentioned that you own a Browning company? So I would imagine sugar was one of the things that may have been something you had to tackle. What were some of the changes that you that you made?

Well, so I had had a knee jerk reaction to all of this, that my brain was so bad. I got scared. I read your book and I was just like, I only want to put food in my body anymore. I’m so scared. I don’t know what to eat. I don’t really know what gluten free looks like. I don’t know. It’s sugar free. It really looks like, you know. Right. You’re free to eat anything. But when you really look at stuff. It’s everywhere. And I didn’t want to start eating like special gluten free crackers and free booze. And I do. That wasn’t the right way to do it, though. Again, I only had your book at this time. I didn’t have the podcast or anything else. I’m just going off your book, so. Right. I decide to sort of go to cold turkey. I think I eat our bars for a few days, you know, with just egg white and red dates and some some good. Also they have. And then. You know, eggs to celebrate because I was afraid until I started doing that, I had definitely like flu like symptoms at the very beginning. And a lot of anxiety just grew like a couple of nights. And I looked it up and it said, that’s what you get when you eliminate these things in your body. So that kind of felt good to know. I was also somebody who in the afternoon, about two thirty three o’clock, I would go and grab a bag of gummy candy and loved my gummy candy. Right. And I got to tell you, that day when I stepped back and realized that I had been getting myself migraines all these years was very emotional for me. I well, I cannot believe that all these years I’ve been doing this to myself and I did not know it. And that’s kind of a hard pill to swallow. You know, when you do realize you could have been not doing this, but who knows, maybe I would have been mature enough to listen or.

Yeah, that’s right. So many variables here.

Yeah. So. Maybe those changes, though. I was pretty good about it. I was there. So I’m like a little piece of this. I was a milk chocolate eater. Never. Not anymore. Now I started doing you know, I enjoyed the really, really dark stuff. Zero. You know, whatever. So I would start eating just a little bit of chocolate at night or I would go. I would do a lot of heavy cream, heavy whipping cream. The fruit. Stuff like that. So those are my really only tools at that time. So I thought it was the gluten and the cheddar or so. I really believe that I did sort of feel much better. I felt that the biggest difference was the daily stuff. So the brain just started talking about its daily goofiness. That was when I first start to go because I wasn’t having the big migraines every month to really test it. I just knew that I was doing a lot better. Right. And also at my son’s birthday party. So that was March, my son’s birthday party with the end of June. I hadn’t really had any sugar or very much less than I had had in the past. And I got a birthday cake for his birthday and I had a piece of it. And I had a terrible headache after that party. And I said to my husband, you know, I don’t think I’m getting him. I agree. But I had a terrible headache and I had to go sleep it off for several hours. And it was such a direct cause and effect in my mind that I had not had a headache in all those months. And then to have a big piece of cake with frosting. And that was it. That’s it. And it was really cool to me to realize that I could again control. Yes. He said a very powerful.

Yeah. It sounds like a feeling a lot of ways. I mean, I think everybody feels this way. Is that not just, you know, having fewer headaches, but just having the level of control back makes such an enormous difference? You touched on that a lot already. And then having that direct feedback, it’s almost like it seems like every person has that moment where they’re doing well for a while. You’re thinking maybe, you know, maybe I can tolerate some stuff. Okay. Yeah.

See, we’ll test the waters a little bit and they get that feedback. And, you know, it’s a temporary setback, but it does kind of reinforce that you’re on the right track and that now you at least know what’s going on and you’re no longer a slave to the whole thing.

Yes. Yes. It is such a relief. It is absolutely life changing.

You mentioned initially, you know, gluten and sugar were the main things you focused on. Every sort of done anything else in implementing any changes since the book or since. And I think you’ve been through at least part of the academy.

Yes. I was just the first step because I was doing well and then in September. So I hadn’t had that know Mark. I started eating better. Then in September, I had the worst migraine experience of my life. I was away at a cabin. We checked into this cabin in the middle of the Adirondacks, walking with my family. And I said, can I have this? Oh, no, something happening. I’m just gonna stay in here. You guys go out and hike, do your thing. This thing was the biggest monster I could imagine. No, no. Thankfully, I had like a pill with me and I have an injection. I don’t want to take the injection because you know what it means. Right. You’re done for. I take the pill. The thing just gets worse. It ramps up. So I wait the night out. The next day, I’m like, oh, this is horrible. I take an injection. Nothing happens. I take a second pill. I am getting worse by the second. I am throwing up the whole bit. I’m in an uncomfortable place in the middle of nowhere. My family’s in the small space. It is a nightmare. And I kid you not. The next day they had to leave me there. I could not get in the car. I had to go check into like a separate room and spend the night there.

I tell you, by the grace of whoever, I’m not that religious, but somebody was looking down on me and that’s what I in the middle of the night because they weren’t with me. I went down to the. I just I didn’t want to make a scene. I said, I have to go to a hospital. Do you have an ambulance that can come in this car into the woods to get me? What do I do? He goes, hold on. And then when got his wife, who was a nurse and she nursed me through the night with cold compresses, you know, massage my neck. She happened to have a nasal version of the scene, the trip down and gave that to me. Then she gave me Benadryl and I was so drugged you could not even imagine. But I was so desperate just to knock myself out. I didn’t know what to do. Right. So my husband comes in, I wake up the next morning and I’m functioning barely. He comes to get me. I think, OK, the worst is over. Again, the car. I make it home. The two hour drive. And then all hell breaks loose again. Nothing has worked. So I’m having a rebound headache, which I get. And I don’t even know what this is because I haven’t really read about it.

No. Then this goes. You’re going to like a couple days later. I’m like my husband. I have to go to the hospital. I am in so much pain. This is not let up. Now we’re going on a day like sixty seven. You know, I go to the hospital, they pump me full of what normally knocks me out thinking, OK, they’ll give me what they’ve given me in the past and I’ll walk out feeling decent. They give me a whole host of stuff. It was like I was made of iron. Nothing penetrated me, so they had nothing left for me to go out to the waiting room. It was probably 2:00 in the morning and I had the deepest cry of my life. And I thought, my life, I don’t want to live this way. How can I raise my children like this? I can never travel with them. I am a slave now to this migration. It was one of the most horrible moments of my life. Being alone in that waiting room and just feelings when waiting for my friend to pick me up. Wow. It’s hard to explain just how depressing that moment was. So that’s. But then I know now that migrant. I’m telling you, Mark. Three weeks to a month of just feeling horrible.

Right. You know, I am across the border. I could not get back into that gym. It was so hard. I just felt weak and sick every time. So that passes. Thankfully, I go back to the drawing board signal. This is it. So then I looked you guys back up again and I start every single thing I can. From you guys and everything. You’ve expanded so much, do I? And of course, I read that we read the book. Then I may have joined already, but I’m not sure. I went back to the website. I read every single chapter I read. You know, I was on your I listened to everything and I picked up so much and I say some of the biggest things. One was that I do not understand the low carb part of this. I just replaced like pasta with brown rice pasta and Gaza filled with eating a lot of carbs, but not realizing and especially around my period. I didn’t realize what was going on. So that monster, my grain also was you know, I would say it was probably a menstrual migraines to some degree and also why it wasn’t as severe as it was. So now I felt, you know, the protocol leading up to my period, you know, very low carb.

I’m not Kito. I I felt very good eating close to that. But just with working out, I do. I just feel a little bit better with some more arms. But get around workout. I mean, what works for me right now. But you know what? If I start to get more migraines, I will we visit. But we’re now in, what, May 20th. And I feel great. And, you know, I just did my first crossword competition this past weekend. Oh, doctor, thank you. And it was outdoors in the sun. That would have been a recipe for absolute disaster in the past. You know, I could not have put forth that kind of effort all day long, starting at know in the morning to 4:00 in the afternoon. That would have been had me absolutely done forward or too scared to even sign up. Very likely. Absolutely. I would have said, you know what? I can’t depend on my body. I can’t. I don’t know what is going to bring me on the day I have teammates that are relying on me. And I’m I don’t want that on me. And I was really nervous about it. But just really stuck to my day. Also, when I eat, I do not eat past seven o’clock at night and I don’t eat until 7:00 in the morning.

Starving the beast is a massive change when I feel a headache coming on a really? Well, Candy, how did you know? Get to get the blood sugar going back, whatever. And wow, what a change to just say, you know. And that metabolic flexibility. I never thought I could stop because 7:00 at night. I apologize after that.

But, you know, I really would I would even push it back to 5:00 if I could. And some days a diet. Definitely. You know, I think a lot or I could do it the better. But right now with family, it just sort of works. The 787 has been working for me. But if I do have a headache, I would definitely cut myself off at 5:00. And just knowing that drink a ton of water when you feel that had it coming or I’ll stop in and just stay away from food for a few hours, it works. Oh, yeah, big changes. So where it started with just the gluten sugar, I’ve been really ramp it up to really watching the cards and not being militant about it, just knowing what’s good and not tricking myself into eating fat bombs and all that.

And I see this in that Quito that you just end up eating more bars and you end up eating things that you really wouldn’t normally eat. Yes. So you said that that was I had to work on that.

You know, it’s very easy to get sucked into a performance by these gymnastics. And I’m going to buy the special peanut butter that’s triple the price of my regular almond butter or whatever. You know what it is. I was like, stop spending money on these things that come in packages.

You don’t need it. But it’s so easy because you think that it’s much easier just to grab it.

A few little things that I rely on. But on the go and I went on my first vacation with me and my family did not bring a single medication with me. I don’t touch adult Tylenol anymore. So even I had the flu, you know, several months ago and I didn’t take any Advil and that was really hard.

I have been there, but I agree.

And it’s amazing, too, because I preach this to people, you know, you know, everyone’s migraines is very different. So it’s hard to just jump in and tell someone is when they’ve been in so much pain for so many years, you guys are just your daily.

But I’m taking it on for you, too. Oh, well, I try to share it with people since it is a sensitive way, right?

And when they see me, I can’t cut out gluten sugar. I think to myself. Well, my grades aren’t bad enough because of me. I think for some people it is just an easier thing to accept it. Oh, I should also say I did before jumping back into all this. I did go see another neurologist just to see where we’re neurologists are sort of out right now. I was curious. So I went and there was this there was an older man meets some obnoxious comment about my boots.

And I walked in my rain boots and I thought, oh, this isn’t going to go well. I see I see this other neurologist.

Or he might be like, OK, let’s put that aside. I go. And he said to me, yes, so the world is a really scary place, isn’t it? Everything’s just waiting to set you off. Right.

And I was like, yeah, you’re right. That is how I feel with a guy. You know, you look down and this happens. You get the sun in your eye when you’re driving. Yeah. Yeah, that is me. You know, he’s like, OK, well, here are five different medications. One will make you gain weight. One will make you a little nauseous. One is going to act like, you know what I mean?

Anything you think about diet that maybe I could try to get. Yeah. Yeah. Here’s like, you know, handing me that generic leg. Right. Luis, they should start eliminating it. I walked out of there. More sure than ever that what you guys were preaching was right for me. And I even canceled. I had an appointment to me six months to get. The best head specialists in Vermont. And I canceled it because this is my path. I feel so good and right. And it’s working. And yes, sure, I might get another migraines somewhere along the way. But the change from where I was to where I am now is astounding, right?

Yes. That’s great to hear. I I apologize on behalf of my colleagues. Unfortunately, what you what you encountered par for the course, but I’m still hopeful all around. Some say what I really liked here in your story, too, is that you’ve taken all the stuff that we put out there and really use all the principles and customized it to your own needs. You know, you mentioned talking about cross fit and sort of the you know, how you work around meals and stuff like that and you sort of take all this stuff and making it work for you. And that’s what’s so important to understand, is that no two peoples plan may look anything like each other, but it’s always sort of the same governing principles are there. And it just takes its insurance, sort of a complete shift of the ownership of the process from, you know, having a doctor try to figure it out who doesn’t have the tools to do so, to, you know, taking ownership and and using this knowledge to figure out what works best for you. You’ve clearly been doing that over this past year and and seeing the results from it.

Absolutely. Anything else that you’ve noticed has changed besides migraines since you’ve kind of made these other changes?

I have lost weight. I’m in the best shape I’ve been in in a long time now that I was. I mean, I’m very outdoorsy person. I left right bike and run. So it’s not as a cross it thing. It’s just that it’s a lifestyle thing. And I’m just unable to plan able to. I know, Garrett, of upcoming events like I used to be. I mean, just to wake up and not think what kind of headache am I going to have today? Yeah, it’s so liberating. Yeah. Go to the big shit that I do. Just feel more clear in my head overall. I mean, and not in when you just sort of say and I’m not going to rely on Advil and Tylenol, I need to get through it. Yeah. Again, I don’t want to minimize anybody’s migraines because I know that you have people that suffer much more than I was. You know, people that are on these medications daily, you know, I thank goodness that was not where I was at. Again, I had the headaches, but not the full blast every day. So, yeah, that’s always an important point.

We try to stress as we talk about, you know, how the downsides of the medicines and so often they trade, you know, a short term solution for much longer term problem. But, you know, it’s not to create guilt is not to. You know, we understand how people get there. And it’s all a part of that’s just the way our system works. And like you, it’s like you found out your last neurology visit. It’s really all about what drug is are you gonna take? So we totally sympathize with how folks get into that situation.

And I mean, I still I’m scared. I’m scared of migraines still. I should mention that, you know, even through this process, it’s always on my mind. You know, yes. I’m definitely much more in control of it right now. I’m kind of an element that. Who knows? And when am I going to do if I’m with my kid somewhere? But I think having that experience before that hospital, it just tells me that even taking the pill or an injection isn’t going to do what it used to do. So why bother anymore? Well, I do think that the cold compresses on the head really helps when, you know, you’ve got to find other ways. I haven’t really tried the exercising 31. Cause I’ve had so much success, I would say. Right. Also, I’d say this is the most consistent I’ve ever been able to be with exercise because dang, I feel so much better. I think that keeping, you know, you call that kind of the Groundhog Day implementing that. And I now know that really works for me. And I think that there have been days when I have had headache that I’ve said, you know, I’m not going to go to gym. And instead I go. Exactly. They’re very understanding. And I’ve said that, you know, having one of those days where when I look down like a little off, I don’t want to be throwing big weight over my head or I don’t want to be working out as hard right now. And I tell you, the second I start working out, I completely forget about the headache and it is gone by the time I leave the gym.

Yeah. Now where before I would have gotten into bed right now get up and I go to the gym anyway.

You know, it’s less of a workout, whatever. I’m I’m very comfortable with that. Some people might not be. I’m totally cool with scaling and doing what I need that day. It really works. I think that keeping that rhythm of eating right and still going to exercise. So I mean, not implemented in the heart of the heat of a. I agreed. Right. And I think I’m implementing it almost on a daily basis.

Yeah, that sounds that sounds right. And keeping that routine consistent also probably helps, you know, not letting those little you know, it’s very easy when you have the whisper of a my head coming to just sort of, oh, I’ll just take it easy and probably ends up making things worse. Your rehab. It’s a good sleep. Yes. Have you been following Ashley Challenge?

I did listen to the TED talk, huh? And I’ve been reading what you’ve been. Yes. Coasting. I sleep.

I’m pretty good about my my pretty early to bed, early to rise. But I was very intrigued by the things that you were saying about sleep cycles. I mean, I I was not tracking them, so I’m not sure right where I lie. Sure.

There’s a lot of a lot of variability. Sleep is a big issue for some migraines and definitely a big one worth addressing if it is. But there’s other related issues like circadian alignment where you’re trying to keep all the sort of physiologic processes that are going on in the body on the same schedule and doing things like having a regular routine is really important for that. So you’re probably also not only sleeping well, but sort of ticking that box as well.

And then as a matter, travel becomes everything for a lot of my trainers because you didn’t know yet. And that’s when I do get my headaches. I’ll get you know, when you’ve been up on. I’m not. I cannot do the all night travel. And we often pick flights based on not just the kids but me.

Yes, sure.

Yeah. Figuring out is probably the next piece to tackle. Right. Is the is the travel strategies, everybody, you know. Eventually we have our own that we’ve figured out over the years and I think everybody kind of goes to that. And it’s you know, it is another consideration, but it’s it’s something most folks can work through as well. Shawn, very scary with children. Yes.

Just because you travel and if you wanted to give yourself when you’ve been. I agree. But think of others is nearly impossible.

Absolutely. I’d love to hear about where the Brownie Company stands now. I don’t know if you know this part about my own history, that I was a baker and sold markets and I really thought a bakery was in my future, which know I did a little bit as I got into this. So I’d like to know what’s going on with the Brownie company now.

So I own it. I love it.

I absolutely love our product to handle those now because I don’t eat it as much as often as often as I used to. But you know what? I have probably a brownie a month now. And I do I do it right around my period. So that’s why I say went to my and I needed more of an event. I said, Guy, warm it up. I sit down to eat it with a fork. I really make it sort of an event for myself. And I really love it and appreciate it. Different than sort of being at work and pop and wanted, you know, and having them as a little snack. Got much more careful about it. And I do it all the time. I do it earlier in the day. I get a lot of water. I make sure I’ve had a protein. Another big shift in eating is making sure to wrap things in a protein. And I don’t ever grab an apple urban at any hour, eat it on an empty stomach.

I mean, those days are long gone. Right. So you get Brownie company is thriving. Oh, good. My work schedule is a little more flexible than it used to be, which is awesome. So that I can get I can still work out and negate any advice being back on the brownies that I really raise right now, that you know, that when you’ve eliminated it, when you go back and have a little bit of it. Yes. For me. And unless you want to promote this meeting, you can certainly take it out.

You know, there’s a little time now when I am celebrating or whatever I’m being that I can allow myself and I’m fine, especially around the cause. I did that first competition. Everyone, I went out for ice cream after I had a little bit and I was like, you know, it’s summer time for me to have the ice get this right. And after I’ve had that like a long day of exercise and I like. And now, like where I can allow that sugar. Yeah. Yeah. It’s not a habit at all, but it was enjoyable. But as I’m eating you, trust me, I’m thinking, why am I playing with fire? You know, I really am. I’m going. This could be a bad thing. But luckily, I think because I’m living so far under the threshold now that I’m more apt to allow myself some sugar than good. I’m not. I mean, I am free. But if someone is cooking with gluten or is someone had a burger on a bun and they take it off, I don’t mind that at all. I might. Well, I don’t have celiac disease. Right. Right. You know, we’re very careful about that, right? Yeah. I’m at a restaurant in something and I can pinpoint what the glue ingredient is. You know, I’m okay with that. But that doesn’t seem to bother me. But I would not go down to a bowl of pasta or family, John, regular bread or anything like that. But, you know, it’s really for me about living under the threshold.

Yeah. And I think that’s a great point you make about this. Now, you know, when you do have a brownie, it’s an event, which is how it should be. Right.

I think that one of the biggest issues with, you know, how we think about refined carbohydrates and sugar is that they’re just everywhere and they’re the bulk of our calories. And that’s not how it should be. And we had you know, our kids are pretty low carb, low sugar, too. And when they go to a birthday party, they’re allowed to have a treat. It’s a major event for him. Whereas yesterday, it’s just totally ordinary. And so that’s I like that. That’s how, you know, that’s really how it should be for all of us. It’s not that these things don’t have a place, but it’s just that they shouldn’t be everywhere.

Yes. And our kids savor that. Desserts like you wouldn’t believe. They’re always the ones at the table. And I think that gives a lot of people hope, because I can’t tell you how many people that I let into our big Facebook group that, you know, their profile says that they own this cake company and that kind of thing. And I think, oh, I wonder how receptive they will be to our message. Yeah, it’s nice to hear your situation and how you’ve been able to incorporate it.

I only did the one with the walnuts because I wish I had a little protein really right around here or the peanut butter one.

And I just I’d rather have that as my treat than I could do. I actually will not touch a piece of gummy candy ever again in my whole life, which. Right is a little little bit sad. But at the same time, it’s not I. That’s the kind of thing that I wouldn’t dare particularly body because I would I think I would just spank me and it would be that would be terrible. I don’t even want that’s not something I’m going to do. Right.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Just more mindful and intentional and thoughtful about what when you do make those decisions. That’s right. If there’s anybody out there listening who is kind of in a situation where you were before you went down this road and found a plan and so forth, is there anything you’d say to them?

Oh, jump in with both feet. It is hard at times, but if you can stop your migraines group diet, why wouldn’t you? It’s something you can control.

It gets easier when also if you do take a few steps backwards and you could have a day where you just go nuts, then you need everything you don’t like.

Just just put that behind you and just start again. You know, because I had many days, maybe not so terrible like that, but many times are that whatever they are carbo loading day, you know, for whatever reason, I was a little sad about something. I might I did have a headache. I got my period. I had whatever. You just get right back on the horse and just keep implementing it. But I do think in the beginning it’s really important to really stick to it. I think you’ve got to get that your body of everything to get back in.

And if you hear my story and you still don’t think it’s kind of where do you try it on? It’s so liberating and awesome. And I mean, I don’t know where I’d be if I found it.

They’ll be down the same old path. You know, I used to say and I don’t. This may be a bit ridiculous basis, basically. You know, maybe this is just my thing in life. Hopefully, I don’t ever get cancer. I don’t have to battle a disease. You know, that’s that’s more seriously in life threatening. Like maybe this is just my my thing to bear rally life. Is it migraines? But you know what? No, I just got to let them know I’m not very good. It’s awful and you know it. I almost wish I had something that I could just cure. You know, I don’t know what that would be. But this wasn’t something I thought I was able to cure.

It was gonna be something that would require medication. And I still don’t know when they were going to hit. It didn’t eliminate the migraines itself. You know, this is a way to get to the root cause and get rid of it.

Yeah, well, that’s a great place to end. I really appreciate you sharing your story with us. And I know there will be plenty people who are going to listen to this and be motivated to take action because of what you said.

Maybe not everybody. But there’s going to be a significant. So we really appreciate and we know we hear from people all the time about how much during these stories help. So really, really, really helped me.

That’s why I shared mine with you, because I just thought, you know. I want people to hear it. But I also understand the battle that you guys have trying to tell people because it’s sensitive and and everyone’s experience is so unique.

Right. Right. Yeah. We want to be taken in the spirit in which it’s. Tended in these help with that, too, so well. Thanks so much, help me. Yeah, it’s great to talk to you.

Have you to thank you for what you’re doing.

All right. Well, thanks once again to Shawna for sharing her story with us today. Really enjoyed talking to her. And now we’re just going to share some final thoughts about our conversation. Jenny, is there anything that stood out in particular for you?

Yes, she made a few points that I thought were great for everyone to hear. One of the points that she made was that she was low carb, but not Quito. And so I think that’s a common misunderstanding that some people think that our plan is only Quito. And so understanding that you can be low carb but not Quito, and the key is an extra tool that you can use. But she had success without being right.

She hasn’t actually done Quito at all. She’s doing fantastic writing, made it work.

I also thought her story was very common, that she initially started by thinking, oh, all I have to do is eliminate gluten and sugar. And I think that’s where a lot of people start. And then she realize it’s actually quite a bit more nuanced than that.

Right. And I think a lot of people may do think that he says something about gluten free, no sugar, maybe even read parts of the book and then kind of start sort of looking around what’s available on Internet and other sources and kind of get a mixed, mixed mishmash of messages and recipes and things like that and sort of that which can undermine things if you if it’s just kind of about those superficial things.

And another point that I thought was good to underscore was the fact that she had vestibular migraines. And that’s a very common question that we get when people are coming into our Facebook group and such as will this help for vestibular migraines? And here is a success story of somebody who. Right. Really did in fact, it was.

So it sounded like the first things to improve were, as you mentioned, the sort of a daily low grade headache, but also that dizziness and so forth that that these these days a lot of people would end up diagnosing as Irish character, describing his vestibular migraines, sort of inner ear type of symptoms that that go along with migraines, but that are not always a part of the attack. And we get a lot of questions about people, whether this helps for them. And she’s not the only one that we know of that has noted significant improvement in those symptoms as well. Mm hmm.

And she also made and learned from a lot of the most common mistakes that people make in terms of, you know, using some gluten free substitutes initially, you know, using the rice pasta instead of rice pasta, you know, and she mentioned eating some bars and things and realized that those maybe weren’t the best choices either, and that she now no longer underestimates the impact of over-the-counter meds like Advil and Tylenol, which I think is huge.

Yeah, yeah. It’s clear that she’s not only like consumed everything we put out there for her, but is is taking it all to heart, figuring out how to apply it and just taking action all the time and then learning constantly as she goes. And that’s why she’s made so much progress in a short period time. That’s right.

I’d also like to highlight one thing she said that I think every one of the success stories have said, which is you have to jump in with both feet.

Yes. Right. Yeah. And it’s almost like we’ve seen this similar arc to where this might start in for a little bit and then and then hit some rock bottom moment. Be like, that’s it. Going all in.

And then and then things really progressed from there. Right. But yeah. We’ve seen it over and over. It really does make a big difference. That’s right.

And now she’s able to experience a little bit more freedom. All right. Things back in after she was very strict initially.

Yeah. And that’s definitely a reasonable thing to do. And she’s kind of figuring out how to how to make it all work in the context of her own life, which, you know, only only you can do. That’s right.

Ok. Well, I guess that does it for this episode. Once again, if you want to become part of our migrant every and family, which includes amazing people like Shawna who are in and of themselves a tremendous resource, as you can hear, that’s one of the one of the most incredible things about this community that’s been building is the people that are in it now are pretty remarkable and are sources of wisdom because they have both taken massive action and they’re always learning and growing.

And so they’re a resource in addition to us now. And so it’s a growing family. And we love to have you part of it if you’re interested. And you can go to my migrate miracle dot com and click on the resources tab and the top and I’ll take you through all the resources that we have to offer, including migrant ever land. All right. That does it. Now it is time to go out and slay the beast.

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