128. Wildfire Smoke and Migraines: What Your Body May Be Telling You

In this episode, I talk about a very current issue that so many people are dealing with right now: wildfire smoke.

I share what I noticed in my own body during the recent smoke in the Chicago area, and I explain why this kind of airborne pollution can hit women with chronic migraines especially hard. We talk about how environmental toxins add to the body’s overall load, why migraine sufferers are often already closer to the edge, and how to recognize the early warning signs before a full migraine hits.

If the smoke has been affecting you lately, this episode will help you make sense of what may be going on.

If you’re ready to address the root drivers of your migraines, you can book a free consultation at the link below:

https://www.drlesliecisar.com/apply

Free Training: 5 Proven Steps to Being Migraine Free (Even if you think you've already tried everything.)

https://www.drlesliecisar.com/5SHMN

Connect with us:

Website: https://www.drlesliecisar.com/

Free Facebook Group: Healing Migraines Naturally, with Leslie Cisar, ND

Ready to try something radically different that actually works? Read more about my approach here: https://www.drlesliecisar.com/map

In health,
Dr. Leslie Cisar

Episode Transcript

um as I've talked about on the podcast before
hi there welcome to the Healing Migraines
Naturally podcast I'm your host Doctor Leslie Caesar
and I'm a licensed naturopathic physician
former chronic migraine sufferer
and I've dedicated my life to helping
other women all over the country
rediscover a migraine free life
so I wanted to jump on the podcast today
to address a very current issue
which are the Canadian and Minnesota wildfires
okay because I live in the Chicago suburbs
and we had a day
I've never experienced anything like this before so
the past few summers we have been getting the Canadian
wildfires that are occurring
have been occurring every summer
in Canada past few years
we've been getting a lot of that smoke over Chicago
but this week
unprecedented never experienced anything like it
and when I woke up on Thursday morning
I could see that it was like foggy and it's been
really really hot here too and very humid so I assume
that it was just like some sort of fog or some sort of humidity
haze you know something like that
and then when I left my house to go to my office haha
it smelled like a campfire I mean it was crazy
I could just tell by the odor
uh oh this smells like it's
wildfire smoke it smells like burning wood
as the day progressed
so my office
I'm on the sixth floor
of an office building I have these beautiful windows
and
by the afternoon
I couldn't see across the street it was crazy
the air quality index was over 500 which
unfortunately what I have seen
like in Minnesota and Wisconsin it was in like the
1200s
but
as soon as I walked out the door on Thursday morning and realized that this was actually
wood smoke I said oh man the
you know the migraine suffers are
just gonna really be tipped
over the edge with all of this airborne
pollution right these airborne toxins
from this burning wood so
I wanted to take the time today
to talk about it a little bit here on the podcast
and also share the impact that this had on me because
when you have this level
of airborne toxins this is what this is okay
when you're burning wood
you're releasing
hydrocarbons
right you're releasing all of this into the air there
they are airborne toxins in effect
and we have been burning wood
since the dawn of time right so
a lot of times when we hear the word
environmental toxin in this day and age we're assuming
that we're talking about man made chemicals
that we have put into the environment which
certainly are not beneficial and I wish we
didn't have them but there are naturally occurring
environmental toxins and a lot of times this gets lost
okay so this is a
naturally occurring
environmental toxin I don't wanna get into
climate I don't wanna get into maintenance of
forests I don't wanna
that's not the point of this podcast just the fact
that you've got a forest
burning you're going to have airborne
environmental toxins come into the air
when you know this comes over where you live
you're going to have really no choice
but to be exposed to them and breathe them in
so you you can wear a mask
people were advised to wear an N95 mask
which would offer people the most filtration
in this situation outside of like a respirator
but you're you're going to you're going to inhale
some of these you're going to be exposed
to these airborne toxins
no matter what you do you can run an air filter
you can stay indoors you can wear a 95 mask
you're going to have some exposure
that you have absolutely no control over
when we are exposed to toxins our body has the ability
to
go through a biochemical process called detoxification
so that the toxin molecule
can be eliminated from the body okay because
we've been exposed to environmental toxins
since the dawn of time and then we also make toxins so
through our normal metabolism our normal biochemistry
we make metabolic
byproducts metabolic waste
material these are also toxins and so we are designed
to be able to detoxify these molecules
and eliminate them from the body so whether it's
the metabolic by products that I'm making
whether it's the uh
wood smoke that I'm breathing in from the environment
my body can handle it but it has to have the capacity
to do that okay so what we wanna have
ideally is we wanna have the capacity to endure
an acute exposure like this a sudden exposure
when I went to bed Wednesday night there wasn't this
fog of wood smoke I mean
you know you wake up in the morning and you have this
acute exposure that's completely out of your control
best case scenario you have the ability
to process it it's sort of like if you have
if you kind of
imagine that we all have like this toxin bucket
inside of ourselves that is continuously we're
continuously adding these toxin molecules to the bucket
we've got a drain at the bottom of the bucket
that's our liver our liver is doing most of this work
so if you imagine
a little drain at the bottom of the bucket
you want that drain
to be wide enough and not clogged up
so that the bucket drains
as you're putting the toxin molecules into the bucket
if you're putting the waste
material the trash into that bucket
at the bottom of the bucket is a drain
that can accommodate it right like when you
turn on the faucet in your bathtub and the water
starts flowing into the tub
there's always a little bit of water
in the bathtub right because the drain is accommodating
that but there's always a little bit of water
in the bottom of the bathtub
when you turn that faucet on
that's sort of like this toxin
bucket it's never gonna be totally empty trust me
because we're continuously
adding to it even if we were living in a pristine
environment we make the toxins so we're continuously
adding to the bucket
there's always gonna be some in there
but just like our bathtub we want the drain to be wide
enough we don't want a big hair clog in there
and then the faucet is running faster
then the drain can run when that happens eventually
right the bathtub is gonna overflow
and then we're gonna have a real big mess on our hands
so we want to have
a drain at the bottom of the bucket that's
keeping up that's accommodating what we're putting in
so then when we wake up in the morning and we are suddenly engulfed in this massive
cloud of you know wood smoke
that's that's gonna go into our bucket because
when we breathe that in those little molecules
are going to pass through the capillaries in our nose
and they're going to come into our bloodstream
our nasal cavity has a protective mechanism any any um
area of the body that's open to the environment
has sort of like a standing army of immune system cells
it's prepared it's trying to protect us but
we're going to absorb some of those toxin molecules
into our bloodstream there's really
no way around it so those are gonna go into the bucket
and like I say if your bucket
when you went to bed on Wednesday night
if your bucket was like all the way up to the tiptop
uh oh now we're in trouble okay and unfortunately
chronic migraine suffers our bucket
is all the way up at the top
because like I've talked about on this podcast before
migraines the migraine itself
is a symptom that the body generates
when there's a pretty significant toxin
overload that exists within the body so
when I had chronic migraines
my toxin bucket was all the way up to the top
pretty much all the time and any little influx
any little additional input was tipping
me over and I was getting a migraine every other day
what we want to have like I say is
a bucket
it's never gonna be empty
but we've got room right if my bucket is just 25% full
I've got a lot of I got a lot of leeway here okay
if my bucket is 50% full
well now I'm probably gonna generate some
lower level toxicity symptoms
if my bucket is all the way up to the top and then I'm breathing in
wood smoke I'm probably gonna get a migraine okay so
what people don't realize what
chronic migraine sufferers don't realize
is that as that bucket as that load
starts to accumulate we develop what I would call
lower level or you could say maybe less severe
toxicity symptoms that are sort of like early warning
symptoms I call these canary in a coal mine
toxicity symptoms
those are alerting us uh oh this level is
rising rising rising the problem is
no one realizes this and so they don't associate
those lower level less severe
canary in the coal mine symptoms as
there as you know the the warning signal look take it
take action now let's get this bucket drained
let's get this drain
opened up more and let's get this bucket drained
because we don't want that to get up to the top
by the time that level gets up to the top
now we're having migraines
if we're prone to migraines
and if you're listening to podcast you're like me
when that bucket gets up to the top
we're gonna get a migraine
so that's why you know I woke up Thursday morning
realized this wasn't like fog or humidity this was
wood smoke and I was like oh my goodness this is gonna
wreak havoc on all of the chronic migraine suffers
in the whole Midwestern region here
so um I wanna share with you what I experienced
when I woke up on Thursday morning okay so
it's been very hot here I know we're kind of like going through this heat wave
here it's been very hot here
so when I woke up on Thursday morning
I could feel my eyes were
swollen like I I could feel my eyes were puffy etcetera
when I looked in the mirror it was definitely
confirmed I was like holy cow my eyes are really puffy
and they were kind of watery like a little not like
stuck shut but there was a
a stickiness
to the tears they were kind of they were kind of thick
and and puffy and a little heavy
they were very congested
right I could feel the congestion in my eyelids
and under my eyes
I got bit by a tick it's coming up on a year
ago and I did get a tick borne infection
which that whole process
definitely generated a lot of additional
metabolic waste material bacterial waste material
I've talked about this on some other episodes of podcast
so my bucket
eh
it could be a little better I'm still getting that bucket
optimally drained
a year later after this tick borne infection so
I know that is my current state okay so
when I woke up and I saw these you know eye symptoms
I was like whoa
what's going on here because at that point I did not yet realize
that there was this wood smoke
so eye symptoms these are
an early warning symptom a canary in the coal mine
symptom okay so
any symptoms with the eyes give us some insight into
the liver and where the load
on in the bucket is how high are we in the bucket
okay with with the toxin material
so this is a classic symptom
that a lot of migraine sufferers will experience so
before the migraines become chronic
for many migraine sufferers they will have had
maybe some years
of various eye symptoms so this could be
puffy eyes dark circles under the eyes eye watering
itchy eyes right we associate that more with allergies
we are not connecting the dots
that this is actually a toxicity symptom
other eye symptoms that are very common are visual
changes so every day
my vision is a little bit different right I like some days my glasses
seem like they're
on point with the prescription and then other days
uh oh I'm not seeing as well right the street signs
seem a little blurry as I'm driving
right my vision is changing
on a
you know day to day basis it's kind of variable
so these are symptoms that
not only people will experience
maybe on like a day to day basis or
they are symptoms that'll flare and remit somebody
might go through like a five day period of time where their eyes are really watery
and then it'll sort of resolve itself it'll go away
these are symptoms that are very commonly
um occurring with a migraine right so
someone is in the throes of a migraine
and oh my goodness I got these dark circles
under my eyes my eyes are really puffy and swollen
you know my eyes are watering
during the migraine or before the migraine starts
the reason why that's occurring is because
migraine is also a major toxicity symptom so
a lot of the other symptoms that come alongside
migraines are some of these lower
level toxicity symptoms that the body is generating
because it's in a massive toxin overload
so when I
walked out the door and I saw that we were in a massive
plume of wood smoke
then I knew why my eyes were the way that they were
um luckily I didn't have any head pain I'm very
very happy that I didn't experience that
but because I know that for the past year
I've been dealing
with the effects of this tick borne infection
and the additional toxin load that this is generating
it made sense to me why you know while I was sleeping
and all of this smoke you know came into the area
right even though our house was closed up
and we had the air conditioning on because it's
very very hot outside
right still that's going to come into my house
that's going to I'm going to breathe
some of that in and it's going to add
to my toxin bucket so
all of that made sense to me
right and this is something
you know that this is why I like talking about this on the podcast
because so often
right we wake up our eyes are puffy
we've got these circles under our eyes and we're like
why is this why is this happening to me right
this is why it's happening to you
fortunately like I say fortunately um I was able to
weather those additional toxins relatively well it's
not pleasant to have your eyes
feel kind of swollen and and so on but it was not
the worst thing in the world right it's a lot better than a
than a migraine
and fortunately too
by the end of the day on Friday and then definitely
today the air is much clearer
right so unfortunately those fires are still going on
and so I'm assuming
we're gonna have a couple more days here while this is going on as the winds
shift etcetera that we're gonna be back in this wood
smoke environment but luckily right we're pretty far
from the actual fires
and so we're not being that directly affected
but um I have clients
that are you know in Minnesota
they're closer to the source and I've heard from them
just how horrible the air is up there
I also want to
again just reiterate
we talk a lot about man made toxins but there are
naturally occurring environmental toxins too
whether they're man made toxins
or they're naturally occurring like this
we really don't have any control
over our exposure right I'm looking forward
to the day where we don't have so many chemicals
being produced
and put into the environment but until that day
I like everybody else are going to be exposed
to these things
you know I look forward to the day where perhaps
the forests are better
managed and we don't have these catastrophic fires but
until that happens
we're going to be exposed to these things
but we are not
completely helpless
in the face of this right if we understand
how this process works within the body
and if we understand how to
interpret the symptoms that our body is generating
they give us an early warning sign
that that bucket is starting to fill up right like
if I were already
struggling with seasonal allergies that's another
early warning
toxicity symptom that I've talked about on the podcast
if I were already struggling with that this season
and then I got this wood
smoke coming in right it's like that's
going I'm going to have in even more
I'm going to have even more of a reaction
more toxicity symptoms from that additional toxin load
so
when I work with my clients
one of my goals is to sort of point out to them
hey these are the symptoms
these are the lower level
toxicity symptoms that your body generates
that you're prone to and you wanna look for these
right throughout your life now you wanna be able to
interpret the signals that your body is sending to you
and if you
now no oh boy if I wake up and I've got these
bags under my eyes or I've got allergies
or I've got this skin rash popping up
those are lower level toxicity symptoms that I'm prone
to that means that my bucket
is starting to fill up a little bit
let me take the steps that I know works for me
to get that bucket drained because again
I don't know about you
I mean I don't enjoy having allergies
but I'd rather have allergies than a migraine right so
if I start to develop the seasonal allergies
that I'm prone to when my bucket starts to fill up
I'm like let's
nip this now because I don't want this bucket to
continue to fill up
and then eventually I'm gonna start getting migraines
again because that's those are the toxicity
symptoms that my body generates
as that bucket starts to fill up and
you know the symptoms that I'm prone to
are very common symptoms that migraine sufferers
are prone to
I hope that gives you some insight
as to what's going on I hope you're not in the throes
of this I know those of us here in the upper
Midwest are really feeling it
right now so I hope that's not you
if it is you and you've been
tipped into a migraine this week
I would love to talk with you please reach out I do offer a free consultation
call we get on the phone we talk about your migraines
and any other health concerns that you have
and then we put together a game plan
to get you feeling better and
if you'd like to work with me to do that I tell you
what that would look like and if I think that I'm not going to be able to help you I will tell you that too so
either way it's really going to be
one of the best 30 minutes you spend on your health
so thanks again for joining me today
um stay cool out there and I will talk to you soon