135. Why I Don’t Just Tell Women What to Take For Their Migraines

In this episode, I answer one of the most common questions women ask me: what is it that you actually do?

And the truth is, the reason that question is so hard to answer simply is because I do not start with a protocol, a supplement, or a one-size-fits-all solution.

I share a story from a conversation at my hair appointment that perfectly captures the problem with the way both conventional and alternative medicine often approach chronic symptoms: the tool gets picked before the right question is even asked.

In this episode, I explain the three core principles I use to understand why a woman’s body is struggling in the first place, and why real healing has to be built like a solid foundation before anything else can truly work.

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

hi there
welcome to the Healing Migraines Naturally podcast
I'm your host Doctor Leslie Caesar
and I'm a licensed naturopathic doctor
I'm a former chronic migraine sufferer
and I've dedicated my life to helping other women
with chronic migraines rediscover a migraine free life
so welcome to the podcast today
you know
one of the most common questions women ask me is
what is it that you do
and I don't have a good answer for that question
not because I'm being evasive
not because I'm trying to be coy
I'll come back to this at the end of this episode
and tell you exactly why but first
I want to tell you about my hair appointment yesterday
so the salon I go to is
you could call it an organic salon
meaning that the hair color that they use is the
you know the least toxic uh
hair color products and
you know in general
the products that they use are very clean products
as less toxic as possible
I'm not gonna say there's no toxins in them
of course there are but you know
it's a it's a cleaner product line that they use there
so the women who go to the salon are
I have to assume like myself
they're women who care about that
they put a priority on that
they put some sort of value on natural remedies
clean living you know etcetera
so I've been going there at least 10 years
the owner is a woman named Tracy
and Tracy used to cut my hair
and now I go to Nancy
who's a great stylist who works there
but you know
I know them both very well
so when I come in you know
I'm sort of like talking to both of them
it's a small salon it's just the two of them
so I sit down in the chair
and Tracy you know
she's like how are you doing
and then she says oh um
I want to let you know I gave your information
to one of my clients the other day
because she has migraines
and I told her you know
you really have to check this out
and then she says you know
I really want my mom to reach out to you
but I know she hasn't yet
but you know
it's on God's timing and so
we were kind of just talking about that a little bit
so the woman Tracy's client
is sitting in the chair next to me
getting her color done so she turns to me and she says
oh did Tracy say that you're a doctor
and I said yes
I'm a naturopathic doctor
and then I paused because
most people have never heard of a naturopathic doctor
I have no idea what a naturopathic doctor is
so I kind of paused
and was looking at her to see if there was any glimmer
you know of recognition that she actually knew
you know what this very obscure profession was
and she kind of gave the typical blank stare
I was ready to jump in with my little elevator speech
that kind of summarizes what I do
but she did have an understanding of naturopathy
like I say good for her
it's a rare breed
and so then her next question was very specific
and she said what do you think about burping
now I get all the same advertisements you all get right
when I'm on YouTube or Facebook or Insta right
I get all those same ads
and right now with the whole GLP1 craze that we're in
berberine right
it's being sold as like a natural GLP1 Nature's Ozempic
right so
I wasn't quite sure
if that's where she was going with it
but I sort of assumed that
so
I didn't just sort of answer that particular question
I asked her a question back
I said well
why are you looking at Burberry
is it is it for weight loss
and she said yeah
I want to lose weight
so this woman you know
she's a little older than me early 60s I would assume
and she said she'd like to lose some weight
you know tummy fat
that type of thing so if you listen to the YouTube ads
berberine is
magically going to melt that weight off of her right
but I know that her her weight
has to do with what I call the three principles
and the state sort of the
you know the state of those three principles
within side of her body
and if you've been listening to the podcast
you've heard me talk about these three principles
are the three things that our body needs
in order to maintain its state of health
or restore itself to a state of health
if it falls out of a state of health
and our weight is tied to our state of health
not our state of physical fitness
that's something else
our physical fitness level is not the same as our
state of health okay
but our weight if we're holding onto excess body fat
or adipose tissue
that's connected to our state of health
so here's what I told her
I said supplements are a supplement
think about a house that's totally run down
ramshackle you know
the gutters have fallen off
the shutters are like hanging crooked right
the paint is peeling
and a supplement is like
walking into that house and saying
you know what I've got the Mona Lisa here
and I'm gonna hang this beautiful picture right here
in the middle of this peeling
moldy living room
supplements are helpful
when you've got a good foundation
when you've got solid two by fours holding the house up
when the roof is intact when the doors are hung
the windows are you know solid
then you add a supplement
and you're going to get a benefit from that supplement
you know you've got a nice house
and now you come in and you say okay
where am I gonna hang the picture in the living room
that's how supplements should be used
but that's not what's being communicated to you
on YouTube or Instagram
or Facebook or TikTok they're presenting the supplement
as if it's going to turn a ramshackle house
into the Louvre
and I could see the light bulb going off for her
so then I said to her you know
nobody wants to take pharmaceuticals
and she said oh no
I hate taking drugs and I said
but do you want to take fistfuls of supplements
let's figure out why your body
can't lose weight in the first place
it could be any number of factors
let's build the foundation of the house up
and then we come in with a little bit of artwork
and make it into a cozy home
so I want to break that down
because it's not the Burberry right
that woman came to me holding an answer right
she wasn't asking me what's going on with my body
she was asking me to sign off on
or give her my opinion on
the answer that she already had
and that's not like a knock on her
that's all of us right
that's how the entire health world
conventional or alternative or natural health
that's how this whole thing is running right now
you know when you call a chiropractor
they're gonna tell you that your spine is a problem
and they're gonna tell you how expertly
they're going to crack your neck
when you go to an acupuncturist
they're gonna tell you that the problem is your Chi
and that acupuncture is gonna balance it
when you go to a functional medicine doctor
they're
gonna tell you that your biochemistry must be wrong
and so
they're gonna order a few thousand dollars worth of
specialty lab testing
and then they're going to sell you the supplements
that the lab told them to give you
and then there's a fourth one that nobody names
because it doesn't really have an office
it's the it's the algorithm eat clean
sleep eight hours cut out gluten
manage your stress that one's free and it's everywhere
and it's just as much a predetermined
answer as the other three
and then you know
also let's go way out on the far end here
and I'm saying this about
the alternative medicine industry in general
there are certainly practitioners out there who have
decided that you know
everything is being caused by liver flukes
or everything is being caused by parasites in your gut
that was a big big scam about 20 years ago
among non medically trained
so called traditional naturopaths
and it hasn't entirely gone away
you know fibromyalgia
migraines infertility fatigue
weight gain liver flukes here's your cleanse right
so that's the same problem
just at it sort of end stage 1 answer
every single
human being who walks through the door has it
so
the woman with migraines
goes to the chiropractor and hears it's her neck
she goes to the acupuncturist
and she hears that it's her cheek
she goes to the functional medicine doctor
and hears it's her methylation
she goes to the neurologist
and hears that her brain is wired differently
so four different practitioners
four completely different answers
all of them delivered with total confidence
and so she walks out thinking
well they all disagree
so nobody really knows what's wrong with me
it's not that nobody knows what's wrong with her
it's that nobody's asking the right questions
everyone shows up with an answer
almost nobody shows up with a question
now
I know you could listen to me say all that and think
uh sure
of course she says that she's selling her own thing
right so let me tell you about my training
so I can actually crack your spine
I was trained as a naturopathic doctor
we're trained in manipulation that the chiropractors do
in the old school osteopaths
I can perform acupuncture
I was trained in that too
I did acupuncture when I practiced in Arizona
and I worked with people face to face
I can read every single one of the specialty
labs that the functional medicine doctors run
I know what those panels say
and I know what they don't say
and I know what supplements
the lab is going to recommend
to the patient who gets that
gets those labs run
I'm also medically trained
I'm licensed in Arizona
where naturopathic doctors have prescription rights
I can read your laboratory reports
I can read your imaging reports
and I know when a woman's symptom picture means
she has a really serious problem
that needs to be worked up in a very real way
right now and not by me
I can use every hammer in the room here okay
and that's exactly why I don't lead with any of them
when I tell you that chiropractic helps people
I'm not being you know
polite or gracious to chiropractors when I say that
you know labs matter yeah
I can read them myself the tools are not the problem
the problem is that the tool got picked before anybody
asked the question
if your entire training is a spine
then
every woman who walks through your door has a spine
problem not
not because you're being dishonest
it's because that's the only lens that you were handed
if your practice runs on selling supplements
it's
remarkably difficult to conclude
that this particular woman doesn't need any
now I'm not standing outside those professions
throwing rocks
I'm standing inside all of them telling you that
none of them is where you start
where you start is a question
what is blocking your body from recovering
now I have to turn this around
because
it would be too easy to make this whole thing about
practitioners right
you do it too okay
we all do it to ourselves
that woman in the salon chair next to me
she did it
and she is exactly the kind of woman who believes that
she's you know
opted out of the pharmaceutical system right
she goes to an organic salon
she pays more for lower toxicity color
she hates taking drugs she told me so
but she still walked in holding a bottle
and that's the part that I want you to hear
she thought she had escaped the pharmaceutical model
she hadn't she had just changed the label on it
take a substance to make a symptom go away
that is the same logic
whether the bottle came from a pharmacy
or from an Instagram ad
the supplement industry has sold that to us
as the alternative it's not the alternative
it's the same model in a prettier
natural bottle
and that's why I asked her about drugs
not to like call her out because when she said
I hate taking drugs
she had already made my argument for me
all I had to do was ask whether fistfuls of capsules
were really something different
and you do the same thing when you call me
you do the same thing when you talk to me
I hear it before I've asked you anything right
women get on the phone with me and they say
I know it's my hormones I know it's the gluten
I know it's the histamine
I've read about histamine
I'm sure it's a histamine
I've just tried everything for histamine
nothing's worked but I know it's histamine
it all started after the car accident in 2009
now you didn't pull these things out of thin air
you've been living with these migraines for
you know 20 years
and you've been paying close attention
and some of what you've noticed is going to matter
enormously I wanna hear all of it
but once you're holding an answer
everything after that gets sorted into two piles
things that confirm the answer
and things that you don't really look at
so if you're certain it's hormones
the migraine on day 19 is proof
and the one on day four is just noise
if you're certain it's gluten
the flare after the sandwich is proof
and the identical flare after a week with no bread
makes no sense so you set it aside
and it costs you because when you're sure it's gluten
you take out gluten that doesn't fix it
so then you take out dairy
and then eggs and then nightshades
and then anything with tyramine
and your food gets narrower and narrower
and your life gets narrower right along with it
and every one of those restrictions
is quietly taking nutrients off your plate
the very first thing your body needs
is a wide variety of nutrients
coming into coming in the front door
and you've been closing that door in the name of
getting better
so I'm not asking you
to stop believing what you believe about your body
or deny patterns that you've recognized
I'm just asking you to hold it loosely enough
so that we can actually look
now
when people hear me say we have to build a foundation
a solid house a roof that doesn't have a leak in it
right that can hold up to the weather
I know exactly what they picture when they say
when I say this
they think I mean eating off of a food list
these are the good foods these are the bad foods
they think I mean
going to bed on time and getting up on time
they think I mean you know
deep breathing and quote unquote
managing your stress
and that's not what I mean
this is a misunderstanding okay
and this is why so many women tell me
you know I've already done all of that
I've already built the house
the foundation and I'm still getting migraines
so what's really going on here
so a food list
is somebody handing you the blueprints to their house
I'm asking about yours
what's the state of your foundation
what's the state of your two by fours underneath
every house yes
it needs the same things that part is not negotiable
and that's what I call the three principles
No. 1 we have to get the nutrients to your cells
you have to be able to eat a wide variety
of food with a wide variety of nutrients
your digestive tract has to break that food
and actually get the nutrients out of the cells
and
your blood has to carry those nutrients to the cells
any break in that chain
and your cells are running on empty
no matter what the label or the food list tells you
and this is why eating clean is not an answer by itself
you can eat a beautiful diet
and extract and deliver very little of it
the second principle is clearing waste material
your body makes metabolic waste material every minute
24 7 and it takes things
you know it it absorbs things
toxins from the world that it can't use
and all of this has to be detoxified and eliminated
mostly by your liver and when more is coming in
or being made than what can get out
it accumulates and a body carrying an accumulating load
generates symptoms migraines being one of them
and then No. 3 the third principle
is you have to have the vitality to come back
stressors knock your body out of balance
physical ones like illnesses and weather and injury
mental and emotional ones
like grief and conflict
and a relationship that's grinding you down
vitality is the force that brings you back
it's why one woman eats the aged cheese and is fine
and the next one loses two days
and no
it like deep breathing is not what I'm talking about
breathing exercises are a band aid
on patterns that run much deeper
so these three principles are universal
every human being on earth
needs all three of these things
but what you build on top of that foundation
or how you put those pieces of the house together
that's completely yours
you can have a prairie style home
you can have a modern farmhouse
you can have a mid century modern ranch
you can have an all brick mansion
I don't care different women
different lives different bodies
different houses and that's why there's no list
there can't be
the foundation questions are the same for everyone
but the house is not
and I want to tell you why
I feel so strongly about this
because I Learned it the hard way
and I Learned it on other people
so years ago
before I had ever heard the words naturopathic doctor
when I was struggling with chronic migraines
getting a migraine every other day
frequently having to pull over on my commute home
so I could vomit on the side of the road
um I worked with a local chiropractor
and in nine months
he and I completely transform my life
and what we did included acupuncture
included chiropractic dietary changes
things that provided support for my liver
to get these waste materials and toxins out of my body
looking back on it now what he recommended to me
addressed the first and second principles
it didn't really touch the third
one that would come later
for me
I was a completely different person after nine months
not only was I rarely getting a migraine
but I had lost 20 pounds of body fat
so not like 20 pounds on the scale
at 20 pounds of actual adipose tissue in nine months
the woman sitting in the chair next to me at the salon
wants to lose tummy fat and that's exactly what I got
but I didn't get it from a bottle
I got it from somebody helping me work on my foundation
work on my house now
I was working in corporate America at the time
I had a completely different career
different profession
before I became a naturopathic doctor
so you know
I'm going into the office Monday through Friday
and the change in me was so dramatic
my co workers were absolutely flabbergasted
so of course they asked me
you know what did you do
so I told them
and I referred many of them to my chiropractor
and then I also started recommending things
oh well
you know do this or do that
and a number of them tried to do what I did
or they did a little piece of what I did
what I told them that I had done and recommended
and most of them didn't feel good
OK nobody was harmed
nobody had to go to the hospital
but they uh didn't
their body didn't react well
they didn't feel well and
that experience taught me something
that also was a very
was very much a turning point in my life
and that is this is not a joke okay
this is not about following a handout
this is not running somebody else's protocol
this is serious stuff and people can suffer
when you tell them to do something
that isn't the right fit for their body
and it makes physiological sense
which is what makes it worth saying
part of what I did was detoxification support
push
detox on a body whose clearance is already overwhelmed
and that person is going to feel worse
not better but my co workers
you know they weren't lazy
they weren't doing it wrong
they took a plan built for a house
that had already had work done on the foundation
and applied it to houses that hadn't
what I decided standing in that office was
I had better really know what I'm talking about
before I tell anyone else what I did
or what to do
and that as well as knowing that
I have found my calling in the process of all of this
was
that set off the whole chain of events
that LED to the work that I do now
I've told that story in other episodes of the podcast
so when I hear a version of
I spent 20 years with migraines and healed myself
and now I'm gonna help you heal you
I don't hear a villain
I don't hear someone with bad intent
I hear a 20 something telling my coworkers what worked
these are well meaning
good hearted women who get into health coaching
and what they're actually doing is this
they figured out how to build a blueprint
that let them build a home
they love to live in
and now they're handing you that same blueprint
but you may not want to live in that house
and you might want other pictures on the wall
the three principles
give you a foundation and a structure
that part I will give to anybody
for free all day long that's what this podcast is
but the actual house is your house
and I want you to build your house
I don't want you building my house from my blueprint
and there's one more question that I ask
and I ask it about myself
am I the best person to help this woman
can I help her with part of it
and does she need anyone else in addition to me
and this is where my training
is also extraordinarily valuable
because I know what the chiropractor knows
I know what the acupuncturist knows
I know what's on those specialty panels
at the functional medicine
doctors run I know what
an imaging report that your neurologist gets back
I know which questions I can help my client answer
and which one
she's going to have to work with someone else
to answer
and I tell my clients that right at the start
here's what we're going to work on together
and here's a piece that
you're going to need someone else to help you with if
in fact that's the case
so sometimes
what a woman needs is a conventional medical work up
right away
because something in her picture is a red flag
and it's not something that I can help her with
in the way that I work right now
and I would much rather say that right away than not
so what is it that I do
I didn't tell that woman in the salon anything
I couldn't have
I was sitting in a chair with my hair half done
next to her getting her color done
and neither of us was going anywhere
I didn't tell her that Burberry was a scam either
I don't know what Burberry would do for her
or wouldn't do for her because
I don't know anything about the state of her foundation
nobody does nobody's asked her
what she got from me was
a better question than the one that she walked in with
she came in asking should I take this
she left thinking about
why can't my body do this on its own
and that's the whole difference
it's the only difference that has ever mattered
in my work so when a woman asks me
what is it that I do I
I don't have a clean answer for her and
and that's why every practitioner
in that opening list
can tell you what they do in one sentence
I adjust spines I do acupuncture
I run panels and build protocols
Chris
been confident and decided before you ever walked in
I can't do that because
I don't know what kind of house you want to live in
I know what your foundation has to hold
nutrients to your cells
waste materials out of your body
vitality to come back from what life throws at you
that's true for every single person listening
but what we build on top of that
that's yours and I can't tell you what that looks like
until you tell me
if you're living with chronic migraines
and you're ready to understand
what's actually driving them
and what you can do about it
I'd love to talk I offer a free consultation call
the link is in the description
we'll talk about your migraines
and any other health conditions you have
and we'll put together a game plan
to get you feeling better
it's gonna be the best 30 minutes
you've spent on your health
in a long time thanks for being here
I'll talk to you soon