Latest / Motherhood Alliance Podcast / Migraines and Headaches: Causes & Solutions w/ Dr. Julie & Dr. Skip Wyss | Prime Family Chiropractic
Transcript
- Britney: Hey everyone, this is Britt from motherhoodalliance.com and I'm excited to bring you a special four episode series with husband and wife team, doctors, Julie and Skip Weiss from prime family chiropractic centers. Both are doctors of chiropractic who specialize in pregnancy, pediatric, and family care. Interestingly, when they were in chiropractic school, they originally planned to do work with athletes, especially being so close to Green Bay, but life took them in a different direction. And we'll talk a little bit more about that in episode one. All right, we are back with our last episode together. For those listening, if you have not listened to our prior episodes, you're just jumping into this one on migraines and headaches, welcome. We're gonna be introducing Dr. Julie and Dr. Skip to you. But I do wanna let you know what you missed. We've had three amazing episodes so far. Our first one was about sicknesses. Why are my kids always getting sick? Our second one was about constipation. very sciencey in that one. I really enjoyed that one from that perspective. And then our the episode prior to this one, we really talked about over scheduling our kids and what that kind of does to their developing brain and and just some encouragement in different ways to tackle the challenges the society pressure putting on us and the the feeling that we need we can't miss out but also family balance right. So that's kind of what we've touched on so far for topics today we're talking about migraines and headaches. They got married during grad school, found out they were expecting shortly after, and were mentored by a coach who ran one of the largest pediatric chiropractic offices in Canada, which I understand helped shape the focus of your practice today. Today, they're passionate about helping families take a more proactive approach to health by giving parents a supportive, judgment-free space to ask questions and make informed decisions for their kids. They're also raising two kids of their own, along with two French bulldog puppies. So they definitely understand the real life chaos and joy of family life. Julie and Skip, we're so glad you're here. And Dr. Julie, know you had told me that you really feel like headaches in kids are rising these days. Why do you think this is and what are some signs and symptoms other than like, mom, my head hurts, that kids might be experiencing that would indicate that this is a problem for them? Drs. Julie And Skip Wyss: Thanks for having us. Thank you for having us. Yeah, it's definitely on the rise. I mean, if we look at it, like we're on a podcast right now, but we're staring at a computer, right? So we just chatted like, we're definitely going to have to decompress after this. anybody, like kids that are school age, they're ⁓ their Chromebooks at school. They have cell phones or on tablets. ⁓ I think that is the biggest thing, right? Because our vision, our eyes is what it takes in ⁓ world, right? What's right behind our eyeballs? Our brain. So when we're constantly looking at screens, we're absorbing the blue light from it, the EMF, the radiation, all of those things that is going in and that is changing our brain. It's changing how it's developing, how the neurons are firing. And then ultimately the symptom because of how we're taking the world, the headache is what is the outpouring symptom of that. Britney: How would you define the difference between a headache and a migraine? Drs. Julie And Skip Wyss: So if you look at definitions of a migraine, it's an ongoing headache for more than three hours. migraine can go from cluster to tension to all these different things. Migraines generally come with an aura, which means there's a visual disturbance where you will see like holographs or maybe ⁓ black spots your vision ⁓ or your will complain that things look rainbow colored or things seem have a shadow to them. Those are auras. So that's affecting their vision. migraines will come with an auditory sensitivity as well. So they'll be super ⁓ sensitive to noises, whether they're super soft or super loud, same thing with bright sun, that's another visual stimulus. And then also you may notice a pattern in their speech, where they're slurred or it seems like they just can't put sentences together well, that's all signs that they have migraines, if they're telling you their head hurts. A headache is generally defined where it's, it's, it's, they're usually headaches usually last less than two hours. Um, it can be due to hydration. They can get stress headaches, which means they, they feel like a band wrapped around their head. Like that's a tension, my attention headache or tension migraine, but I don't think it's a migraine. Um, it can be brought on due to, overstimulus. But bottom line is, is that it doesn't require them to go into like a black room, shut the curtain, shut off all their lights and bury their head in the pillow or fall asleep in order for it to go away, they can still go on functioning. Typically, if you talk to somebody that suffers from migraines, they can't function when they have their migraine. And they know the signs and symptoms. The other sign is that they'll get an upset stomach, so they'll feel like they want to puke. A lot of kids will tell you that they get like, they actually will say a name for it, like they get pukeys or they get the butterflies in their stomach. Those are all signs of a migraine and a headache is everything else off of that. Britney: Can a migraine have all those different sensory stimulation pieces, whether it's the visual, the auditory, the stomach, without a head-like pulsing sensation? so how would you know if your kiddo was talking about their stomach hurting that this is stomach from a migraine versus just like a stomach? Drs. Julie And Skip Wyss: Well, that as a parent, have to use a little bit of our own abilities to filter, deduction, filter out the information coming in. All of us have, if we're listening and we all have children, if we do, what are your children's tendencies like? Do they always complain to you of ⁓ a ache? Is this that just randomly comes on and then all of sudden they're shut down for hours? ⁓ Those are that that migraine has come on. Does that make sense versus having a fever, wanting to actually puke? Most migraines don't come with a fever. They don't come with an actual immune system response. They'll come with an autonomic response, which can be sweatiness ⁓ or getting cold, but there isn't really a fever with it. ⁓ I make one thing to about though, because we're talking about migraines and headaches in children, but as an adult, Britney: Yeah. Drs. Julie And Skip Wyss: If you suffer from a migraine that is getting constantly getting worse and not getting any better. And it's the first it's it's the worst migraine that you feel you've ever had in your life. Please seek medical attention. That is the sign that something terribly could be going wrong with your brain. could have a blockage. You could have an aneurysm. You could have a bariannurism. Like there's other things that are life threatening. So I just I just want to make that announcement right now. Like there are some migraines that They need to be taken extremely seriously. Most of them are not like that, but we need to hold space for that. Britney: And are migraines something where somebody gets migraines, it's something that's potentially and or like a pattern? Because a headache to me is kind of like a here and type thing. But when I hear of somebody who says, get migraines, it's kind of like, this is like a reoccurring thing that I experience. Is that kind of part of the definition or not really? Drs. Julie And Skip Wyss: I don't know if that would be part of the definition, but we see it very common. And usually once they're maybe adjusted and we take care of them, I try to go back through, well, like what's causing this? The number one is usually stress. Stress for many people can be that first indicator. or if they're severely dehydrated, we know that it'll go from headache to migraine maybe within ⁓ 30 minutes. But I think stress is usually a really big starting point for a lot people if they can't get that under control. But why we're seeing it more and more kids is ⁓ the screen time, right? It's that blue light into the eyes and blue light glasses are great. That still doesn't justify the amount of time that we should be on the technology that that definitely needs to get addressed. And I would say like the worst one is when somebody says, ⁓ I woke up like this, meaning it was like, ⁓ I just woke up, no. Chances are your cervical curve or how you're sitting throughout the day or lack of movement. It wasn't just how you maybe slept that night, but your posture has a huge play that maybe it could have just been started as a headache, but now we have all these other things together, which is now full blown turned it into ⁓ debilitating migraine for somebody. Britney: Yeah, we do have we have blue light blocking glasses for our kids now. So, you know, there's we're not a big screen family. really try to limit it. But once in a while, a family movie night is great, you know, and so that feel that's just something that you really enjoy. Yeah. Drs. Julie And Skip Wyss: Well that's perfect. That's excellent. There's nothing wrong with that. That's the 80-20 rule. Yep. There's a big difference between having a screen five to 10 feet away from your face versus 10 inches. And I think that that is one of the things that parents really need to understand that when we're this close with our cell phone versus watching a TV that's 10 feet away. Britney: my kids for those, ⁓ right? Yeah, mean, we're all doing our best here, right? Hmm. Drs. Julie And Skip Wyss: there's a big difference in the light that's coming into our eyes. It's dispersed when it's 10 feet away versus directly being just bombarded into your eyeballs. that's a big deal. ⁓ mean, even in podcasting, like when you're staring at a screen, you should have eye relief on. On your phone, if you have an iPhone, it's called eye relief filter. It's not called blue light. On a Samsung, it's called blue light on Android. But ⁓ it's designed take some of the blue light down. Why blue light is so dangerous is because blue light really does affect your pineal gland. Your pineal gland is where melatonin's produced. And melatonin is the major sleep of the body, but here's the thing, it's not a chemical, it's a hormone. And a lot of people take melatonin to help themselves sleep and you're doing is taking more hormone. and you're shutting down your body's ability to naturally produce melatonin. And if you're constantly putting blue light into your body through LED lights, through LEDs on our phone, through LEDs in your TVs, you're changing your melatonin production. And commonly in kids, when we see kids that have migraines and headaches, they have a very poor sleep pattern, and that's due to the melatonin production in their body. So what do parents get told? Well, let's give them melatonin. I know that melatonin is something give to a vast majority of the pediatric population that's not sleeping because they put it into gummies. As soon as I see anything put into a gummy form, it's meant to be given to children. And that's not okay. Anything that's made chewable, that's designed to get a kid to settle down, has been tested on adults and now they're just putting it into the pediatric form. Not okay. I've seen parents give their kids CBD. Britney: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Drs. Julie And Skip Wyss: I've seen parents give their kids even THC gummies to get them to like in extreme circumstances to get their bodies to settle down. Why this is extremely important to understand in the course of migraines and headaches is it's an overactive nervous system. So now the brain basically is trying to do math stage at a Metallica concert versus quietly in the bedroom where we can organize our thoughts. So that ⁓ causes brain exhaustion, which then leads to migraines and normal headaches. Britney: Yeah. And I think as you're talking about the melatonin for kids, it's like, by the time a parent is putting their kid to bed, they're just done for the day. And they're just like, go to sleep, go to sleep. And so they, and this is where conversations like this are so helpful because there's no shame in how a parent is feeling about that. We, we have been there. We understand that it is exhausting and you are just ready for your own time or just ready to go to bed by yourself. Drs. Julie And Skip Wyss: Yeah, I know. Yep. Britney: I do want to return to the conversation around posture though, because I think that this is a huge piece ⁓ in kids these days and adults, I mean, I think about how many adults are sitting at computers all day long. Like right now, yeah, we're sitting at a computer, but I know after we're done here, you're going to be going to see your patients and you're going to be interacting with them. I'm going to be probably taking my dog for a walk and taking a break, but there's so many people that are stuck on their computers. And then also even our kids these days, how many times is that you hear even a parent, even if a kid isn't on a screen saying, stand up straight. ⁓ we talked about the squat, they have great in that, but then they start slouching over in life and it just starts out when you're a kid. So let's talk about how can we build up our posture habits to be positive, especially with our kids as they're growing up. Drs. Julie And Skip Wyss: ⁓ least 30 minutes before like scheduled bedtime, no more blue light, no more phones, no TV. If that's your time to journal, ⁓ read in your Bible, sit together, say prayers, nothing 30 minutes before bedtime. But then having a routine, I find it interesting that we see so many babies and it's like, yeah, I have my baby routine that we wind down and then we take a bath and we do baby massage and we snuggle. Why are we not doing that to our eight year olds, our five year olds, our 10 year olds, 15 year olds, right? That emotional connection, that bond. will start to change again the chemicals in the body, in the brain, which can also decrease the prevalence of headaches. So having a really, really good bedtime routine is important. So with posture, we actually have a posture chart that parents can have. just need to, they can hit us up. They can email us at info at primefamilycenters.com. It's very simple for them to look at. ⁓ a rubric and it has different shapes of children. and you can start scoring your child's posture. My question for you parents out there is when was the last time you actually looked at your child's back with their shirt off and actually looked at how they were standing? Most of you will see that they will have a high shoulder on one side over the other. Their head will be forward, their shoulders will be slumped. They may notice that their butt is extremely tilted back versus forward. Those are all signs of an imbalanced nervous system. Your nervous system drives your posture. So if my nervous system isn't communicating correctly, my posture will be off because the whole point of your nervous system is to stay balanced. And if I have, if I look at the muscles of my spine and I see that they're overdeveloped on one side versus the other, where if you look at your child's shoulders and you see that like one muscle, everybody like your traps, right? That's the muscles that run from your shoulders to your neck and then down your back slightly at like a triangle, right? Like this. But what happens is that you'll see overdevelopment one side versus the other, and it has nothing to do with handedness. In fact, the side that they're not dominant on is usually the overdeveloped side. This is not okay because now we don't have muscular balance. What actually runs muscle tone is the nervous system. It's not how much you overwork it and build it up, like that you can manually do, but your nervous system is actually what keeps it balanced from side to side. If we don't have this happen, now we start developing curvature of the spine because that's your body's normal compensation, I mean abnormal compensation, to poor communication. So now your body's changing shape to try to get the best communication it can on the inside so it can actually function the best it can and compensate versus adapt. So it decreases the child's resiliency. What happens then is that this will lead to headaches and migraines because their upper neck isn't in the right position. So now the body is exhausted, which most of the time people that deal with stress migraines or stress headaches, it's because of exhaustion. And it comes back to actually our first conversation back on episode one with you is if we have a nervous system that's not communicating properly, it's exhausted. how do we know this? Because the child will take a protective state in their posture, which is slump shoulders forward, head forward, trying to protect their torso. If you think of a baby when they're born, our babies when they're born and they're laying in your arms, are they curled up or are they completely stretched out like this? They're curled up, right? They're curled up because they're protecting themselves. It's called sympathetic dominance. It's a protective mechanism. That's fight or flight. As an adult, what reverses that in a baby is called their morals reflex. So when we go and put a kid in their crib and they like their arms out or they do this big extension response which resets them sleeping which is horrible, which every parent crazy, but that's a normal reflex. That morals reflex makes them extending, get tall and long. and it takes them from a hyper excited fight or flight to rest and digest. Same thing in your kids as a teenager. If they're slumped forward, head forward, like this posture, except with their heads down, or if we're holding our phone, like that, that is a fight or flight posture, which means it's an overstimulated nervous system. And instead of them resting and digesting and adapting and thriving, they are now in survival state. which will lead to headaches. Britney: Wow. This is really interesting. So I am seeing just this vicious cycle though of, know, you're getting overstressed or overstimulated. so you're going into that hunched forward posture, which is then going to create a ricochet ⁓ negative side effects and habits where it's harder to come from that. Right. And it takes a lot of intention to get good posture again. I mean, okay, let's go into solutions mode. So first let's talk about solutions for. ⁓ Drs. Julie And Skip Wyss: you Exactly. Exactly. Britney: ⁓ chronic, like bad posture since we're on the topic. Obviously, think chiropractic is going to play a role in that, but for people who are struggling with migraines and headaches on a frequent basis, this very well could be part of their problem. And then, ⁓ so let's stick with that first, but then after that, I'm going to revisit the topic of if you're actually having a migraine or headache right now, what can we do about it? So first kind of long-term 10,000 foot view, how can we correct ourselves? Drs. Julie And Skip Wyss: chiropractic. That is the most simple thing. I know that you're talking to chiropractors and you expect us just to say chiropractic. No, it really is chiropractic. That is the foundation because, we work hand in hand with PTs, OTs. again, if we're talking about the muscle imbalances, we need to stretch the muscles, we need all of these things to happen. The message that's going to tell the muscle what to do comes from our brain, comes from our nervous system. So it's kind of, they really go together that if, I'm gonna start a new ⁓ gym routine or a gym workout, it would make sense to then, okay, let's begin chiropractic here so we can make sure that when we're lifting, we're getting that resilience, we're getting that symmetry on both sides of our body. Because the last thing that we want is to only be working one side of our body. Nobody goes to the gym to work one side of our body. But if you go to the gym, now start looking around and you can tell the people that are under good chiropractic care versus those that aren't because lots of times they'll have bigger biceps, bigger triceps, maybe neck muscles more defined on one side or the other. Same thing in the calves and your thighs. So the foundation really is chiropractic only being that we're the only doctors that take care of the nervous system and the system is what controls every nook and cranny inside of you. Migraines and headaches are a three-faceted approach. And number one is the ability to keep your head on straight, like Dr. Julie talked about. Hydration is key, right? And nutrition is another big support. So if we're lacking magnesium, right? We talked about that in the last episode with constipation issue, I two episodes ago, which actually works for the last episode too. Kids need magnesium to stay calm. But magnesium is a big one to help just relax muscles. And the other thing is, is like you said, hydration, but posture in the posture, if you see abnormal posture, it has to do with the head not being on straight. And in our 19 years of care here at our office, we have rarely, rarely ever taken care of a patient that has not seen positive results with chiropractic care in changing their posture, changing their communication, which then a result changes their headache. Britney: Do you guys, you know, let's say an adult is coming into you who's had poor posture for years, probably stemmed from their childhood. Maybe you're even seeing it stemming from their children already. But when they're coming in for chiropractic care, do you also help them kind of evaluate their everyday situations? Because if they're sitting in a hunched over position at their desk for 10 hours a day, Drs. Julie And Skip Wyss: more. Mm-hmm. Britney: you're really fighting an ongoing battle. So it's almost like we have to do chiropractic, but also these habit changes too. So do you help them kind of identify those? Drs. Julie And Skip Wyss: Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, and that's like why our workshop is really good at that, but that's where it's kind of, okay, we're gonna start this, but tell us a little bit more. Like what is your job? Oh, I said, well, can we do a ball chair? Can we option to get a standing work desk? So yeah, ergonomics has a huge play in that. The foods that we eat, the things that we're drinking or not drinking if we're not hydrated, but also our environment. If we're constantly in a stressful, overwhelmed environment, and that could be work, that could be home, that could be relationship, that could be family, it's also understanding those things and, what tools do we have? what tools can we help for patients to help ⁓ with that stress management? Is it time? Is it just some meditation time? Is it church? it getting rid of those groups of friends? or those activities, sometimes it just, we need somebody else to pull those things out that person to then understand, ⁓ I didn't even realize that that's been unhealthy for all of these years. Britney: Awesome. This has been really great. Last question related to the topic today. If you started getting a migraine right now and you had one today, what would you do to help alleviate it? Drs. Julie And Skip Wyss: I would look at number one, would automatically look at taking magnesium. I would be taking between 500 and 600 milligrams of magnesium every four to five hours to help with the muscle tone, right? Number two is, is you gotta look at hydration. Am I consuming enough water? And is there electrolytes in the water? So is our body maybe short on electrolytes, which is causing a mitochondrial problem, which is causing your migraine. So make sure that you're properly hydrated. And then number... Three is food and glucose levels. So do I have low blood sugar? Am I properly fed? Did I eat today? Did I consume a lot of caffeine? Which then would make you more dehydrated, not hydrated. then number four, which I think should be number one is, did I get assessed by my chiropractor today? Like that is a big deal. Making sure that the one factor you actually have major control over is in the hands of another person, which is chiropractic. but making sure that your nervous system is fully communicating and functioning. If we know that, that eliminates a massive factor which causes a great deal of migraines and headaches. That's where I would start. I stay away from as many non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs as I could. I understand there's a place for them. I also understand people that have to take them. If you're somebody that takes them very sparingly, they might actually be pretty effective but you're not actually fixing the problem you're just putting a band-aid on it to help you get through the day which I totally understand. You want to avoid them though if you chronically take them your body's not responsive to them anyways. Britney: All right, that's very helpful. think people are always just like, I need help now, right? So if that's the situation that someone is listening to this for. Drs. Julie And Skip Wyss: Mm-hmm. Yeah If you need if you need help right now Pick up the phone and call me the reason why is that? Here's the reason why I will see you I don't care where you're at if you have a problem if you call and you feel it's an emergency We're gonna figure out a way to get you in that day And we're gonna figure out a way how to help you and if it's a migraine and it's that bad have somebody drive you But we will make sure that we can help you. I will do it. That's how we work Britney: Yeah. I love that. I love that. All right. Final question kind of rounding out all four of our episodes here. What does the future of prime family care, practic centers hold? Drs. Julie And Skip Wyss: That's a great question. mission is to impact the health of the community, right? And we've only just, I think, hit the ⁓ the tip of it. ⁓ it's being here to give resources for our families. I say we built our clinic the way that we would want to be cared for ourselves and how we would want our kids to be cared for. So we're selfish in that, that we can check ourselves every day, we get adjusted every day, same thing with our kids, but we want those same things for our families. And to not be judged on things that maybe that we did in the past and now I maybe know better or I choose not to change those things, it's no judgment because we've been judged, right? We know what that feels like, but to be a resource, to have the resources, just to have the open communication and understanding because there is so much craziness and chaos in the world. Sometimes we just need a place where it's okay to show up and to just know that you're gonna be ⁓ welcomed and in a really safe place. I think Julie pretty much hit it out of the park. We're going to continue to serve our community. You're going to continue to see us extremely active. Hopefully you may see us opening up more clinics and being able to use our brand of chiropractic wherever we can to help as many people as we possibly can, especially pregnancies and pediatrics. I don't know, but Brittany, before we were Prime Family, we for 15 years, 14 years, were Weese Family Clinic of Chiropractic. And so all we did was a name change. All we did was- People thought that we left. People thought we left or we got brought out. So Prime Family is still us, we're set up that we, Dr. Skip, he trains other chiropractors in the profession to ⁓ care and treat pregnancy and pediatrics skillfully expertise, very specific, so that they can experience the same. health and healing that we have in our clinic in other states and other places. So it was just a brand. Yeah, I find that the simpler we can keep chiropractic without over complicating it, the simpler it is for our patients to understand and the simpler it is and easier it is for them to get help. that's the key. Britney: Yeah, perfect. Thank you both so much for joining me for all four of these episodes. think our audience ⁓ If made it to the end and they've listened to all four, I know they're walking away with a whole head full of knowledge and probably need to listen to them again, because you covered a lot. I'm really thankful for your time. Thanks, you guys. Drs. Julie And Skip Wyss: you Thanks, Brittany. Bye, Brittany. Thank you.