In this episode of Spotlight on Migraine, host Molly O’Brien is joined by neurologist Dr. Jessica Lowe (@DoctorBrainBarbie) to debunk common migraine myths, explain viral migraine hacks, and share practical advice for safely consuming health information online.

Does migraine always come with a headache? Can migraine symptoms change over time? Does migraine get better in pregnancy? We answer these questions and discuss why you shouldn’t blame yourself for migraine attacks. Dr. Lowe breaks down the viral McDonald’s migraine hack, daith piercings, claw clips, and other internet-famous migraine remedies, explaining what may help and what can be harmful. You’ll also learn how to better navigate and consume migraine information online. 

Follow Dr. Lowe:

• Instagram
• TikTok

In this video:

• Common migraine myths debunked
• The truth about migraine triggers
• Viral migraine hacks explained
• How to recognize trustworthy migraine information online
• Tips for navigating migraine misinformation and scams on social media

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TRANSCRIPT

Molly O’Brien: When it comes to migraine, there are many misconceptions, not to mention the internet is full of tips and tricks, supposed cures. But how much of that is actually true? Hi, I’m Molly O’Brien, and this is Spotlight on Migraine. In this episode, we are diving into some common migraine myths and the truth behind some of those migraine hacks. 

To help us break it all down, I’d like to introduce our guest, Dr. Jessica Lowe. You might know her better as Doctor Brain Barbie. Dr. Jessica Lowe is a double board-certified neurologist and epileptologist who specializes in migraine and epilepsy care. She’s also the creator of Doctor Brain Barbie, where she’s built a large following by breaking down complex neurological conditions and calling out medical misinformation online. Through both her clinical work and digital platform, she’s passionate about helping patients better understand their symptoms, navigate treatment options, and feel empowered in their care. 

Thank you so much for being here. We’re pumped to talk to you.

 

Dr. Jessica Lowe: Thanks for having me. 

 

O’Brien: And you’re the perfect person to have this conversation all about migraine myths, misconceptions because you’ve kind of built up a whole brand about this. 

 

Lowe: Yeah.

 

O’Brien: I guess we’ll start off just real quick. How did you get interested in talking so much about migraine myths, misconceptions, trends – all that kind of good stuff?

 

Lowe: It was very clear that it is what the people wanted. I am a neurologist with migraines. And I touched on that briefly on my social media, and it just went wild. 

 

O’Brien: Congratulations on a whirlwind year. 

 

Lowe: Thanks.

 

O’Brien: We love that you’re going to share all of your knowledge with us. So let’s set the stage for folks, how we want to do this. I’m going to introduce a topic, give you a statement, and I’d love for you to say if it’s a myth, if it’s true, if it’s false, if the answer is yes, no, maybe sometimes, explain the nuance behind it. 

 

Lowe: Cool, let’s do it. 

 

O’Brien: We know that migraine is classified as a headache disorder. So want to know does headache always come with a migraine attack? 

 

Lowe: No, and this gets really confusing. So there’s actually something called a silent migraine. The physiologic process behind migraine is that cortical spreading depression – that wave that moves across the brain – and it causes this massive release of inflammatory peptides in the brain. And, yes, that leads to pain because it sensitizes those nerves and those vessels in the head and the face. Because it is such a systemic process, it isn’t just the pain. And you know this for the patients who do have pain with their migraines, they also have the aura sometimes. They have the nausea, the vomiting. They have the cravings, the yawning, the frequent urination – things that you’re like, what is happening? And so there are instances when that pain doesn’t come forward, but you have all the other stuff. 

True to form in any disease process, while the disease itself is the same, the way it manifests in each patient can be different because we are all different. And that is why you have subtypes of migraine and subtypes of headaches. So, again, very complex process. And it’s important for patients to understand that so that they don’t feel like they’re losing it and so that they can truly, in that confidence and understanding their own disease process, advocate for themselves. 

 

O’Brien: So sticking with the headache topic, migraine is often described as a throbbing pain, pain on one side of the head. Does it always have to be like that? Or can it feel differently? 

 

Lowe: Every patient is different. We say all the time in medicine, patients don’t read the textbooks, patients aren’t textbooks. And so, if you look at the criteria for diagnosing migraine, one of them is it’s a unilateral throbbing pain or… And then there are a bunch of other criteria. So while that unilateral throbbing, pounding pain is characteristic and really supports that diagnosis, that’s not to say that having a bilateral pain or something that feels more pressure than throbbing negates it being a migraine. That does not say, well, the diagnosis is now off the table. 

 

O’Brien: Will migraine feel the same your whole life if you have it? Or can it change throughout the course of your life?

 

Lowe: It’s going to change most likely. Your body is still changing. Your body is still evolving. The things that you are consuming, the environmental factors that you are exposed to, the life that you are living is evolving. So it should be no surprise that the disease process is also going to evolve. It, more often than not, will change, and that is why patients will come in and say, I was good, my meds were working, and over the past year, it’s impossible to get ahead of it, something has changed. 

And it may not be a clear-cut trigger. You moved or you developed a new trigger, or you have a different job. Those things are a little more obvious. It might be the most subtle thing, or it might be something that we can’t measure because it’s happening in your aging body. And what I tell patients with most neurological diseases: Your brain is aging. 

 

O’Brien: Yeah.

 

Lowe: When you age, it changes. And so those networks might change. As we age, the brain starts to shrink a little bit. And then the other factors in your body that can affect the migraine also change, and this is why it is, again, such a complex disease process. Because those factors will be different in everyone, and the levels of hormones and the external factors and the internal factors. And that is why we say all the time, you treat the patient because the patients are going to be different. 

 

O’Brien: Everybody’s going to be different. Migraine is different, which is so fun. 

 

Lowe: It’s so fun. 

 

O’Brien: It’s so fun.

 

Lowe: It’s so fun. 

 

O’Brien: Just when you think you understand, no.

 

Lowe: They’re like, I got it. They’re like, just kidding, perimenopause. 

 

O’Brien: Yeah, exactly. So get ready. 

 

Lowe: I’ll just book her a pregnancy in there. Everything goes off the rails, and you’re like, all right, here we go. 

 

O’Brien: Just when you think you’re ready for it. Oh, my gosh. All right. We mentioned pregnancy, so let’s talk a little bit about that. They’ll say migraine will get better during pregnancy. Is that true? Is it false? Is it both? Does it depend?

 

Lowe: So I will tell patients it often improves but not always because hormones play a huge role in this. Migraine is very hormonally sensitive, especially to estrogen fluctuations. And you’ll see that in the stages of the menstrual cycle and how that affects the menstrual migraines, how we approach the treatment to menstrual migraines, things like that. 

During pregnancy, particularly in the second and third trimesters, estrogen becomes very high and very stable in most patients, especially the ones that have menstrual-related migraines. You see that. And so when you have that stable estrogen, you’ll see significant improvement in the migraines. But the important nuance is it doesn’t improve for everyone. Some patients stay the same. Some patients actually get worse, especially the ones with aura. 

 

O’Brien: Interesting. 

 

Lowe: So there are people who have never had migraines that get migraines at pregnancy. This tells you again just how complex this is. And from a scientific standpoint, stable estrogen, migraines should improve. But this depends on how sensitive your migraines are to problems, and so it is very patient specific. 

 

O’Brien: Let’s talk a little bit about this idea behind stigma that someone is at fault for causing their migraine attack or triggering their migraine attack – however you want to put it – bringing about their migraine attack. You can often hear other people asking questions – or maybe you’re thinking about it yourself – like, what did I do? Why this time did I get this bad attack? 

 

Lowe: Patients come and say, did I cause my migraine? I say, no, you didn’t. This is a neurological disease process involving the excitability of the brain at times, often genetically influenced. You did not cause the disease process. What they conflate is the migraine attack, which triggers can impact, and migraine, which is the disease itself. And I think that’s an important distinction to make. And the way we equate it is it’s kind of like asthma. You have asthma, and then you have asthma attacks. So you always have the asthma; the asthma is there. Then sometimes you have an asthma attack. Migraine’s the same. You have migraine. You have migraine, period. You have the disease process. Your brain is wired that way, period. And then sometimes you have a migraine attack. 

This part – the having the migraine – is not something you have caused. That is just how your brain is. The migraine attack is something that is often influenced by triggers, which again, because migraine is an excitability disorder, the brain gets a little too excited and it overshoots, and then you get all this pain and all these symptoms. Triggers can affect the threshold of that excitability. And so when you are exposed to certain triggers, you may cross that threshold and end up in a migraine attack. And so you think I caused this. Well, you didn’t. 

First of all, there are a lot of triggers that you have no control over. Great one: barometric pressure. Another great one: hormones. Just weather in general, really. There are a lot of things that you don’t have control over in terms of triggers. And then there are triggers that you do have some control over, and this is where you see patients start to blame themselves. Well, I didn’t drink enough water, or I didn’t get enough sleep last night. Okay, fine. Those triggers might affect the threshold for migraine. But in a person who doesn’t have migraine, that trigger wouldn’t cause it. 

It’s good to have accountability. It’s good to be mindful. It’s good to track your triggers and stay on top of it. You want to be an active participant in your health, but it’s important for them to understand you didn’t cause your brain to have migraine. That’s how your brain is wired. What we then do moving forward is we try to control what we can control.

 

O’Brien: The asthma analogy, just the way we talk about migraine really does make a big difference because it really does put it in perspective that…

 

Lowe: Yeah.

 

O’Brien: …you can have asthma, you can have migraine, you can have an asthma attack, you can have a migraine attack. Because people understand that. General public understands that. Super helpful.

 

Lowe: And when the asthma patient has the asthma attack, no one says, just take a deep breath.

 

O’Brien: Well can you imagine if they did?

 

Lowe: Just take a deep breath, you’ll be all right. Go drink some water, you’ll be okay. Sleep it off. What?

 

O’Brien: What?

 

Lowe: And so this is why I like to use that analogy. And we’ve seen it as we really moved forward with this type of language. 

 

O’Brien: You were talking a little bit about the McDonald’s hack. This is something that went wild on the internet.

 

Lowe: The McMigraine?

 

O’Brien: Yeah, the McMigraine. Brand disclaimer here: this is not advertising. We’ll try to use some generics like…

 

Lowe: No, the Coke and fries.

 

O’Brien: …French fries and a cola, something like that. 

 

Lowe: A cola.

 

O’Brien: So how about you fill us in on this whole «McDonald’s» hack. 

 

Lowe: The first thing that I will say is the idea of this hack working is something that people do before they get into the actual attack. When you’re in an attack, you can’t see, you’re probably nauseated, vomiting. At that point, we’re beyond a cola and fries. 

 

O’Brien: Yeah.

 

Lowe: It’s typically that prodrome phase, which, again, is why we talked about the phases of migraine. You’ve got the prodrome, you’ve got the aura, you’ve got the attack, you’ve got the postdrome. So that prodrome/aura, if you have it – not everyone has an aura – that’s typically where people see benefit of these hacks.

 

O’Brien: Yeah.

 

Lowe: Whatever the hack may be. With this particular hack, fries and a large cola that is ice cold – it has caffeine in it, it’s got sugar in it – and fries – some food and some salt. And so if you look at common triggers – and we’ve talked about this – dehydration, electrolyte fluctuations, hunger, hypoglycemia – those two go together – this is a quick way to address quite a few common triggers. And so patients who do find benefit in this, they are probably the patients whose biggest trigger is dehydration and fluctuations in glucose and electrolytes. And so in doing so, this is just a fast way to get it all in and stop it before it hits that aura or hits that attack or at least diminish it a little bit so it’s not as severe. 

Does it work for everyone? No. Because, again, everyone’s triggers are different. If you’re a person who electrolytes and sugar and dehydration are not big triggers for you, it’s probably not going to do much. The caffeine might help, but caffeine also makes migraines worse for some patients. Again, because everyone is different and their process is different and triggers are different. So for me, caffeine’s a big deal, so chugging a cola that has caffeine in it and sugar, that does help me. Also, I’m a physician; I probably haven’t eaten all day because I’m running between patients. So chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, feeling better. Stuff some fries in my mouth, feeling better. All right, cool. Stop it in its tracks. 

This is not something you should be doing every time you get a migraine. Because in and of itself, it is unhealthy and will create other health problems. And like we said earlier, we don’t want to create another problem while we’re trying to fix one of them. But the prodrome is a little more insidious. It’s happening most of the time and you don’t even know. 

 

O’Brien: So sneaky.

 

Lowe: And so people will be yawning, or they’ll have increased urination, and they think, oh, okay. That is all of this hypothalamic activation, and what does that also control? Hunger and cravings. And get ready, this is going to mess with you a little bit here. When people say chocolate triggers my migraines, I say, does it trigger your migraines or were you craving it in the prodrome, so you ate it and then the attack came – because it was going to come anyway – and you blamed the chocolate? That prodrome stage, you’re craving things, and I think that a lot of the food triggers… There are well-documented food triggers. We know the science behind them – chocolate, wine, cheese, the tannins – all of those things, we know. But there are some patients that I really do think during their prodrome they’re craving the salt, the fries, the comfort foods, the things that your body’s like, I’m preparing for war.

 

O’Brien: Yeah.

 

Lowe: You don’t know I’m preparing for war, but I am. So get some high-calorie stuff in me because I’m going to need it because I’m about to projectile all of it out. I need as much as I can get. And so there are those patients that I am convinced their prodrome is a craving for chocolate, and that chocolate gets blamed when that attack hits. 

 

O’Brien: I love the prodrome. I think it’s so fascinating. One of my favorite things to talk about is chocolate and how, well, is it a trigger? I love that conversation, so…

 

Lowe: Yeah.

 

O’Brien: …you just added that to the migraine myths. So let’s talk about something that’s been around for a long time, as long as I’ve known. People always want to ask about the daith piercing. It’s a piercing that you get in your ear. I think I said that correctly. Does this work? What’s the science behind it? Is there science behind it? 

 

Lowe: I thought it was pronounced daith, and then I think it’s doth. I made a video on daith piercings, and I was promptly corrected in the comments. 

 

O’Brien: Okay, so doth. Let me ask you again. 

 

Lowe: They know what we’re talking about.

 

O’Brien: Yeah, they know. 

 

Lowe: The piercing, right there. Daith, doth – however you pronounce it – there’s no robust clinical evidence behind it. The thought is that you do have branches of the vagus nerve that run through the ear, and in doing that piercing, you are providing some nerve stimulation to the vagus nerve, which traditionally will minimize pain when stimulated. It’s not a reliable or recommended treatment. A lot of what we see in terms of benefit is either placebo or a nonspecific nerve stimulation thing.

First of all, exactly where your vagus nerve runs is going to vary anatomically by individual, and where it gets pierced is going to vary anatomically. It’s a small part of your ear, but there’s landscape there for you to move up and down, left and… And so, it’s just not reliable. Probably 40% of patients say, yeah, it helps; 60% say it didn’t. It’s not something that we have strong, strong scientific data to back it up. I think the thought behind it could make sense, just physiologically, but we don’t see that translate into proven benefit. 

 

O’Brien: So if you want to get one because it’s cute, go for it. It is not a proven migraine treatment, but hey, placebo helps too.

 

Lowe: Yeah, it’s hit or miss. And that’s what I tell patients. If it’s not going to hurt you and you want to do it, you can go ahead, but I cannot recommend it. The issue is a lot of these hacks end up hurting people.

 

O’Brien: Yeah.

 

Lowe: And that’s where we get into trouble. Like snorting pepper up your nose.

 

O’Brien: Talk to me about it. What is that? Why?

 

Lowe: Can we not do this? There’s nothing… 

 

O’Brien: Please.

 

Lowe: I’m like, you did what? There’s this idea that red pepper or crushing red pepper and snorting it… Do not do this. It does not help. All it’s going to do is assault your mucosa and your sinuses, and you’re probably going to end up in the ER. It’s going to burn your nose. The thought behind it, I think… I’m sweating just thinking about it. 

 

O’Brien: Me too. Just so uncomfortable.

 

Lowe: Because people put this stuff out there, and people who are desperate for pain relief try it, and they end up hurt. And I’m like, can you not hurt my patients? Can you not? 

 

O’Brien: Yeah.

 

Lowe: The thought is, I think, pepper is going to activate capsaicin, the capsaicin receptors. That same thing that when you eat it, it burns. 

 

O’Brien: Okay.

 

Lowe: And so it creates this pain, but it’s just like a capsaicin rub also, that burning, tingly, icy-hot feeling. The thought is that if you expose the receptors to a lot of capsaicin, it’ll desensitize it, so it’ll minimize pain ultimately. There’s also this thought of this gate control theory where you’re redirecting the processing of pain to the burning. And I’m like, why does that seem like a reasonable alternative? I would rather take – and I mean this – I would rather take migraine pain than my nose being on fire. 

 

O’Brien: No, thank you.

 

Lowe: And the thought – and this is actually the part that’s so dangerous – is that in your nose, you have something called the cribriform plate that sits right here and the brain sits right on top of it, and it has perforations. That’s how your senses go up into the brain to process smell. And so the thought is, I’m going to snort this pepper and it’s going to go right up into the brain. Again, why does that seem like a good idea? 

 

O’Brien: That sounds terrible.

 

Lowe: No, don’t do that. Under no circumstances should you be snorting really anything, least of all pepper. 

 

O’Brien: Yeah.

 

Lowe: If it burns your mouth, it’s going to burn your nose. I don’t care what any wellness influencer on TikTok says – oh, it cured my migraines. No, it didn’t. No, it didn’t. 

 

O’Brien: You mentioned this, that people are so desperate to find some type of relief, that they will try whatever they see online because they feel like they’ve tried it all or just the pain is so bad that they’re willing to risk it. So with that, can you talk to us a little bit about some of these other hacks or trends that you have either seen online or that patients have brought up or asked you about? Some of your favorite, the wackiest. And then how do we go about consuming information either online or when we’re shopping for things to be safe?

 

Lowe: Yeah. Hot and cold therapy comes up a lot, and that’s hit and miss. I use ice packs just… Again, this is symptomatic management. This is not addressing the cause of the migraine attack. This is to help you get through it and feel better. And a lot of these hacks are geared toward that. When you’re talking about external things, it’s more about symptomatic management. Ice packs on the neck, on the head. The thought behind that is it does induce some vasoconstriction, and a part of the physiology of migraine is vasodilation. So it does help alleviate some of that and also just feels good. 

Feet. I’ve seen a lot of feet in hot water. People do that a lot. The thought there is it dilates the vessels in the feet and kind of pulls the blood out of the head, which is very… Realistically, it does help some people. I think heat does alleviate muscle tension in general, and while tension is not the physiology behind the migraine, it just helps you feel better to alleviate some of that. It’s very patient specific. 

Another wild one – and I think you put this one on your list – shaving your head, that comes from allodynia. I think most migraine patients know what it feels like when your hair hurts.

 

O’Brien: Yes, absolutely. 

 

Lowe: You’re like, ow. That’s allodynia. I have a video on that one as well, which is migraine really dials up that sensitivity and perception of pain. So things that are not painful end up feeling painful. So something as simple as moving your hair can feel painful because you are so sensitized. And so I think what people think is, well, my hair hurts, that’s what causes my head pain, so I’m going to get rid of the hair. The pain will still be there. You won’t have the allodynia of the hair, but you’ll have the allodynia of the pillow or of the wind going across the… So there is no need to shave your head. Your hair has nothing to do with the pathophysiology of migraine. The claw clip under the brow…

 

O’Brien: Yeah.

 

Lowe: I’ve seen that quite a bit. You see that on social media. It’s typically not harmful as long as you don’t leave it there for hours. There is a nerve – it’s called the supraorbital nerve – and it’s a groove right here. It comes out and it goes up like this. And so in providing pressure to that nerve, it stops it from transmitting the pain signals up the head. Also, it goes to that gate control theory, which in neuroscience is that the brain can only process one type of painful stimulus at a time, and so in providing that pressure, it redirects the brain processing the pain of migraine to the pressure that you’re putting on that nerve. 

It’s a similar theory behind the icy-hot thing. Not for migraine, but in general, that’s gate control theory as well. Because pain and temperature are processed by the same tracts going to the brain, and so if you have pain and you put something that creates temperature, you will process the temperature instead of the pain. And so, again, because it can only do one at a time. And so we’ll see that theory applied to this type of thing. Okay, well, I’m going to put pressure on this nerve. Now the brain is processing that pain/pressure rather than the migraine pain, so I’m not perceiving the migraine pain as strongly because it can’t transmit that signal while also transmitting the signal of the pressure that I’m putting on this nerve. 

So, again, there’s science behind it, typically harmless unless you actually leave a claw clip on your eyebrow for two days straight and cause permanent damage to that nerve because nerves cannot be compressed permanently without inflicting damage. The idea of willingly compressing a nerve also makes me nervous. I feel like, true to form, people will take it too far and then end up permanently damaging this nerve. Again, if you’re having to do that every day, you probably need a medicine. I’m just saying. 

 

O’Brien: It’s probably time.

 

Lowe: It’s probably time to see a neurologist. Things to look for in consuming information online as patients – and this is not just migraine patients. 

 

O’Brien: Yeah.

 

Lowe: This is anyone online looking for medical information. There’s a lot at our fingertips. There’s a lot on TikTok. There’s a lot on Instagram. Patients are no longer Googling their symptoms; they’re TikToking their symptoms. 

 

O’Brien: Yeah.

 

Lowe: And I always just like to let patients know, people will talk about big pharma, and they’ll say, oh, the pharma industry is a $3 billion industry. Well, the wellness industry is a $10 billion industry. We have to be mindful when we’re looking at that wellness landscape that the wellness industry is not regulated the way pharma is. It does not require the same data to put something on the market. It does not require the same regulations. And that’s something that is being made by a company and put on a shelf. When you take that and put it on social media where anyone can say anything…

 

O’Brien: Yeah.

 

Lowe: …you need extra levels of discernment. I see this a lot as a neurologist because, as we’ve touched on, people are desperate. Neurology patients in particular are very susceptible to this because they’re dealing with scary things. Something’s wrong with your brain and you’ve tried everything and nothing has worked. Because of a lot of things in neurology we cannot fix, unfortunately. The brain is finicky. Once it decides it’s done with something or once it’s injured, it’s like, we’re done. And so there are a lot of things that we can’t completely fix, and so the desperation kicks in. And now here’s this wellness influencer saying, I can cure your seizures, I can cure your migraines, I can cure your dementia. People are going to try it. 

And it’s, to me, very dishonest and taking advantage of a vulnerable population, and I really hope the day comes that we start regulating those individuals and holding them accountable for the harm that they inflict on patients and people and their lives when they are acting out of vulnerability and desperation, just wanting to be better, wanting to feel better. 

What I tell my patients for any condition: Listen, I want you to be informed. I want you to pay attention to the source of information that you’re getting. Who is the person saying it? What are their credentials? And I’m not talking what are the credentials they tell you they have. I want you to look up those credentials. What do they mean? There’s so many… Some of the largest platforms on social media – millions of followers – are people that have no credentials and they’re spewing wellness. They have no MD. They have no bachelor’s, nothing. And then there are people that they’ll be on social media, and they’ll have this slew of letters behind their name. And I’m like, what does that even mean?

 

O’Brien: It’s the alphabet here. 

 

Lowe: You Google it, and it’s a two-week course that they did on brain wellness innovations or some… And it was a free course. 

 

O’Brien: That’s sad.

 

Lowe: And so I tell my patients, I want you to look up their credentials, what those credentials mean. And listen, don’t tell me, oh, I don’t want to waste the time. You doomscroll for three hours a night. You can look something up. You can Google credentials. You can ChatGPT it if you want. What do these credentials mean? How long did it take them to get? And then based on that, does that sound like someone that you should be putting your life in their hands? Because that’s what you’re doing. And there are a lot of very engaging individuals in this world who can do that with absolutely no credentials. 

And so when you, as an individual, are consuming information about your health, something that you’re going to put in your body, or something that you’re going to put on yourself or do to yourself, you want to make sure that information is coming from a credible source, someone who is an expert in what they are telling you, who is operating within the scope of their expertise, and who actually has your best interest at heart. 

And it should come as no surprise that the wellness influencer who makes all of their money off of TikTok views and is linking supplements in their bio probably doesn’t care about your health. I said what I said. And that’s not to say that every person who’s in the wellness landscape on social media is evil or is just looking to make money. There are a lot of really mindful wellness influencers out there that are coming up with recipes; they’re doing things that are authentic and are good for patients. And they will say, hey, I’m not an expert. They will let you know up front: These are the limitations of my expertise, and this is just what I have experienced. And that’s fine. But it’s the individuals who are on there saying, doctors are hiding the truth from you, all of those medicines are going to kill you, stop taking them and just take this supplement and you’ll feel better. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. 

And that’s where that discernment really comes in. Because at the end of the day, it’s your life, it’s your body. And do you want to take the risk putting your health on the line based on advice given by someone who is not an expert? This is your brain. 

 

O’Brien: You can tell that you feel strongly about it, and that says a lot about you, that you care about people. I know that I feel strongly about it too. Because it is… People will try anything at a certain point. 

 

Lowe: We see the downstream effects in the ER when the patients come in. I was passion about it before, but as we’ve seen this evolution of social media and the wellness industry and a lot of people capitalizing on that as wellness influencers who don’t necessarily have people’s best interests at heart, we’ve seen that spike in ER visits of, oh, well, I stopped all my medications and now this is happening, this is happening, this is happening, this is happening. And what I say to patients is, okay, you want to listen to them. That’s fine. You, for some reason, trust them over me. Healthcare is imperfect, and we’re working on that. But when it goes south – when that heart attack or that stroke or that brain bleed or that glucose gets up to 1,200 and all of the things that we told you were going to happen happen – are you calling them or are you calling us? 

Because, guess what, if you call them, you know what they’re going to tell you: Go to the ER where the real doctors are.

 

O’Brien: Yeah.

 

Lowe: So when we’re walking through the halls at 2 AM, I’m like, where are the wellness influencers? Where are they? And my hope would be that we get to the point where the wellness influencers and the wellness industry in general is regulated in such a way that they can work together with modern medicine.

 

O’Brien: Yeah.

 

Lowe: Because there are things that are helpful and there are things that can supplement – no pun intended – augment what we’re doing in traditional medicine. But it’s the unchecked, unregulated spiral of it and the absolutes – that medicine is bad and wellness is the answer to everything – where we get into trouble. And we need to be able to work together, and in order for us to do that, we have to regulate both sides. And right now, only medicine is regulated, so we have to get that wellness in check. 

 

O’Brien: Thank you so much for taking all of this time. This has been amazing. I’m so excited to share it with folks. Thank you again so much for being here. It’s been a great chat.

 

Lowe: Of course. Yeah, of course. Thank you for having me. 

 

O’Brien: And that wraps up this episode of Spotlight on Migraine. Don’t forget to hit like and subscribe. And to your followers, thank you so much for listening. I’m Molly O’Brien. We’ll see you next time.