Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.
00:00
To control my migraine, I’m going to do things to reduce my risk of having an attack so I can live a full life and enjoy everything I want to do and being with people and not limit myself from regular activities.
00:18
This is Dr. Meenal and welcome to Uncover Your Eyes, where we uncover reality. As a mom and eye doctor, I want to know it all. If you’re listening to this, you’ve probably experienced a migraine. Migraines are on the rise. Currently 30% of women experience migraines, 8% of men, and 10% of children.
00:45
Migraines can ruin your entire day and make it so debilitating for you to do anything. Here to give us more insight on migraines is Dr. Rani Banik. Dr. Banik is a neuro-opthalmologist and is also certified in integrative and functional medicine. She focuses on the root cause of eye diseases and uses strategies based on nutrition, botanicals, lifestyle
01:15
been voted New York Magazine’s best doctor in ophthalmology, and is also the author of two bestselling books, Beyond Carrots, Best Foods for Eye Health, A to Z, and Dr. Rani’s Visionary Kitchen. Welcome Dr. Banik. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. So tell me, you know, I suffer from migraines. I never had them when I was younger, but you know, now I suffer for them. So I really feel the pain of my patients.
01:43
But sometimes I’m so, I don’t know, is it a migraine? Is it a headache? How do I know if it’s a migraine? So what is the difference? What’s a migraine versus a headache? Yeah, that’s a great question. And like you, a lot of people don’t know the difference. There is a big difference because we all get headaches, right? We’ve all experienced headaches that come and go. Typically they’re attention headaches, which are kind of bifrontal, a little temporal, and they’re pretty mild. But migraine…
02:11
migraines are very unique because migraine is actually a neurologic condition. It’s not just a headache. So it’s not just the headache part. There’s also all these other symptoms, including visual symptoms and other neurologic symptoms. It’s a neurologic disorder and there are very specific criteria for migraine. I can go over them if you’d like, but basically someone has to meet these criteria to be officially diagnosed with migraine.
02:36
Now, you may have some of the criteria, and maybe you don’t meet the full diagnosis yet, so maybe it’s going to be transforming into migraine. But the criteria are, first of all, you have to have at least five attacks. So if you have one or two that are characteristic, again, they may be migraineous, but it doesn’t mean that it’s yet migraine. So five episodes. Usually, the episodes last anywhere from four to 72 hours.
03:02
So it could just be like part of your day, and then it gets better, or it could go on and on and on for three days or even longer sometimes, but four to 72 hours. And then there are headache symptoms and then the non headache symptoms. So the headache symptoms, two out of the four, of the following four. So typically it’s unilateral, so one-sided, versus tension, which tends to be like bilateral. So one-sided.
03:27
It typically has like a throbbing or pulsating quality to it. Like sometimes even with your heartbeat, like boom, boom, boom. Or sometimes people feel like it’s like a ice pick or something sharp stabbing them in the head, but something like jolting kind of, um, usually it’s moderate to severe in intensity. And usually I ask my patients, you know, a scale from one to 10, how bad is your headache? And most people with migraine will say, Oh, it’s like 10 out of 10 or 20 out of 10. It’s pretty severe.
03:57
Again, in contrast to tension, which tends to be milder, like three or four typically or even less. And then the other headache quality is that it’s so bad that it prevents you from doing what you would normally be doing. So let’s say you’re seeing patients and you just like, I can’t do this anymore. Or you’re reading or you’re at work, you just have to put your head down or looking at a screen like, I can’t do this anymore. You just want to go into a dark room, turn out all the lights and go to sleep.
04:24
That’s kind of the headache component. And then there are the non-headache criteria, which are either nausea or vomiting, or light sensitivity or sound sensitivity. So I know it’s kind of hard to kind of put it all together, but again, the frequency, the duration, and then the headache type of symptoms, and then the non-headache symptoms. Many people get migraine. You’re not alone. I have migraine too. Many of my family members have migraine. It runs in families.
04:52
And it’s estimated that one in eight people in the world have migraines. That’s over a billion people in the world have migraine. It’s pretty shocking. So are all headaches becoming like, so is there a relation or there’s zero relation headache is more of a loose term that can happen to everybody. Whereas migraines only happen to a select number of people.
05:13
Exactly. Yeah, what you said is exactly right. So headaches, again, this kind of a very general term. And those general headaches are usually triggered by things like, you know, I’m stressed or, you know, I didn’t sleep well, I didn’t eat yet, I’m dehydrated. But you know, some of those risks are also risks for migraines. So how do you tell the difference? It’s if you meet these criteria.
05:37
And again, all of us can get regular headaches, but not all of us get migraine. It’s very unique. And if you’ve ever had it, you know exactly what I mean. It’s not your normal day-to-day function. You cannot function if you have a migraine. It’s really bad. Right. Like our patients have to pull off when they’re driving, if it starts. That’s the scariest time, I guess. It is. Yeah. The visual aura component, it’s quite… Because I remember the very first time I had visual aura.
06:05
I was in med school. It was my very first migraine actually, but I remember it was my second year of med school. I was in the science library. I was studying for finals and I probably hadn’t slept well. I was really stressed. I probably hadn’t eaten well. And all of a sudden I started to see these zigzag flashing lights. And even though I was a medical student, I didn’t know what it was. I literally thought I was having a stroke. I’m like, oh my God, I’m having a stroke. And then it just clicked like, oh.
06:33
maybe this is scintillating scotoma, maybe this is visual aura. And then I waited for it to pass and I realized, oh my god, I just had my first migraine, then I had the horrible headache afterwards. But it can be really quite scary when it first happens. People really think it’s something very ominous is happening. And many of them, because the visual symptom is often first, will end up in an eye doctor’s chair, like what’s going on with my vision.
06:59
So as eye care providers, we’re oftentimes the first to see these patients on their first episode. Why is it on the rise? Why are so many people getting them now? That’s a great question. I don’t know. I think there are certain triggers that are just kind of escalating out of control. Caffeine intake has to do with it, sometimes too much. And we can talk more about caffeine because it’s a little complex. But
07:25
high levels of caffeine, stress, screen time, looking at flashing lights, like scrolling on your phone, seeing all these different images go by so quickly. All of these can potentially be triggers, but the other thought is maybe it’s always just been there and now we’re just diagnosing it more easily because we have these diagnostic criteria. So maybe there are a lot of people out there who had migraine before, but they just never had the official diagnosis.
07:55
Especially when someone comes in, let’s say they’re in middle age or older, and I ask them, oh, do you have migraine? And they’ll say, no, I’ve never had migraine. But I get these headaches. And then they say, okay, tell me about your headaches. And it turns out that yes, all along for these years and decades, they were having migraine and they just didn’t know it. So is it a subjective diagnosis or is there an objective test to it?
08:21
Unfortunately, that’s really a great question. There is nothing objective. It’s all subjective. There is no MRI finding that’s pathognomonic for migraine. It’s not like, oh, there it is. We see it. No, that doesn’t happen like that. There’s no blood test for migraine. In terms of genetic testing, we can talk about genetics, but there is no one gene that is the harbinger of migraine. We don’t have a great test for it.
08:49
It’s really based off of someone’s symptoms, which makes it so hard because externally, our patients may look totally normal, yet they have a raging migraine. You can’t see it. There’s nothing. Yeah, we check their vision. We check their pupils. We check their motility. We won’t see it on that. Even on a visual field, it’s not going to show up. It’s really important to ask those important questions.
09:17
You can download. There’s lots of checklists online. You can download it. And then if you meet a lot of the criteria, have a discussion with your doctor and get the proper diagnosis. I mean, you can even just go to your primary doctor. You don’t have to go see a neurologist for this. You can go see any primary care doctor and just say, I think I have migraine. And then they can confirm it for you. Because I think it’s important for someone to have a definitive diagnosis. Because it doesn’t just affect our head. It affects so many other.
09:44
sensory aspects of our being and our quality of life that it’s important to get the right diagnosis. So, you mentioned there’s a neurological component to it. So can we talk to what is a migraine? What causes all these symptoms? Is it the balance of something being off? What is the stimulator? Yeah, that’s a really another question that I wish we could answer just in your life.
10:13
Here you go. We should just know it all. Yeah. We would think that we would. So migraines have been around for thousands of years. There are documents or there’s historical data suggesting that Caesar had migraine. And even prior to that, very prominent figures in world history have had migraine. We still don’t really understand what’s happening. We have hypotheses. We think that what’s happening is there’s some kind of stimulus that causes an electrical change in the brain.
10:42
And that electrical change then spreads throughout different parts of the brain. And it causes a change in blood flow. So it affects the blood vessels and it affects the nerve. So it’s kind of like a neurovascular or electrical neurovascular phenomenon. I guess that’s the best way to say it, but we don’t really know like what is the trigger because everyone is so different. You know, my trigger may not be the same as your trigger.
11:08
And some people, they’re never able to identify what their trigger is because it’s just kind of spontaneous and it seems kind of erratic, you know, like there’s no pattern to it. So if you can identify a pattern, that’s great. Like for some people, I’ll just give you a couple of examples of what triggers may be. For some people, it could be red wine. You know, we all compare like, oh, have some red wine, you know, it’s good for you, you know, a couple of glasses a week. But there are certain chemicals in the wine.
11:35
compounds, sulfites or tannins that for some people are triggers for migraine. For other people, they’re working out, they’re thinking they’re doing their body a great thing exercising in the gym, but they do a really intense workout and boom, they get their aura and their migraine. Probably there what’s happening is that their body’s dehydrated and maybe they’re depleted of certain electrolytes and then that’s what’s triggering their migraine. Each person is different in what their triggers may be.
12:06
I’m going to make a blanket statement, but for women, is it hormones that’s one of the most common triggers? It can be. Yeah, that’s really a great observation. For women, we have a lot of changes in our sex hormones, estrogen, progesterone, and many women will get this phenomenon called menstrual migraine.
12:30
And what it is is basically, you know, they’re fine most of the month. And then right around the time of when their period starts, they will get a horrible, horrible migraine attack. And what we think is happening, again, this is a hypothesis because we don’t exactly know, what we think is happening is that during the woman’s cycle, the estrogen levels kind of build up, build up, build up. And then right before menstruation, the estrogen levels plummet. They drop very quickly.
12:58
And we think that it’s that sudden drop in estrogen levels that may be, there are estrogen receptors in the brain. So estrogen one and two receptors in the brain. So we think that something’s being triggered there. Interestingly, a lot of women who are pregnant, who have migraine may actually have reduced migraine during their pregnancy because their estrogen levels are very high and they’re not really changing. They’re just kind of staying at a really high level. So it’s really the fluctuation.
13:27
that we think triggers migraine in many women. And also you would think that later on in life, maybe during perimenopause, menopause, things are gonna get better. For some women that’s not the case because especially during perimenopause when hormones are all over the place, women may actually get a flare up of their migraine during perimenopause. And for me, I know that’s what happened to me is I had like a perfect storm of all these different triggers when I had really bad chronic daily migraine, but.
13:55
it was partly hormonal, I think. And then what we think happens later on in life, like post-menopause, is that once the hormone levels really level out, they’re much lower, but they level out, they’re not fluctuating, then finally people, especially women, get a relief from their migraines because that’s when things are not changing in their life. So depends on the stage of life, but certainly hormones play a role. What do you feel for men is a trigger? I mean, it’s a lower percentage of men with migraines,
14:25
Is there a common trigger that you notice? I would say similar to like women also, not the hormone part, but dehydration, stress, lack of sleep, a change in their pattern, whatever that pattern may be. Like the brain, especially people who have migraine, our brains love regularity. They love to have things like on time and on a schedule. So let’s say you’re really busy, you miss a meal, boom, you could develop a migraine.
14:54
or let’s say you’re traveling, you’re on a flight, and there’s changes in barometric pressure, you know, you get on the plane, and maybe you haven’t slept well the night before, you’re dehydrated on the plane, that is a major trigger for some people. I find that those are the major triggers for men. For some men, I definitely have seen a pattern of like extreme workouts, and then developing migraine after their, you know, strenuous physical activity, for sure. Do you, I mean, you touched on the genetic component.
15:24
Is there a genetic component? I know it’s still up in the air. Nobody really knows. But what do you feel? What’s your take on that? Yes, there is. The complicating thing is that it’s not just one gene. And this is what I was talking about before. At last count, I think researchers that have identified at least 50 different genes that are associated with migraine. So 50 different genes. So it’s not just like, this is the, there you go. There, we’re going to get migraine in your life. So it’s some combination of that.
15:53
And if it were really truly 100% genetic, then without any environmental factors, then people would have migraine from day one. Babies, yes, babies can get migraine too. But they wouldn’t just develop migraine later on in life or in their adult years or whenever people develop migraine, which is typically by their 20s, most people develop migraine. So there are genetic risks, but then there are all these environmental risks. I guess you could call them kind of like epigenetics,
16:23
putting the switch, like something turns a switch on and then people are more predisposed to migraine. So we don’t understand it. I wish we did. I wish we had a better grasp of all this, but you know, the research is still evolving. Well, I’ll just mention something about genetics. So if there’s a parent with migraine, there is a 50% chance that their child will have migraine. 50%, it’s crazy. If both parents have migraine.
16:52
there is a 75% chance that their kids will have migraine.
16:58
Okay. So one in three of my kids are definitely going to have one. Yeah. Yeah. Well, 50. Yeah. Yeah. One and a half of them. And you know, it’s interesting, like people, you should really, you know, I know, you know, get together for family, you know, events. But when you’re with your family, ask, ask people, do you have migraine? Because people may not tell you, you may not know. And when I…
17:27
asked, I had no idea that it was so rampant in my family. It turned out my grandmother had migraine on my dad’s side. My uncle, my aunts on my dad’s side, they all have migraine. Multiple cousins have migraine, all on my dad’s side. And now, even on my mom’s side, I’m hearing, oh, yeah, there’s migraine in the family. So you don’t really know unless you ask. So ask. And now my sister has migraine. She didn’t used to have migraine before. My daughter is starting to get migraine. So.
17:54
It’s very, very common to run in families. And now, like, when I think about it, I’m like, when I was younger, my mom used to always come down the stairs in the morning with, like, this cloth on her head tied really tight. And we were all like, what’s going on? Like, why are you? She’s like, I just have a headache. You know, she does. She didn’t know. And like you said, at that time, a lot of people didn’t know that.
18:14
classify it as a migraine. So maybe that’s why we’re seeing it more just because of that classification. But now I understand because when I get those episodes, I’m like, I just need somebody to squeeze my head. Right? So everybody has, yeah. You know, I know there’s been some talk around melatonin and migraines. Can you speak to that? So there are a host of supplements that have been tried for migraine. I’m not, you know, so in tune with the melatonin research. I know that.
18:43
Irregular sleep patterns are definitely a risk for migraines. So again, your brain craves that regularity. So melatonin or not, try to maintain a regular sleep schedule. So I always tell my patients, and I’m still working on this, I’m a horrible kind of, you know, I’m horrible at this myself with sleep schedules, but try to go to bed at the same time every night and wake up at the same time in the morning, whether it’s, you know, holiday, weekend, vacation.
19:10
try to maintain that regular sleep schedule because your brain really, really thrives on that. And so with melatonin, again, I’m not so versed in all the research studies, but from what I did read, people who do take melatonin on a regular basis may have a reduced frequency and severity of migraine. But you just have to be careful. I know some people take really huge amounts. I wouldn’t rush to taking a big amount. Like,
19:38
two to four milligrams maybe to start, even less in kids. And just try to maintain those healthy sleep habits. And also when you’re sleeping, just have a really like a dark room. I remember like when I was younger, like I could go to sleep with all the lights on, like the shades were up and I would just go to sleep and it was no problem. And now even if there’s like a little flicker of light coming in through like I have.
20:05
blackout shades, but they’re not fully blackout. Sometimes a little bit of light will come in and that will irritate me. And it’s just like, I know I’m going to get a migraine today because that light woke me up in the morning and it’s like grating on me. My brain is picking that up. Are there other supplements that you would recommend? Absolutely. And with full disclosure, I do have a supplement line and I have a supplement that’s curated for migraine.
20:35
The most research has been done with magnesium and riboflavin. So magnesium is a mineral. We need it in our bodies for over 600 different enzymatic reactions. It’s really vital to our normal physiology. And we know that people who have migraine are predisposed to a magnesium deficiency. The studies have shown that people who take magnesium, now, the magnesium that they used in the studies was magnesium oxide.
21:01
There are different types of magnesium you’ve probably seen like on the shelf. You know, there’s sulfate, citrate, glycinate. You know, there’s so many different types of magnesium, but magnesium, I’ll get a little bit nerdy here. Magnesium oxide is, um, it’s a salt. It’s a magnesium salt and it works great for GI issues. Like if you’re have constipation, it’s going to help you, but it can cause sometimes cramping and loose stools. But the studies with magnesium and migraine were done with magnesium oxide. So this, the dose they use was 400 milligrams.
21:30
I think it was twice a day for three months, and it decreased people’s migraine. But what I found in my experiences, treating lots of patients with migraine, is that the salts are not well tolerated. So I prefer chelated forms of magnesium. So for example, where the magnesium molecule is bound to something like an amino acid, which can then get absorbed by the brain. The salt doesn’t get absorbed by the brain. So that stays in the peripheral kind of nervous system, but it doesn’t really get into the brain.
22:00
So I like magnesium glycinate or malate or threonate. And so the malate is the one that I have in my supplement, which is called COM. Now with riboflavin, so riboflavin is vitamin B2. It’s an essential B vitamin. There’s lots of food sources. And also, by the way, there’s lots of food sources of magnesium as well. So start with food, always start with nutrition. But if you feel like you really need a boost, then take a supplement.
22:27
that holds true for everything, and start with nutrition. But with vitamin B2, most people, like if they take a multi, there’s vitamin B2 in that multi, but it’s a low amount, usually about 10 milligrams, or sometimes even two milligrams, like a tiny, tiny amount. The studies that were done with B2 riboflavin used 400 milligrams, which is a huge amount compared to what you get in your multi. And again, for three months,
22:55
The patient took it for three months. They did well. Their migraine severity and frequency decreased. I find, though, that 400 is a lot. And basically, if you ever take riboflavin, it causes your urine to be this bright fluorescent yellow color. A lot of it just gets excreted. So I actually use a much lower dose of riboflavin. I don’t think you need 400 milligrams, because most of it’s just going right through your kidneys and getting excreted.
23:21
So I use about 150 milligrams. And that’s what I have in my supplement is magnesium, malate, and riboflavin at a lower dose than what the studies used. And I have a couple of other things as well. Feverfew, which is it’s botanical. It’s also been shown to help with migraine. And it’s kind of like a cousin to aspirin. It’s not exactly aspirin, but like salicylic acid. And so it’s anti-inflammatory. And so I have that.
23:51
in my supplement as well. That’s great. So, you know, I mean, it’s great to take supplements. Like you said, nutrition comes first. What are other, you know, I want to call them lifestyle modifications besides sleep that you would recommend to your patients? So we also know in migraine that our mitochondria, the energy producing organelles in each of our cells probably aren’t working to their optimal ability. And so I always recommend that people.
24:21
try to boost their mitochondrial health and the best ways through diet. And so I typically recommend, especially for people who have chronic migraine, not just episodic, but they’re getting them often, like many times a month, I recommend having nutrients to support your mitochondria. And these are typically like the whole range of B vitamins and select minerals. And the best way to do this is a green smoothie. So I always recommend starting out the day with a green smoothie.
24:50
for many of my migraine patients. And that way you get your nutritional requirements. And then in terms of, you were saying like lifestyle, there are just so many things. There’s screen time, which is a big trigger for some people. So I recommend, rather than to get just like blue blocking glasses, I recommend using various different screen filters to take out. So this is a little fun fact.
25:19
All of our screens flicker. We may not know it, but our eyes and our brains are perceiving it. It’s constantly flickering on off, on off, on off. And it’s doing it at a very, very fast rate. And it’s designed this way to save battery life. So that’s why screens can last 10 hours, et cetera. But
25:38
That flickering is picked up by our brain, our eyes and our brain, and it can sometimes trigger migraine for some people. It’s kind of like, you know, if you go into a grocery store where there’s overhead fluorescent lights, and if one of them is kind of like flickering, it’s bothersome, right? It’s really annoying. Imagine that’s happening all the time when you’re looking at your screen, but at this really super fast rate. So I recommend using various screen filters to eliminate that flicker rate and also maybe decrease the blue light coming from your screen.
26:07
Um, those are, you know, some things. Yeah. So, you know, I’m not a pill pusher, but, um, obviously, you know, if there’s supplements are not working, you know, these lifestyle modifications are not working, what are the treatments, you know, what are the medications that are the most commonly given for migraines? So there, there’s a whole range now of options that we can use. And I’m like you, you know, I always try to.
26:33
manage things naturally before going to a prescription. But if somebody really, really needs something, like in the moment they’re having an acute attack, I would recommend over-the-counter excedrin migraine. It has a little bit of Tylenol, it has a little bit of aspirin, and a little bit of caffeine. That’s the three ingredients that work together to try to break that migraine attack. Now, you can only really use it, or you should only really use that as your fallback two or three times max per week.
27:03
So if you’re having regular migraine attacks and it’s not, you know, cutting it for you and you’re still getting them, don’t go over that two or three times a week because then you’re risking your liver health, you’re risking your gut, you know, you could develop a stomach ulcer with, you know, some of those ingredients. So then I would talk to your doctor about maybe like a medication, like a prescription medication. There are many classes, there are the triptans, which work for episodic migraine where as
27:32
it’s happening, you know it’s starting, you start to see the visual aura, that’s when you take it. And it’s really to try to abort the full migraine attack. Now there are other medications that are very widely used, they’re called CGRP inhibitors. Calcium, oh my goodness, I’m blanking on the name, CGRP. We won’t remember it anyways. Calcium-unrelated peptide, what’s that? We won’t remember it anyways. It’s a…
28:01
peptide that modulates pain in the body. And basically, these medications have been out since 2018, but it’s a totally new class meant specifically for migraine. They’re both oral forms and injectable, like monthly injections. So those are options and they’ve really revolutionized or improved the lives of like hundreds of thousands of people around the world. So they do work, they’re expensive, they’re not first line, but if nothing else is working. And then…
28:28
I also use a lot of, when patients do need medications, I use a lot of older drugs that have been used, that have been around for decades and decades. We know that they’re safe. There are various blood pressure medications that can be used for migraine, beta blockers, calcium channel blockers. Then there are also various different antidepressants that can be used for migraine. So if somebody has coexisting migraine and depression or mood issues, then…
28:55
I may opt to put them on something like that. So it’s very individualized. There are lots and lots of options. And I always tell my patients, sometimes people who have chronic migraine, they feel like nothing’s worked for them and they feel really dejected. I always tell them that there is always hope because there’s always something that you maybe have not tried yet. You may have tried this, this, this, this, but there’s always something that we can try.
29:21
And now what’s also great is that there are these devices that are FDA approved for migraine. They’re called neuromodulatory devices. So there’s one that goes on your forehead here. It’s called Cephaly. It provides electrical stimulation to calm down the nerves. There’s one that’s called GammaCorts, a handheld vagus nerve stimulator that you put here on your carotid artery that where the vagus nerve is going past there. It activates the parasympathetic.
29:50
sympathetic system and calms the sympathetic system. There’s another one that’s an armband, which was called Nervio, and that also modulates the peripheral nervous system and tries to calm things down peripherally to affect the central nervous system. So there are so many, whether you do naturally through supplements and food and lifestyle, or you’re doing abortive medications just as needed, or you’re doing a prophylactic medication or a device.
30:17
There are so many things that are available now that weren’t available, let’s say 10 years ago. So it’s really amazing. So let’s be real. I’m in a migraine right now. What is your emergency kind of plan for me? Number one, try to remove yourself from whatever it is you’re doing. Go into a quiet, dark place.
30:39
I would drink lots and lots of fluid with electrolytes. So not just water, but something with electrolytes added. And I would do a magnesium supplement right away and maybe consider excedrin migraine. And then you can also do what you were saying. People like having pressure, but you can get a cool pack or put it on the back of your neck. There’s actually something called a migraine hat. I’ve never tried it myself, but I think it’s something you put into the…
31:09
freezer and you freeze it and then when it happens you put it on and it kind of puts pressure and cold around your head. So those are kind of the emergency migraine toolkit items that you should have around if you have migraine. That’s a great plan. I don’t need to visit my doctor anymore. Thank you. I see you visit. So just send me the bill later. So you speak a lot about the mindset of migraines.
31:38
What does that mean? So migraine is, you know, it can really take a toll on your mental health. Having been through it, and I had chronic migraine for like six, seven years. Like every day I would have a migraine. It was really bad. But just to know that your migraine, yes, it’s there. It’s a part of you. But it shouldn’t control your life. And I know a lot of people will refrain from doing activities because they’re so afraid that they’re
32:07
it’ll either trigger a migraine or it’ll make their migraine worse. Like I’ll give you the perfect example would be physical activity. You know, we talked earlier about like really strenuous activity. I’m not talking about like the super strenuous, like marathon runners and all of that. I’m just talking about just like regular exercise, like taking an exercise class or, you know, walking on the treadmill, running on the treadmill, swimming. Like a lot of people with migraine will refrain from doing these things because they’ll feel like, Oh, it’s going to trigger an attack.
32:37
But studies have shown that if you move regularly and you have exercise in your weekly regimen, that actually will help to improve blood flow, it’ll improve your mood, and it will actually decrease the risk of migraine. So in terms of mindset is don’t, what I tell my patients is don’t let migraine control who you are. It’s very easy for people to just give in and be like, okay, I’m gonna assume that I have…
33:07
and it’s gonna, you know, I don’t want to have an attack and they’ll limit themselves. But you kind of have to think beyond that and say, I’m going to control my migraine. You know, I’m going to do things to reduce my risk of having an attack so I can live a full life and enjoy everything I want to do and being with people and not limit myself from regular activities. That’s so great. Thank you, Dr. Banik for your time today. This was amazing. Super helpful for our listeners.
33:34
Can you tell our listeners, you know, I’ve already mentioned the two amazing books that you’ve written. Can you tell our listeners where to find you? Yes, absolutely. First of all, thank you so much for having me. It’s always a pleasure to share this information. You can see it’s like, I love it, this topic, because I have migrants. I know a lot, you know, I understand what my patients have gone through. But the best way to reach me is my website, which is drronnybanek.com. You can find everything there, my books, my supplements.
34:03
And then I’m also on Instagram. That’s my major social media platform where I do a lot of sharing of eye health tips and migraine tips, etc. So I’m @Dr.RaniBanik on Instagram. I’m also on YouTube. So if you’re on YouTube, you can find me there. Perfect. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, listeners and viewers, for tuning in. If you want to catch more episodes of Uncover Your Eyes, make sure to Follow or Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and on YouTube.
34:33
To learn more about me, follow me on Instagram @Dr.MeenalAgarwal Until next time, keep those eyes uncovered!