I Thought I Just Had a Sensitive Stomach & Was More Prone to Chronic Headaches....

“I just get sick off food often. It’s how I’m made.”

-Me. All the time.

“I feel my headache coming on again.”

-Also me. All the time.

I could eat enchiladas for dinner one night and feel totally fine. Then two weeks later, eat the exact same meal and throw it up that night.

Was the meat bad? Did I use a different sauce?

I would replay everything in my head trying to make sense of it. And then it would happen again.

Eventually, I chalked it up to having a sensitive stomach. If you knew me, you knew about my tummy issues. 😅

I would joke with my husband, “Well, I haven’t thrown up a meal in a couple months, so I’m definitely due for that soon…”

Growing up, I can’t even count how many times I got sick. Between motion sickness, too many sweets, bad headaches, and my stomach issues....My poor parents had to get rid of at least two vehicles because they couldn’t get the puke smell out. And yes, almost a brand new couch that I most certainly threw up on.

I don’t know why these people still put up with me. 😂

Fast forward ten years

I’m sitting at dinner with a friend and I pull out enzyme pills. I always keep them on hand lol. 

She asks me what they are, and I start sharing about why I have these in the first place. 

And I remember thinking, where do I even start?

A decade of trial and error. A lot of confusion. A lot of money. And a lot of learning.

I wonder if there might be someone else confused on why they seem to have a sensitive stomach, and why it's getting worse. Or if someone is at their wit's end with their chronic headaches. Maybe someone is so tired of that little voice in the back of their head that's always a little bit worried about their health, but not really sure where to even start, or not wanting to even go down that rabbit hole. 

I decided I should reflect and put everything together, just in case those someones are out there. In case that someone is you! 

Maybe this will save you years of upset stomachs, relentless headaches, and worrying about your health. 🤍

Especially if you are in the thick of it right now.

What actually pushed me to get help

It wasn’t the stomach issues that finally broke me, it was most certainly the headaches.

They were constant. Debilitating. And they stole so many evenings from me.

Night after night I would come home from work with my head pounding. I needed a dark room. I couldn’t make dinner. I couldn’t function. I couldn’t even spend time with my husband.

After what felt like the millionth night of this, I just remember saying to my husband (or maybe just myself), “I can’t do this anymore". I was at my breaking point.

But before I tell you what helped, let me back up just a bit because each part of my journey has something valuable to take from it.

What I had already tried

I had been to my family doctor more times than I can count. And every visit sounded pretty much the same.

Are you drinking enough water?

What’s your diet like?

We can give you a prescription to help.

But deep down, I knew that wasn’t it.

I didn’t want something to mask my headaches. I wanted to prevent them. I wanted to understand why they were happening in the first place.

These didn’t feel normal, and my body was clearly trying to tell me something.

Eventually, I stopped pursuing the traditional doctor route (at least the one I was seeing). I just wasn’t getting answers that I felt were helping my longterm health and getting to the root of why these headaches were happening.

The nontoxic shift

Around the same time, I started learning about living a more nontoxic lifestyle. I began swapping out products in our home that could be contributing to my headaches.

I joined Young Living, met some really wonderful people, and even rekindled old friendships.

I understood why such strong smelling products really did trigger my headaches, and that felt validating!

I did see a little improvement. 

But the headaches were still there.

When things finally started to shift

One of those rekindled friendships changed everything (God is so cool like that).

She had been working with a doctor for a completely different issue, but I loved his approach. Holistic. Root focused. Curious.

I asked for his contact information and started working with him.

I would love to tell you that he helped me solve all my problems. But it wasn't quite the magic bullet (I don't think there actually was one?). 

However, I did make progress. More than I realized at the time.

And that led me to one of the biggest lessons of this entire journey.

A "this wasn't the full answer," doesn't mean your time was wasted.

It’s more like hitting a dead end while driving. You can still turn right or left. Everything you did before still mattered. It got you here. Which is much closer than where you started. And you have a lot of (really great) luggage that you've picked up along the way. 

One of pieces of luggage I picked up 

One of the helpful things I learned from that doctor to help with headaches was the importance of chiropractic care. I learned that the nervous system is kind of like a hose. When there is a kink, the water cannot flow properly. Chiropractic care helps remove those kinks so things can flow the way they are meant to. And this impacts all of your body's systems! 

I actually had one or two appointments where I walked in with a headache and walked out without one!

Regardless, I learned that finding a good chiropractor (I've had ones I didn't love as much) and consistent chiropractor care (as evidenced by my inconsistent times lol) can be a game changer. 

A big step in the right direction. 

Another big step I did not expect

Another major takeaway from that doctor/season was getting off hormonal birth control. This could be a whole other blog on it's own lol.

But I felt worse at first, and then I felt so much better.

Hormonal birth control suppresses your natural hormone rhythms and depletes nutrients. I had been on it for almost ten years....

I like to think of it like this....my body was a plant barely surviving on the minimum - like when you see a shoot from a plant and you're like "is it dead or alive?" Idk, let's just keep giving it water. 🙃 When I finally started getting what I needed again, it could actually grow and bloom. But it took time to get reacquainted, absorb the nutrients I was finally getting, and let my hormones do their thing that they had been suppressed from for SO long! 

Maybe a little dramatic, but when your body is made to go through cycles and you keep it all flatlined, your body isn't going to thrive the way it's meant to....soooo I think that's kind of a dramatic thing to do ;) 

My headaches became less frequent.

My upset stomachs became less frequent.

They were not completely gone, but another big step in the right direction :) 

A lesson I did not expect to learn

Progress is often far greater than we give it credit for.

I am really good at focusing on what is still wrong. What is missing. What has not been fixed yet.

But the more I started noticing progress, the more my brain started looking for evidence of it.

It was okay to be frustrated about where I wished I was sometimes (and I catch myself still doing this today). I just try not to live there.

Sometimes this journey takes time for reasons we cannot see yet.

Maybe you are meant to meet certain people along the way. And you wouldn't meet them if you didn't take certain turns along the way.

Maybe your body isn't ready to heal everything all at once - it NEEDS all that time. 

Maybe God is teaching you things that you would completely miss if you microwaved the process.

What finally filled in more missing pieces

I ended up finding a new doctor, just for general wellness. After our first appointment, they set me up with a nutritionist.

And I am not exaggerating when I say that my first meeting with the nutritionist changed so much for me and helped clear up most of those lingering headaches.

I did my usual spiel of telling her how much water I drink, and she casually said, "have you ever considered that you might be drinking TOO much water?"

Absolutely not, Abby (I do not remember her name now). I was pretty busy being defensive because everyone tells me to keep drinking more gallons of water! lol. 

But she was right!

I started drinking less water and paying way more attention to minerals and electrolytes.

That ended up being a huge missing piece, especially after being depleted from years on hormonal birth control.

Who would have thought?

What about the stomach issues?

You know what's crazy?

As my headaches started getting better, my digestion quietly started improving too.

A lot of it goes hand-in-hand. For example, chiropractic care can positively impact your digestive system.

I learned that hormonal birth control can mess with digestion as well, so getting off of it supported that healing more than I realized at the time.

Somewhere along the way, I learned about enzyme pills and started taking them regularly. I noticed that when I took them, especially before dinner, I was far less likely to get sick. And thus began the era of the girl that couldn't leave the house without her enzyme pills LOL. 

Where I am now

Those headaches I used to get daily? I can now go weeks, sometimes even a month, without one.

Every once in a while I notice them creeping back, but now I have a mental checklist. Have I been to the chiropractor recently? How are my minerals? Am I sleeping well?

Throwing up dinner is very rare these days. I still have moments. I still have areas of health I am working on. I think health will always be a journey :)

But I have learned so much.

I have learned how to better support my digestion, my bile, my stomach acid, and much more.

I have learned the importance of foundations like sunlight, sleep, circadian rhythm, and movement.

Before you gloss over that, did you know that when your circadian rhythm is synced, your body knows when to have a bowel movement, when to make melatonin, and when to repair your gut?

Your gut cells are literally one of the fastest cells to regenerate - every few days when your circadian rhythm is supported.

Now I get outside first thing in the morning or at sunrise, and again later in the day for at least twenty minutes (with naked eyes). 

After having a baby, I spent a lot of time focusing almost entirely on health foundations. They are free. They are overlooked. And they quietly support everything else.

A lot of what we might try to fix or supplement, God already built into nature (not that I'm just relying solely on sunlight and food from my nonexistent garden to live, I do like our modern luxuries okayyy). We just might need to do something that our modern conveniences make us forget to do - like going outside :) -spoken from the girl that used to never go outside unless from the car to the store counts.

If you are in the thick of it

If this sounds familiar.....remember that your body is not betraying you. It is communicating with you.

And even if it feels slow, progress is still progress.

You do not have to figure everything out at once. You do not need to chase every answer. You are allowed to take this one step at a time.

Pay attention to what is improving, even if it feels small. Especially if it feels small.

You are allowed to trust that your body wants to heal, and that God is not wasting any part of this story.

If you are tired, confused, or discouraged right now, I see you.

And if you are still walking forward, even slowly, you are doing better than you think.

Much love + I'm rooting for you

– Brittany 🤍