Episode 13 – Trigeminal Neuralgia & Fasting

 

Living with trigeminal neuralgia can be very difficult. It impacts our life, resulting in problems like, weight loss, isolation, and depression. Today, Frederick Schurger and Beth Bagley welcome a guest close to Beth’s heart. Beth Bagley’s sister, Sarah, shares her experience dealing with trigeminal neuralgia and why people should seek care and try it. Beth chimes in with how our body is built to protect, but sometimes that protection mechanism is what holds us back. Frederick and Beth also touch on fasting and its benefits. Tune in to this insightful episode today.

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Trigeminal Neuralgia & Fasting

We have got a special guest. This is Sarah and she’s my sister. I brought her on because she has a story about a little-known problem that has happened to people called Trigeminal Neuralgia. She had it very early onset in college and she’s got a great story about how she had her life turnaround and now lives pain-free from trigeminal neuralgia symptoms and some headache stuff too. We will talk all about that. Sarah, when I was in chiropractic school, I discovered this thing called upper cervical and we had been under some chiropractic care most of our lives, correct?

Yes.

Our grandfather was a chiropractor and then through the years we would get chiropractic care, but it was more of conventional chiropractic care. What was your experience with conventional chiropractic care?

I’m going to be honest, it scared me. Grandpa was a wonderful man, but he did a lot of surprise attack chiropractic care where he would jump behind me so I would cry and try to crack my neck, and then I would cry.

It didn’t feel good to you.

No, I was never relaxed when he did it. I was always tense and so it scared me growing up. I still continued with it. Through high school and college and found other chiropractors that didn’t scare me but, at first, it scared me.

Coming into college, you were having a lot of headaches. One of the things I remember is an industrial-sized bottle of Advil or something from Sam’s Club. How much were you going through of that you think?

I’m sure within a week, I would say maybe 4 of the 7 days I was taking Advil pretty regularly.

That was when you were 19 to 20 years old then something happened and what did it feel like?

Towards the end of my college career, I was up in Kirksville and I did have a chiropractor that I saw up here and there. I remember calling our mom and saying that something in my jaw hurt and my mouth. I was like, “Who do I go to? Is this a chiropractor thing? Is this a dentist thing? Is this a doctor thing?” It came and went and it was a pulsing pain down in my jaw area. It would go away for a little bit and it would come back. I didn’t know what was wrong and who to see. It happened at a time where I was coming back to St. Louis anyway because I was going to start my student teaching.

I remember it being super uncomfortable and painful. It would go away and then it would come back and I talked to you about it. I talked to Dr. Bagley about it because I wasn’t sure what to do and then it got more and more intense. It didn’t go away anymore and was keeping me up at night. The only thing that would help is if I would drink water. I remember repeatedly.

You’d have ice in your mouth too.

I needed something. I don’t know what it did or why that helped, but all of a sudden, it was keeping me up at night. I couldn’t sleep, eat, or do anything and I didn’t know what was wrong.

I was in chiropractic school at that time. I didn’t know a lot yet because I was in school, but I had discovered upper cervical already. There was a chiropractor I was seeing, Dr. Adam Tanase, and he had already changed my life with the chiropractic care that I’d received there. In school, I had learned about trigeminal neuralgia and it was super rare. You are probably not going to see it a lot but this is what it is. When she was describing this to me, I thought this is trigeminal neuralgia. I think you got maybe tested. Did they do an MRI? I can’t even remember.

Trigeminal neuralgia is super rare.

I don’t remember.

I remember you hearing that, “You are too young for that. There’s no way you could have that.” That’s what people would say.

I was calling my doctors and they didn’t think I had it. They were trying painkillers, which worked here or there, but not completely. I was living with it. I remember being at Mom’s house in the middle of the night sitting in the bathtub. I couldn’t sleep or do anything. I remember the nights being the worst because nobody was around, nobody was awake, and I was awake and I couldn’t sleep. I was getting freaked out.

I got a question about that. When you say in the bathtub, you are talking like a hot bath trying to get warm enough because I have had something. I don’t know if I want to call it trigeminal neuralgia but the only thing that would give me enough relief to get myself ready for the day or to go down to get adjusted was sitting under the hot shower.

It was the only thing that calmed my mind and my body. I felt like I could make it another hour or do something else. That’s a great way to put it. I had never thought about that. It was the only thing that was giving me any relief at all.

Again, I don’t even remember the whole story because this was years and years ago. I wanted to bring you on because this confirmed my belief that I was doing the right thing by leaving conventional chiropractic behind and exploring upper cervical as my career. It is because I brought you to my chiropractor.

You did. I had Dr. Tanase.

He had X-rays taken of you and what did they discover on your X-rays?

They discovered that I have a weird bone and for my entire life, even Grandpa was adjusting me wrong. You can tell them what bone it is. They always thought that I was out on that side so they kept adjusting me on that side and I can feel it over and over again and nobody knew.

There’s the skull, the top bone, one side of her is bigger than the other side by a lot. It’s a big chunk. It’s called The Transverse Process. A conventional chiropractor that doesn’t take X-rays would feel that. With a side X-ray of that, you are not going to see it but with a specialized X-ray called The Base Posterior, he was able to see that, “You have got a honk inside to one of your atlas bones.” Chiropractors had been adjusting you wrong since you were a kid. No wonder it hurt so bad for you because it was wrong.

No wonder it never was right. I would feel after an adjustment maybe some relief immediately, but nothing ever worked. Nothing stuck. Thankfully, Dr. Tanase took me on and I remember the first time I was adjusted. I remember laying there and I felt my whole body relax. I was hearing my stomach start gurgling and I was like, “That’s weird.”

We started going there and it took some time. It took twice-a-week adjustments. It wasn’t immediate, but little by little, it stopped hurting. Going back to student teaching, I remember doing that and I don’t remember exactly when it stopped, but knock on wood. Having been under Dr. Bagley and my sister’s care now, I haven’t had a relapse of it. I was telling our mom on the way home I don’t remember when it stopped and I don’t remember a lot of it. I think I have blocked it out.

It’s scary when you are going through something like that. The thing that your brain goes to is, “What if I have to live like this for the rest of my life?

I had that thought in the bathtub. I remember, “I can’t do this. I can’t go to work like this. I can’t sleep like this.” My sister knows me. Sleep is my favorite thing in the entire world and it was awful.

Someone reading this might be going through that right now. That’s why I wanted to bring you on because they might type in trigeminal neuralgia and then find our show. I want them to know that there’s life after this. One of the problems with trigeminal neuralgia is it’s so unrelenting for some people that they end up taking their lives.

That’s painful for me to even think about because there is an answer to this and it is upper cervical chiropractic care, especially Blair Care. If Blair Care is not available in your area, there might be an upper cervical doctor that’s awesome too. We love all of our friends that do upper cervical. Since then, you have been under care. I know you still get headaches sometimes, but not very often anymore, right?

I can tell that when I have a headache, I’m out. I know what immediately, and I need to come and see you. Right now, I had a headache at school but we will take care of that. I don’t know if it’s because I have that weird bone but I can feel it down my ear. I can feel it when I start getting out. It’s almost a tingling sensation that I need to come in and see you. Going back to what you said. I was googling trigeminal neuralgia. I remember it coming up as such a suicide disease. I read those words and I was like, “I won’t do anything.” I completely agree with you. People need to seek out care and they need to try it.

 

 

Dr. Frederick, we got her under care relatively quickly after her symptoms started. Do you notice a difference when someone with a big neurological complaint if they get in sooner versus if they have had it chronically for a long time?

With any chronic neurological issue like this, one of the interesting things about nerves is if a nerve starts firing and firing a lot, it starts to develop a memory of that problem. We are going to call it trigeminal neuralgia for sake of this conversation. When I had that, I knew that I immediately needed to get it addressed.

One of our good friends who has now passed, the late great James Tamasi, had TN for twenty years before he got his head on straight. Something that he had told me it was at least a decade since he had been under care. Maybe a little bit longer, but he had a hard time. He would talk about it. He would give talks to people describing how he had bought the gun and how he was about to commit suicide when he had a moment of relief.

He shared with me that just telling that story would bring that pain back on across his face. He was at this point, a decade or more out, not having that pain come on as he tells the story, which is pretty profound. We hear this phrase, “Nerves that fire together, wire together.” Those pain fibers, if they are always firing and you do not get any relief, for some people, they have to be cut because the nerve fibers will not turn off otherwise. Hopefully, we don’t let people get to that point, but that is a reality for these pain fibers and these pain generating nerves. I think most people, before they get to that point, decide that they are done and they are checking out unfortunately.

Last thing, unless Dr. Schurger has any other questions. When I look at my story of how I found upper cervical chiropractic and relief from my own problems, which we have talked about in previous episodes, your story comes into my mind too because of that confirmation. I know there’s a higher power at work and all of that stuff, but what would you say to someone who is in despair with a neurological condition? What would you tell them about the upper cervical?

First, I would say, “Why not? Just do it.” When you were in that moment, when you are in that bathtub and there is nothing else that’s working, just do it. Try it and get under care. Give it a chance because you don’t know but it could change your life the next day. Chiropractic care in general, I have talked to you and a lot of people about this because we grew up with it. There’s a big group of people in the United States that have never tried it and their family never tried it.

I encourage people to try. There are so many medications out there that people take that I believe that if they would try upper cervical care and give it a chance, it could change the way their body functions, works and heals. Lean into it. It’s not going to hurt because it doesn’t hurt when you get adjusted. It’s not going to hurt to give it a try because it could change something that you thought would never be without ringing in your ears, pain, or headaches. What you can be, it can happen.

Dr. Schurger, do you have any other questions for her?

I have one quick question. Have you had any symptoms since, for other TN, that’s even close to what that used to be?

It’s funny because you were saying that you think about it. Right now, I’m gritting my teeth. I’m worried about it because we are talking about it. I would say the closest I get to it is I get tingly. As I said, I know when I need an adjustment because I get a headache or I feel tingles. It’s never a pain again but it’s almost like tingles. I can tell something is trying, not working, not connecting, or something is happening, but thankfully since then, I have not.

It’s interesting how so many people have a little bit of a tell, but after years and years, that tell becomes less and less that you don’t notice it as much and that gets you in trouble. The upside is your sister is right there.

She’s literally closer to my office than I am in my house.

Not just right there, but literally in the neighborhood.

We could walk to your house right now. Sarah, thank you so much for coming on the show. We appreciate you telling your story and opening up about it. I know that this is going to go places and help a lot of people, so thank you.

I hope it does. Thank you too for having me on. I appreciate it.

We are going to continue on, but Sarah, you can sign off.

I am leaving. You guys have a great evening. Thank you so much.

You too. Bye, Sarah.

That was such a great story, wasn’t it?

That is.

I knew you would like it. I don’t think you have heard that whole story before. You have heard bits and pieces of it.

I don’t think I have. Her saying that she was in the tub clicked with me. As I said, I didn’t want to say that I have had trigeminal neuralgia. I had bad facial pain but I’d never wanted to go to that point. After her describing that was what got her better, I remember I turned on the hot water until it was cold. If you are suffering from this and it takes you a little bit of time to get in or you need something to make it feel better in between even while you are getting adjusted and your body is healing, I highly recommend these spa shower heads.

They are so nice because it’s a lot of little spots. It’s probably one of the most relaxing shower heads I have ever had. I will buy one of these going forward. You need one. The upstairs shower needs a better showerhead when I visit, but that’s another story. I would get underneath it. The trick is I’d sit in the bottom of my shower stall. I’d have to stand up, adjust it a little bit, sit back down, stand up, and adjust it until I got it so it hit all my head and water would run down. I might put my hands like this over my eyes so that I could breathe with the heat coming down. As soon as she said that, I’m like, “That’s probably what this was a couple of years ago.”

The other interesting thing she mentioned and you have mentioned as well, and I have seen this on X-ray was that one side of the atlas was honking big and the other side was itty bitty comparatively. If they were both the same size, we would say, “That’s a normal atlas,” but for her, that’s a major problem. I saw another patient several years ago with bad migraines seeing a good chiropractor here in town, but he didn’t take an X-ray.

Traditional X-rays aren’t going to necessarily show an enlarged part of the atlas because you are taking it straight across and straightforward. You don’t see that it’s shaped like this.

It’s two parts and this is why the Blair work that we do is so critical. I wouldn’t change it for the world. If someone comes up with something better, I’m going to be like, “I’m interested,” but this little bit is key. Looking at, “That one is bigger and this one is smaller. It looks like it’s off to the right and isn’t accurate enough because the joint biomechanics don’t go straight left or right.” They are more forward and backwards and you have to do special views, which we do in our office so we can look straight down the joint to see this millimeter misalignment. Sometimes half a millimeter that you will never see on a conventional X-ray.

As we are talking about this, I will bring Philip on at some point in time in the future because he has such an interesting story. He’s been having such problems with the VA. All he wants is for them to help get a better sense because he knows what we are doing here is great. He wants better diagnostic imaging so we can show what’s effectively screwed up with him. He goes to these orthopedic guys and they are saying, “Everything is fine,” because it’s stuff that they can’t fix. I don’t want to say it’s an old understanding because it’s probably as new as can be, but let’s be honest, the science that you and I were taught in school is based on research from several years ago. The unfortunate part of any healthcare field is the information.

Unless you are into the cutting-edge stuff like you and I are because we are looking at this stuff all the time. I then come down, I teach, and you are picking my brain so that you don’t have to dig into it. I know you. You are much happier that I do the digging. I teach you but that works out fine. You ask me, “Now that you have said that, explain that in plain English and I have to think about it for a second.”

I think that’s relevant because then if you wanted to explain it to a patient, you could or just explain it to me.

To the point, as far as finding some of these ligaments for him that have been damaged in a work-related accident that happened to be VA time, some of these ligaments are so small that traditional imaging isn’t going to find them. You need very specialized imaging which we will get lined up for him. He’s trying to go through the system. I’m not understanding why the system is not conducive to what he’s looking for.

It’s not built for this. I wish it was, but it’s just not.

For the imaging and for what we are looking at, we are at least years ahead of what your average orthopedist is looking at. Nothing against what they are doing but they also don’t have a solution for it because we are looking at very small ligaments. The blessing is the muscles that hold that upper neck. Put that open-neck picture model back up and show me the muscles on the back. There are little muscles that are supposed to be back there. Those are largely not torn but those muscles will hold until the ligaments can heal.

They are trying to protect. Your body is built to protect you. Sometimes that protection mechanism is what’s holding you back. Speaking of rebuilding my body, I have been doing a fast.

 

 

How are you doing that? Are you doing it quick or slow?

Very quick. I’m going to show my app here. I am 70 hours into a 72-hour fast. I’m doing well with it. I have been hungry. Right now, I’m not hungry, which is incredible because I know I’m going to eat in two hours. I decided to do this for my health. My church is doing 21 days of prayer and fasting. That kicked my butt a little bit saying, “I have done a three-day fast before and afterwards, I’m going to continue to fast but One Meal A Day also called OMAD. Through the 21 days, I might do another three-day fast in there.” As my church has been going through the Bible, there are lots of fasting in the Bible, which is incredible.

Every religious tradition has a fasting tradition to it.

I wish I had it with me but there was this cool passage that was talking about fasting so that your body consumes itself. My jaw dropped because this is written thousand years ago. That might have even been in the Old Testament. I don’t even know how that old passage was. Somebody can look it up and let me know.

That sounds like Old Testament to me.

The process that now we have discovered is called Autophagy. One of the main reasons that I like to do a three-day fast is it gets your immune system refreshed because your body consumes the old cruddy parts of the immune system itself.

A three-day fast will refresh your immune system because your body consumes the old cruddy parts of the immune system.

I like the word detritus, which is all the old cruddy junk, all the crap, and all the dead tissues. It allows older cells to clean themselves out. We are not the same matter that we were a week ago and it’s changed a little bit. They say seven years. I don’t know. Maybe.

Every seven years, you have a new body or something.

Something to that effect, which may or may not be accurate to all pieces and parts, but the cells will go through their cell division. Old cells die off and new cells replace that and that’s how we are. That’s the process. We don’t have a good measure for it yet, but we do know that we can start to see in these 3 to 5-day fasts lots of benefits very quickly.

A couple of things that I have noticed already. I was testing my blood sugars beforehand to see where they were at. They weren’t super high but I did have a day or two when I was waking up in the morning in a fasted state before eating anything. That was over 100.

That’s a little high.

If you’re fasting, you should be under 100.

Even just an overnight fast, the big question is how late. You and I have run the same problem because we will run a long day especially now. We will get a meal and we won’t have a full twelve-hour fast by the time we wake up the next morning and we should have been at least twelve hours.

That’s true. I get home late and then I will eat. That’s not always the best thing and it’s not always the best food sometimes. I was noticing that was creeping up. Since the last few days, my blood sugars have been steady in the 80s, which is fine. Seventies would be a little bit better, but I’m happy where I’m at right now.

When I got out of bed, I got ready and everything, and then I walked down the stairs. I had been in the last week or two, maybe longer, and every time I took those first steps down the stairs, I was like, “Ouch.” My feet and my knee were hurting. I was in inflammation pain because my body was inflamed. I hopped right down the stairs and I even noticed it when I looked at my face. My face looked fresher and it looked not as poofy.

You look skinnier.

It’s just been three days. I think that’s incredible. I’m going to continue the OMAD. I do think I will probably do it because the church is doing 21 days of fasting in prayer. Sometime towards the end, I will pick another 3 days and do another 3-day fast. I know not everyone is religious but fasting is part of a lot of religions. The one thing I can say that’s been better, I have done 2 other 3-day fasts in the past but I never did them prayerfully and gratefully. I have been praying on this fast and it has helped me. If that is something that you want to try, know that when you are doing a fast, it can help to pray. If you are not a praying person, have a moment of meditation and gratefulness.

We are starting to see the science come out that is backing up why fasting is great. A lot of people are like, “I’m not crazy about religion,” except it kept society together for thousands of years. Let’s not pretend that there aren’t aspects of religion that have serious problems.

There’s been lots of problems and lots of religions and still are.

There are, but there are tenets that we should take a look at and say, “Is this good? Why was this practice? Why is this a thing?” It’s a recognition that we have got to clean out the body from time to time. I’m not saying that all of these things should be accepted blindly, but maybe we should revisit them in a manner that is at least intellectual and say, “Why does this stack up the way it does?”

We have to clean out the body from time to time.

If you wanted to sit down and learn some other interesting fasting facts, Dr. Mindy Pelz on YouTube has tons of great information. It’s wonderful. My sister-in-law is going through her book as she tries to get herself healthier so that they can get pregnant. That’s the end goal there. Fingers cross. All of these things, there are so many benefits. Here’s my next question. You are going to go to OMAD, which meal are you going to eat?

The only way I can successfully do OMAD is if I plan it day by day. Sometimes I will eat lunch and sometimes I will eat dinner. Sometimes there’s a get-together and if I can skip lunch that day and do dinner, I’d prefer to do lunch. I think OMAD is better at lunch because eating late at night isn’t the best thing for our bodies no matter what, and it’s part of sometimes what I have to do.

I do think I’m going to switch it. In a 24-hour period, I’m going to have a 2-hour eating window. Some days, it might be an 18-hour fast, sometimes it might be a 28-hour fast depending on what’s happening. That’s what I’m going to try to do. Again, the best way to do it is to pick the meal and keep it consistent through, but I’m going to be honest, I’m not going to be that person. I’m not going to be a psycho about it.

It can be because between your schedule, keeping up with the girls, and everything you have got going on there, you are going to have weeks where everything is topsy-turvy like you said. For me, this week was a non-Arthur week. I didn’t drive over to Arthur, Illinois to see patients over there on a Tuesday night.

When I do, I don’t get back until 9:00 PM. At 9:00 PM, I make my eggs and bacon on Tuesday night, and that’s what I’m doing. Whereas now, it will be 8:00 PM by the time I get home. Again, I’m not going to do that consistently. I would rather try to get that meal in earlier. The more that I look at intermittent fasting, I realize this. Everyone is now coming around to this without me even saying anything. Breakfast and lunch are probably your best choices when you are doing intermittent fasting. Eat a morning meal, eat a noon meal, and skip dinner. Everyone has been very adamant about doing a skip breakfast and eat lunch and dinner. Dinner ends up getting pushed late.

It might be better not to eat it then. Breaking the fast. We need to talk about that too.

We will get to that here in a second. There are a couple of big pieces of research out there. One being with women, they were looking at breast cancer markers or whether or not they were elevated in these women. There were two groups. Both were doing intermittent fasting but one group made sure they were eating their meals during daylight hours.

We are short on daylight. We are done by 5:00 and int comes up at 7:30. They would eat all their meals in daylight versus another group that would have noon and maybe 8:00 PM or 7:00 PM in darkness. The group that ate that second meal or had some of their meals in that darkness or in that evening time had higher incidences of breast cancer indicators.

There is something to our circadian rhythm driving when we are eating. Whatever that might be for you or somebody else who’s reading, it’s something to think about and try to focus on getting those meals in earlier in the day. We have our schedules and we have our lives. Sometimes food and our meals have to be put in around our work. Restricting that eating cycle has shown to be very beneficial across the board. What are you breaking your fast with now?

My refeeding will consist of a soup that’s in the freezer right now. I got to defrost it. It’s a vegetable and it has some chicken in it, a brothy soup. The tendency for some people is then they go like, “Let’s go to the Chinese buffet.”

I’m tempted to come on down to go to the Chinese buffet with you.

No. Maybe if it’s in my eating window. Pretty much that’s what I’m going to eat. I’m going to eat that and then let my body absorb it. I’m not going to continue to eat through the night and stuff. After that, I got to decide what time I want to eat again. I know I will be hungry in the morning, but I think I’m going to wait until late afternoon to eat again. Refeeding is important. A lot of people will start with a bone broth. I don’t want to stop at the store. If I had some or if I made some, I would do that, but I don’t.