Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy
Speaker 1: d Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. We talked about the
Speaker 1: history of migraine on the show this week. Um Man,
Speaker 1: this whole episode brought up so many feelings for me.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, So I had actually forgotten about my grandmother
Speaker 1: talking about her sick headaches until Um, I was having
Speaker 1: a conversation with my dad, and so this must have
Speaker 1: been in because I have not seen them yet since
Speaker 1: it has become a little safer to travel. Um. And
Speaker 1: I don't even remember how the subject came up, but
Speaker 1: he mentioned something about it, and he he mentioned my
Speaker 1: grandma Jenny saying talking about her sick headaches, and I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, yeah, I totally remember that. And then
Speaker 1: my dad said that he can to have migraine attacks,
Speaker 1: um if he like eats too much really dark chocolate.
Speaker 1: I think was the thing that that he described as
Speaker 1: a trigger for him. I had pretty bad recurring headaches
Speaker 1: when I was like a child and a teen and
Speaker 1: a young adult, but never with any of the other
Speaker 1: symptoms that are associated with migraine attacks. Um. And I
Speaker 1: also never except for when I was a little kid
Speaker 1: and I was having weird headaches and I didn't know
Speaker 1: what was going on, Like, my mom took me to
Speaker 1: the pediatrician and it turned out that was sinus headaches,
Speaker 1: So then I knew what a sinus ache I felt like.
Speaker 1: But I had a lot more like sinus headaches and
Speaker 1: tension headaches. And I remember going to the doctor one
Speaker 1: time and being like, I feel like I have a
Speaker 1: headache all the time, and my doctor said, you have
Speaker 1: uncontrolled allergies, and I was like, oh, yes, you are correct,
Speaker 1: I do have uncontrolled allergies. Let's fix that. Let's fix that. Um.
Speaker 1: I sometimes would have a headache that was bad enough
Speaker 1: that I just had to go to bed, But unlike
Speaker 1: a lot of people described with their migraine attacks, like
Speaker 1: I could go to bed and go to sleep and
Speaker 1: sleep it off. It was not something that was waking
Speaker 1: me up out of sleep or preventing me from sleep. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm the woosiest human on earth about headaches, like I
Speaker 1: I hate them, and even a mild headache is very
Speaker 1: upsetting to me. I have only had one in my
Speaker 1: life that fits a lot of the descriptors of a
Speaker 1: migraine you know, like the sensitivity to light and like
Speaker 1: just the intensity and the nausea, and like, I have
Speaker 1: no idea what that was about. Like it was and
Speaker 1: it hit as I was walking into a movie that
Speaker 1: had a lot of cuts that faded to white, and
Speaker 1: so it just kept getting worse and worse, and I
Speaker 1: eventually just left and went and sat in the lobby
Speaker 1: and waited for the people I was with to be done.
Speaker 1: But like it was a one and done. I've never
Speaker 1: had another one like that before, and that was in
Speaker 1: my early twenties. But I mean, like I said during
Speaker 1: the episode, I definitely had a family culture where it
Speaker 1: was like bad headache. People would be like, oh, you
Speaker 1: have a migraine, and I'm It wasn't until much later
Speaker 1: in my life that I realized, like in my twenties
Speaker 1: that I realized, like, oh, no, people with actual migraine
Speaker 1: have a whole different jam than just getting a really
Speaker 1: bad Like my first exposure was a coworker who was
Speaker 1: literally like it would hit her. She did not get
Speaker 1: a lot of the warning signals and like it would
Speaker 1: literally just crumple her body, Like it would be so
Speaker 1: bad and so intense, and she would be nauseous and
Speaker 1: and all all of those problems that are you know,
Speaker 1: kind of acute and intense, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is different than headaches that I understood to be
Speaker 1: my Yeah, this is real. Yeah. I found the whole
Speaker 1: portion of the research for this episode that was about
Speaker 1: how a lot of sort of excess preconceptions evolved around
Speaker 1: migraine in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I got just
Speaker 1: enormously frustrated with that, because it really feels like people
Speaker 1: took migraine more seriously before those ideas started to evolve.
Speaker 1: So like, the medieval treatments for migraine attacks probably didn't
Speaker 1: really work, but like they were there and people were
Speaker 1: working on it. Uh, And as things have evolved until today,
Speaker 1: considering how prevalent migraine is and how serious and disabling
Speaker 1: it can be, it's really underfunded and under research compared
Speaker 1: to a whole lot of other things. And it's really
Speaker 1: hard for people to get diagnosis a lot of the times.
Speaker 1: And then the idea of people having a hard time
Speaker 1: getting diagnosed with things like that doesn't just apply to migraine.
Speaker 1: It applies to so many other conditions as well, And
Speaker 1: I just I got very angry about all of that
Speaker 1: during the research. Yeah, I mean, I I think there's
Speaker 1: also that problem, right that persists. We touched on it
Speaker 1: a little in the episode. But like for people that
Speaker 1: don't have migraine and they do kind of equate it
Speaker 1: to just a really bad headache, there is often a
Speaker 1: level of dismissiveness. Like I remember a boss, he was
Speaker 1: not my boss, but was in a different department at
Speaker 1: a job where we had a coworker that had really
Speaker 1: quite debilitating migraines, and he was always never actually said it,
Speaker 1: but kind of always gave the impression that he believed
Speaker 1: this person was faking to get out of work, like,
Speaker 1: and that's not an outlier at all, which is very problem.
Speaker 1: I had a coworker at one of my first jobs
Speaker 1: who started dealing with migraine attacks really while we were
Speaker 1: working there together, Like we were in the same age,
Speaker 1: basically the same job position, and she was having to
Speaker 1: miss a lot of work both because of being in
Speaker 1: the middle of migraine attack, but then also because of
Speaker 1: like trying to go to doctors to figure out what
Speaker 1: was going on and like get a treatment that actually
Speaker 1: helped her, and then also left for another job and
Speaker 1: our boss told me he thought she had been lying
Speaker 1: about her migraines to go to job interviews. And that
Speaker 1: was more than twenty years ago, and I'm still mad
Speaker 1: about it. Yeah. Yeah, it's a like, like you said,
Speaker 1: it's a persistent problem of miss based on misunderstanding in
Speaker 1: people not really taking it seriously. Um, which just stinks
Speaker 1: because here's my thing. Let's just say, for the sake
Speaker 1: of arguments, someone just had a regular headache, but if
Speaker 1: they feel cretty enough that they think they cannot work,
Speaker 1: have some grace. Yeah. Yeah, I know. There's a weird,
Speaker 1: a weird thing about wanting and expecting people to work
Speaker 1: through discomfort and feeling ill that I think is even
Speaker 1: worse in the migraine and headache area. But it's just
Speaker 1: across the board kind of a general problem in a
Speaker 1: lot of workplaces. Yeah, yeah, I know. There were folks
Speaker 1: who really hoped that the pandemic would lead to generally
Speaker 1: more grace of allowing people to have time off if
Speaker 1: they were ill. Um and at least at this moment,
Speaker 1: does not seem to be something that's been universally adopted
Speaker 1: across businesses here in the US. No, it's a whole culture,
Speaker 1: this week we talked about something super disgusting. Sorry about
Speaker 1: that adulterated milk, but it is one of those things
Speaker 1: that I really didn't know anything about, so when I
Speaker 1: stumbled across it, I was like, what, Yeah, Well, in
Speaker 1: the food safety story that I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people are more familiar with, is uh like the slaughterhouse scandals, um,
Speaker 1: that were covered a lot more widely. Uh, not as
Speaker 1: much about the milk. We've talked before on the show
Speaker 1: about uh then the butter versus Marjarine episode about the
Speaker 1: idea that marjarine was being made with impure ingredients. But
Speaker 1: it's a little bit different nu Once. Yeah, the most
Speaker 1: of the slaughterhouse stuff happened, you know, a couple a
Speaker 1: few decades later. Um. The milk one really though, endured.
Speaker 1: I mean it was going on for a long time
Speaker 1: and people were fighting it, which to me is just terrifying.
Speaker 1: Like I can understand why there were some people who
Speaker 1: were like, I'm not using milk at all, because I
Speaker 1: just don't know, especially if this strange mixture was in
Speaker 1: some cases making a convincing doppelganger for actual good milk.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine it would, but I don't know I'm
Speaker 1: not about to mix chalk and plaster into my milk
Speaker 1: to see how it turns out. Um, oh so gross. Uh.
Speaker 1: You you grew up in a milk drinking house. Yes, well, yes,
Speaker 1: so milk drinking house. Part of it was just that
Speaker 1: I particularly liked milk, and I drank a lot of it.
Speaker 1: My brother had a lot of allergies when he was little,
Speaker 1: and so for a while when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: we were getting our milk directly from a goat farm
Speaker 1: because he didn't have the same allergy response to goat
Speaker 1: milk is he did two cow's milk. Um. And I
Speaker 1: continued to drink milk a lot pretty much into my
Speaker 1: early adulthood, like college years, and then I eventually tapered off,
Speaker 1: like I don't if I am drinking a glass of
Speaker 1: milk at this point, it's because the thing I just
Speaker 1: ate is too spicy, and even though there's some debate
Speaker 1: about whether milk really helps with that, that makes me
Speaker 1: feel a little better. I have never been a big
Speaker 1: milk drinker. Um. The only thing I have historically really
Speaker 1: like as a kid. Forget at it. You were not
Speaker 1: going to get me to drink a glass of milk.
Speaker 1: I would literally sit there and stubbornly gut it out
Speaker 1: in my chair for as long as it took until
Speaker 1: my mother would take that business away. For no reason
Speaker 1: that I know, I just probably got in my head
Speaker 1: that I didn't like it. Um. I would use it
Speaker 1: in cereal without a second's thought that I just didn't
Speaker 1: want to drink a glass of milk for whatever reason.
Speaker 1: And I have always used it in coffee. Although UM,
Speaker 1: I have definitely found since probably my thirties, when like
Speaker 1: nut milk started to be on the rise, that I
Speaker 1: just have a way easier time with those in terms
Speaker 1: of like my body being like, yes, I'm cool with
Speaker 1: this to digest it, I can handle that, no problem. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I married a man who is very lactose intolerant,
Speaker 1: so that works out. UM. I cut all the dairy
Speaker 1: out of my diet at one point because I felt
Speaker 1: like it was making my acne worse. That's just my
Speaker 1: own personal experience. I do not I do not need
Speaker 1: papers about what about that. Um. And I kept that
Speaker 1: up for a while, and I think that might have
Speaker 1: been the thing that like eventually just sort of cut
Speaker 1: off the desire to just drink a glass of milk. UM.
Speaker 1: I do eat some cheese now and put some butter
Speaker 1: on things. Are you plenty of cheese? Like a lot
Speaker 1: of cheese in my diet. But yeah, for my my coffee,
Speaker 1: it's which I drink a lot out of. It's usually
Speaker 1: an oat milk these days, delicious, marvelous. I bought a
Speaker 1: thing of um I think almond milk during the early
Speaker 1: early months of the pandemic, intending to use it to
Speaker 1: make chea seed pudding because I have a cheesa seed
Speaker 1: pudding recipe that I really like. Uh, And I never
Speaker 1: got around to doing that, and so now it's like
Speaker 1: I'm slowly making my way through this needs to be
Speaker 1: consumed and not wasted all my milk that I have. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a It's a very interesting right any time you
Speaker 1: talk about any consumable item, just as we demonstrated, one,
Speaker 1: everyone has an opinion about what you should be putting
Speaker 1: in your body, and two that has been going on
Speaker 1: for centuries. Yeah, I did not know about that. Cotton
Speaker 1: mother writing that was like God will punish you if
Speaker 1: you don't breastfeed your babies, and I was just like,
Speaker 1: whoa may Yeah, right out of the gate, cotton mother
Speaker 1: needs to mind his own business, own joke. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's always I mean, it kind of comes down
Speaker 1: to that thing right where you were saying, please don't
Speaker 1: send me papers about whether or not dairy and acne
Speaker 1: are actually connected. There's certainly validity that for some people
Speaker 1: that kind of response could happen, because everybody's body is
Speaker 1: different and you respond to things with different inflammatory responses,
Speaker 1: and so, you know, I appreciate that everyone thinks they
Speaker 1: have all of the information on what is best for
Speaker 1: everyone else, but really that's between you and your doctor. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Just as a general rule, everybody can focus on their
Speaker 1: own food choice. Yes, yes, um yeah, but uh now,
Speaker 1: thank goodness, regulations all over the place. Yeah, I can't
Speaker 1: imagine some of the things that were going on in
Speaker 1: these places, and it's horrifying and not something I want
Speaker 1: my brain to linger on. Um. Both for all of
Speaker 1: the babies who were dying in horrible ways because their
Speaker 1: bodies could not obviously process the disgusting things they were
Speaker 1: being fed by well intended mothers, surely, and also because
Speaker 1: those animals are treated horribly and everyone involved. I understand
Speaker 1: the people who are like everyone in the supply chain,
Speaker 1: should be punished, totally get that that mentality, Um, but
Speaker 1: in happier thoughts. I sure am excited to make that
Speaker 1: meat loaf. Yeah, I really am. Um. Christian's recipe looks
Speaker 1: very good. I can always check with her and see
Speaker 1: if maybe we could share that recipe on our social uh,
Speaker 1: if she'd be comfortable with that, if anyone else wants
Speaker 1: to make it, I think it would be a great
Speaker 1: testament to just the concept of like family recipes that
Speaker 1: get passed down. If everybody started making her mom's secret
Speaker 1: recipe we loaf, that would delight me to no end
Speaker 1: as a meat loaf lover. Can't wait. Um. I hope
Speaker 1: that you, if you are headed into a weekend, get
Speaker 1: a chance to eat and possibly make if you like
Speaker 1: cooking all kinds of delicious things, and that you get
Speaker 1: some RESTful time if that is the way your weakest structured,
Speaker 1: if you have responsibilities or you have to work over
Speaker 1: the weekend. I hope all of that goes as smoothly
Speaker 1: as possible. We'll see you on the other side. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, we do have a classic for you tomorrow
Speaker 1: and then a fresh episode on Monday. Stuff you Missed
Speaker 1: in History Class is a production of I Heart Radio
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