My Migraine Journey & Trust Brothers CBD
If you were to ask me back in 2015 when I started my The Creative Brief if I would talk about my health and CBD, I’d have probably laughed and said no way, this is a fashion blog! And while it still is, I usually get great responses from my more lifestyle based posts. Varying from relationships to faith to travel, TCB readers tend to love the content outside of the clothes too, which is why I eventually felt comfortable sharing this product with y’all!
So, when I was approached by Trust Brothers, I had a bit of a pause at first. Was this something I was passionate about? Would it make sense to my readers and do I even understand the product? Upon doing more research on CBD and watching a great documentary called Weed The People I was a bit more open to learning more. While the documentary focuses on cannabis too, I wanted to be sure that anything I was promoting did not and would not cause any high or reaction that people associate with cannabis. No judgement here, just personally not my thing! After speaking with their team, learning how their CBD contains no THC and trying it out for myself I learned a lot and have had great benefits from using it too. More on that in a bit, but here is some background on why I wanted to try it.
Ever since I was 13-14 years old I have suffered from migraines. If you have had one, you get it, but if you haven’t I’ll try and explain briefly as to why they are so debilitating. I’m sure many of you reading this have had a headache or two before and maybe a Tylenol or Advil helps and you’re good to go. When I had my first migraine I was scared. It was pain I had never felt before and nothing I took made it any better. The scariest part? It isn’t just pain. Many people can have other symptoms like blurred vision, sensitivity to light and sound and even vomiting and nausea. Luckily, I have only had 6-8 really bad ones at that level. To put it into perspective, Chronic Migraine patients get 10-15 a month.
My headaches got to the point where my doctor recommended I see a Neurologist for an action plan. She and I started a plan and she wanted me to really understand what the triggers were for my migraines. I kept a journal of what I ate, when I slept, what medicine I was taking, what life events were going on and turned it over to her after two weeks. We learned the following were triggers for me (this is over the course of 4-5 years of this exercise and where I currently have the most triggers):
Lack of sleep
Red Wine
Dehydration
High level of stress or anxiety
Lady time of the month
Weather (barometric pressure was a HUGE one for me - Google it!)
By narrowing it down to these triggers I could usually pinpoint when I’d have a migraine pop up. This became another issue because then the anxiety of waiting for one or thinking I’d get one would be its own problem. But, as I learned more and got older and also got the daith piercing (not a medical recommendation, but was worth a shot to me and improved my symptoms. Always consult professionals as everyone’s symptoms and treatments are different), I was on a pretty good path. I went from having 2-3 a month to maybe 1 per month.
Things started to get bad again when I was working a ton and not taking care of myself. I was having at least one per week and also having cluster headaches. Basically headaches that lasted 3-4 days and would only shift in pain vs. go away. It was time to re-balance. You can read my post here about what I learned that year and what helped. Once my stress levels were down and I had some time off I was chatting with a friend about how she takes CBD for anxiety. She mentioned it was helping her and she suggested I try it for headaches as that is one of the things that people who take it have found relief in. A couple weeks later Trust Brothers reached out and I said why not! I’ve been testing their CBD oil for about two weeks now as I wanted to give the product some time before recommending it to y’all.
While I did not expect it to take away my migraines or even make them better, I did get some benefits that have helped reduce the triggers of my migraines and therefore I haven’t had many since trying it. By taking the recommended dose twice a day (I do this when I wake up with my chai latte and about an hour before I go to sleep), I started noticing that I was more rested, had less stress and anxiety and was overall more calm. Keep in mind that I’m still working 40+ hours a week and planning our wedding so there were plenty of outside triggers as well.
After two days of taking the CBD I started noticing that I was sleeping better, getting to sleep faster, feeling more rested and calm during the day and my stress trigger was a lot harder to reach. I’m a big night owl and am usually most productive at night and my mind can race before bed. CBD helped me calm down before going to sleep so I was actually getting restful sleep and FYI there is no sense of drowsiness or even any feeling at all. The oil is tasteless and I have not had any other side effects or reactions from taking it. So, while it isn’t a cure or even treatment for migraines, it’s a big help in the migraine process for me.
If you’re interested in trying it for yourself or your pet (Wrigley takes it too!) Trust Brothers was so kind to send over a coupon code where you can get the oil free and just pay the cost of shipping. You can visit here and enter my code CREATIVEBRIEF and your email for a free 250mg CBD oil. As always, I hope y’all know and trust that I would never share or promote something that I did not 100% believe in and use myself. So, if you have any questions please let me know, would love to chat with you! Thanks so much for reading xx
Thank you to Trust Brothers for sponsoring this post. It is brands like yours that make The Creative Brief possible. All opinions are my own.