Migraines can be profoundly disruptive, interfering with your ability to work, be present in relationships, and fully engage in life. We understand the toll migraines take—not only on you, but also on your loved ones and coworkers.
Our compassionate, comprehensive, root-cause approach goes far beyond simply suppressing symptoms. Instead of masking the pain, we help uncover why your body is creating these symptoms in the first place—to support your body’s innate ability to heal.
If you’ve been affected by migraines, chances are you’ve already tried a variety of things to find relief, such as:
- Journaling or counseling to identify patterns or triggers
- Labs, imaging, or neurological evaluations
- Medications, supplements, hormones, essential oils, or CBD
- Modifying your diet, exercise routine, or sleep habits
- Avoiding bright lights, loud sounds, strong odors, or temperature extremes
- Chiropractic care, massage, physical therapy, or acupuncture
- Botox, wearable devices, or other pain-reduction aids
- Endless suggestions from practitioners, the internet, or well-meaning friends and family.
While some of these may offer short-term relief, they are not addressing your specific root causes if you are still experiencing migraines. For true healing to happen, it’s essential to listen to your body and understand why it’s getting your attention through the pain of migraines. When the body becomes more balanced, the ‘internal fire alarm’ can stop sounding, allowing you to live with more freedom from pain.
A Whole-Person Approach to Migraine Healing
At Hope and Healing Naturopathic, we don’t focus solely on the symptom of migraines. We understand that migraines, which may include head pain, nausea or vomiting, auras, or blurred vision, are signs that something deeper is out of balance. Migraines are rarely caused by a single issue. We take a comprehensive view to assess various contributing factors.
We address not just the physical body, but also the emotional, spiritual, and energetic terrain that influences health and disease. Migraines can be categorized as a “neurological issue”, but it’s important to ask why the nervous system is struggling in the first place.
Healing isn’t about obsessing over triggers or relying on painkillers that leave you foggy – it’s about building resilience in your system so you can stay sharp, focused, and show up fully in life.
Our goal goes far beyond helping you resolve your migraines. We want to help you feel empowered to reclaim your life—free from the fear of the next episode, and with greater confidence, clarity, energy, and overall health!
Maintaining Balance Through Life’s Stressors
Our nervous system is influenced by countless factors throughout life. We are designed to maintain balance, but symptoms occur when our system is overwhelmed.
Imagine walking on a balance beam at the park. You might steady yourself through a few rocks tossed on the beam, a gentle nudge, or a little rain and wind. But when boulders land on the beam or you’re pushed repeatedly during a windy downpour, it becomes much harder to stay balanced.
Just as staying healthy and symptom-free can be compared to staying on the balance beam, the things that throw us off balance include stressful thoughts, dehydration, alcohol, lack of sleep, structural misalignment, and toxic exposures – whether from people, chemicals, environments, or food.
With a thorough assessment, physical exams, targeted lab testing, applied kinesiology, urinary indican and food intolerance evaluations, and years of clinical experience, we can identify key root causes and guide you on your healing path.
We don’t use one-size-fits-all protocols or cookie-cutter treatments. Everything is tailored to you and your genetics, goals, lifestyle, and unique concerns.
How We Help – An Approach that Works
Throughout your care, treatments are designed to reduce the factors pulling you out of balance, while boosting your body’s natural ability to stay balanced. Returning to the balance beam analogy, we help widen the beam, increase your stability, and clear away the stressors that threaten your ability to move forward with confidence. There is no magic wand to eliminate migraines, but when your body is properly supported, it can heal and no longer feel the need to signal distress through migraines.
Every patient’s root causes and treatment plans are different, but here are some of the most common causes of migraines:
1. Structural Misalignment
Even subtle misalignments from birth trauma, car accidents, dental work, or sports injuries can affect the function of the brain, nerves, muscles, and blood vessels. Anyone who has had any head or face trauma including concussions is likely in need of Bio Craniopathy—a hands-on therapy that restores proper cranial motion and nervous system function allowing people to experience less pain and brain fog, and more clarity, focus, and ease.
Bio Craniopathy has been clinically shown to improve balance, vision, relaxation, and postural alignment from head to toe. If you’ve noticed that your adjustments or massages only provide temporary relief, or if you notice facial or postural asymmetry, this treatment may be a great addition for you!
2. Dietary Triggers & Food Intolerances
Patients often come to us avoiding so many items including gluten, dairy, chocolate, caffeine, alcohol, aged cheeses, nitrates, MSG, soy, corn, or artificial sweeteners. While eliminating these items may help some, it’s unnecessary to be so restrictive for most people. For those who want to eliminate the guesswork, expand their menu options, and reduce pain, finding out dietary intolerances can be life changing.
Genetically, if we lack the enzymes to break down certain food groups, it impairs digestion and absorption contributing to leaky gut and toxemia. When the digestive tract is compromised, it’s like garbage rotting in the intestines, fueling inflammation, weight gain, pain, high blood pressure, and digestive issues.
Identifying your food intolerances is simple and nearly painless, unlike sensitivity or allergy panels. Intolerances remain consistent regardless of medications or recent food intake, unlike sensitivities or allergies. Learning how to fuel the mind and body for sustained energy, hormone balance, and strong bones, muscles, and joints is essential. Food is medicine and an integral piece of the healing puzzle.
3. Stress (a.k.a. overwhelm, burnout, exhaustion)
Chronic stress can trap the body in a fight-or-flight loop, leading to muscle tension, mood swings, hormonal imbalance, poor digestion, insomnia, fatigue, and pain. Living with migraines often adds another layer of stress and worry about when the next episode will strike, trying to avoid triggers, or rearranging your life around your pain. This creates a frustrating cycle that can perpetuate itself unless something is done to break the pattern.
While life will naturally include stressors, it’s important to help the body release stored trauma to respond with greater resilience. When we support the nervous system in feeling safe enough to let go and relax, healing can accelerate and pain can resolve.
Most people don’t want to relive or talk about their trauma. For many, it can feel scary – like unlocking a vault of life’s hardest moments, with the fear that something may be unleashed leaving you feeling raw. While it may feel like you’ve successfully stored away this locked vault forever, the truth is that the contents are already affecting you negatively. The symptoms are your signal that it’s time to listen and release what has been holding you back.
You are in control and we will not push your body beyond where it feels safe. Your body will only release what it feels safe and ready to let go of, always with your safety and well-being in mind.
Migraines may seem random or unrelated to emotions, yet symptoms are never random. We use a variety of gentle and effective therapies to help you process unexpressed emotion, reset neurological patterns, and return to a calmer, more regulated state. This healing opens the door to experiencing a life with greater freedom and confidence, and fewer or ideally no migraines.
Some of the techniques we offer to expedite your healing and decrease stress include:
- NET (Neuro Emotional Technique) – To help uncover and clear unresolved emotional stress stored in the body, which may contribute to pain or anxiety. According to therapists themselves, each release can be as effective as 10 years of talk therapy as NET accesses deep, subconscious layers.
- QNRT (Quantum Neuro Reset Therapy) – To reset the nervous system, prevent destructive patterns, and support the formation of new and healthier neural pathways. This technique also resets subconscious patterns.
- Homeopathic Medicine – Safe, individualized remedies that support healing from within to reduce pain and promote balanced emotional health.
- Bio Craniopathy – A hands-on technique to restore cranial motion, decrease pain, and improve nervous system function.
- Microcurrent and Scalar Energy Devices – Frequency-based tools to support cellular repair, pain reduction, and relaxation.
4. Toxicity
Many patients with migraines are sensitive to perfumes, cleaning products, alcohol, fumes, or artificial dyes. When the body responds with pain, it’s pulling an internal alarm to get your attention and ask for support. Migraines can be a symptom of toxicity, therefore, it’s important to both reduce your exposure to toxicants and support your body’s natural detoxification pathways.
Just like an overflowing bucket or trash bin, your detox pathways can become overburdened, signaling distress through symptoms like pain, high blood pressure, rashes, weight gain, hot flashes, and more. It’s important to support detox pathways gently and consistently, rather than relying on aggressive ‘detoxes,’ which can worsen symptoms when proper support isn’t in place.
Our detox strategies avoid intense protocols that leave you feeling deprived, sick, or exhausted, but instead, guide you in reducing toxic exposures while improving your body’s ability to process toxicants.
Keep in mind that toxicity can exist on many levels – cellular, physical, emotional, spiritual, and energetic. Supplements may help with physical toxicity, but it’s also essential to evaluate and limit toxic food, people, thoughts, or environments in your life. The subconscious treatments mentioned above can help make this transition smoother, easier, and more natural.
5. Hormonal, Nutrient, or Blood Sugar Imbalances
Many people report migraines being worse during times of hormonal shifts such as puberty, ovulation, or menopause, or during periods of increased stress. Stress can impact our blood glucose, cortisol, Vitamin C, thyroid, and progesterone levels just to name a few.
Fluctuations or deficiencies in hormones like progesterone, estrogen, thyroid, insulin, or cortisol can all be correlated with migraine frequency and intensity. Nutrient imbalances and vitamin deficiencies (especially magnesium, B vitamins, iron, and Vitamin C) may also be part of the puzzle.
When appropriate, we offer targeted lab testing to assess hormone levels, nutrient status, and blood sugar balance to better understand what imbalances may be contributing to your symptoms.
In addition, habits like skipping meals or overindulging in food, leading a sedentary life or overexercising, and having poor sleep habits can cause blood sugar fluctuations which can contribute to migraines, fatigue, irritability, and poor concentration.
The Power of Personalized Care
No two patients are the same—and that’s why our programs are never based on cookie cutter protocols. We listen intensely, assess comprehensively, and take the time to educate and empower you to be an advocate for your health. Our patients are supported through a healing journey with a clear plan, proven methods, and authentic support to address the true causes of migraines.
We’ve seen incredible results even with patients who:
- Were previously told that there was “nothing left to try”
- Feel like they’ve “done everything”
- Have been to “the best” doctors and clinics in the world
- Had nearly given up that there was any chance of relief
- Had been a part of 10 or more research studies
- Come from a family of “migraine sufferers”
You Don’t Have to Keep Suffering
Whether you’ve just started experiencing migraines or have been living with them for decades, please know that there are still effective, empowering options available. It’s time to get to the root of your symptoms and experience lasting relief so you can return to living fully without being held back by debilitating migraine pain.
If you’re ready for real answers and solutions, reach out to us at 602-836-HOPE to book your consultation. You are worth it. Are you ready to take the first step?
About Dr. E
Dr. Shawna Eischens (Dr. “E.”), a Naturopathic Doctor in Scottsdale, AZ, and owner of Hope and Healing Naturopathic is an expert in finding the cause of your concerns so you can live a life free of pain, anxiety, fatigue, or other symptoms that are holding you back from enjoying the life you deserve!
Dr. E attracts motivated patients who are ready for a health advocate who is non-judgmental, passionate, experienced, and determined to help you THRIVE instead of just survive! Dr. E is a graduate of Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine, a mentor through Big Brothers/Big Sisters, a volunteer for Naturopathic Medicine Institute, and nature-loving outdoor enthusiast.
Dr. Eischens is a licensed Naturopathic Physician in Arizona and Minnesota.
She has received additional training and is certified in:
- QNRT (Quantum Neuro Reset Therapy)
- NET (Neuro Emotional Technique)
- Bio Craniopathy
- Vitalist of the Naturopathic Medicine Institute (VNMI)
Dr. Eischens is a member of:
- AANP (American Association of Naturopathic Physicians)
- NMI (Naturopathic Medicine Institute)
- AZNMA (Arizona Naturopathic Medical Association)
Dr. E was voted Top Naturopathic Doctor by her peers in the Phoenix Magazine in 2025.