Virtual Functional Medicine
Migraine is an energy problem at the cellular level. We treat it like one.
Just like the sun’s energy powers the living systems on our world, every cell in your body runs on the energy your mitochondria produce. When that production is compromised — by blood sugar swings, nutrient gaps, hormone shifts, or hidden inflammation — your nervous system has less capacity to compensate before it tips into an attack. This is where we go looking.
No two people's migraine looks the same underneath. One person's pattern is driven mostly by hormonal swings. Another's by blood sugar instability. Another's by a thyroid that's quietly underperforming, or a food sensitivity nobody's tested for. Generic protocols treat migraine as one thing with one fix. It isn't, and that's exactly why they so often fall short.
Functional medicine starts from the opposite direction: find out what's actually driving your pattern, then build the plan around that — not the other way around.
Migraine exists on a spectrum. Your care should match your experience.
Cellular Energy Is The Foundation, Not A Footnote.
Think about what it actually takes to balance. It's not one muscle working hard — it's dozens of small systems making constant, quiet adjustments so the whole structure stays upright. Your body's energy production works the same way. A growing body of functional medicine thinking makes a simple case: much of chronic illness traces back to how well your cells produce and use energy — a kind of internal balance, held moment to moment. Migraine fits that pattern.
Raising your threshold — the real work of having fewer, less severe attacks — requires your nervous system to actually change: build new neural connections, calm reactive pathways. That's metabolically expensive work, and just like balance, it falls apart when too many of the small systems underneath it are struggling at once.
A body running on unstable blood sugar, depleted nutrient stores, or a thyroid that isn't functioning well doesn't have the energy budget to do that rebuilding — no matter how good the rest of your care is. Functional medicine is where that balance actually gets restored, system by system, so the whole structure can hold steady again.
The Categories That Can Drive A Migraine Pattern.
Any of these can be a meaningful piece of your pattern — often more than one at once, which is exactly why this needs to be investigated, not assumed.
Hormones
Estrogen, progesterone, and cortisol all shift your threshold, often in ways that track with your cycle or life stage.
Thyroid
An underperforming thyroid affects mitochondrial energy production directly — subtle dysfunction can cap your capacity to change.
Food Sensitivities
Beyond classic trigger foods — a real, testable sensitivity can be a quiet, constant drain on your threshold.
Metabolic Dysfunction
Blood sugar instability and insulin resistance are two of the most common, most fixable drivers we find.
Mitochondrial Function
The actual energy-production machinery — nutrient status, key cofactors, and what's limiting it in your case specifically.
Gut & Detox Pathways
How well your body clears what it needs to clear shapes inflammatory load, which shapes your threshold too.
This isn't meant to replace your existing care team — it's meant to work alongside it. That might mean coordinating with your neurologist, bringing in a personal trainer, or looping in a therapist, depending on what your case actually needs. Migraine touches too many systems for any one provider to carry alone, and good care reflects that instead of pretending otherwise.
Collaborative Care, Not Siloed.
"I joined this group not knowing or realizing the benefits it would bring. I didn’t realize the self-love and tenderness it would allow me to see myself in. I imagined educational content and action steps that might help, but might not fully apply to me. This group has been supportive, helpful, educational and has made a noticable impact on my life."
— MRA participant
A 12-week Program, built around YOU
Intake
A thorough initial visit plus dedicated chart and care-plan preparation — this is where your customized plan gets built, not a generic migraine protocol.
Monthly Protocol Adjustment Visits
Regular check-ins to review labs and progress, and adjust your plan as your body responds.
Biweekly Implementation & Coaching Visits
Shorter, frequent touchpoints to help you actually put the plan into practice — nutrition, hormones, and whatever else needs tweaking along the way. esigned to help fit your lifestyle, not having you change your whole life to fit our plan.
Stabilize the System, Then Support the Change
In person, the work isn't a spinal adjustment in the traditional sense — it's neuro-rehabilitation: nervous-system-based neuroplasticity care, using precise, low-force techniques like DNFT to help retrain how your nervous system processes and regulates input. Rather than forcing a correction, we listen for exactly where your body is holding tension or dysregulation, then work with it — calming the pathways that have learned to overreact, at a pace your system can actually tolerate.
With repeated migraine attacks, your nervous system's pain-processing pathways can become progressively more reactive over time — a process called central sensitization. Pain signals that should fade start lingering, ordinary sensation starts registering as pain, and the threshold for triggering the next attack gets lower with each one. It's the nervous system equivalent of a smoke alarm that keeps getting more sensitive the more times it goes off, until it's reacting to steam from the shower.
This is exactly where neuroplasticity comes in — and it works in both directions. The same capacity that let your nervous system become more reactive over time is the capacity that lets it become less reactive again. Neuroplasticity-based care doesn't fight central sensitization with force; it retrains the pathways directly, teaching your nervous system to stop treating ordinary input as a threat. Sensitization isn't a one-way ratchet. It's a pattern that can be unwound the same way it was built — through repeated, appropriate input over time.
This kind of retraining has to happen in person, and it works best once your body has the energy to support the change — which is exactly what the virtual functional medicine phase is for.
For some people, the virtual phase is enough on its own. Others move on to in-person care at Stockheart once the foundation is in place. Either way, this is individualized clinical care.
Is This Right For You?
A good fit if:
You want individualized answers, not a generic protocol
You're ready for lab-based, root-cause investigation
You're not local to Minneapolis, or prefer virtual care
You want a plan you understand, not just one you're handed
Probably not the right fit if:
You're in acute crisis or need urgent medical care
You want group support and a lower-cost entry point — The Migraine Resilience Academy may be the better start
You're seeking medication management alone
Your Provider
Dr. Brenna Erickson, DC — a Doctor of Chiropractic with advanced training in functional medicine, craniosacral therapy, and functional neurology, and the only DNFT-certified provider in Minnesota. She also practices in-person at Stockheart Whole Health in Minneapolis.
Investment
Starting at $1,800
for the full 12-week program (intake + monthly + biweekly visits).
Labs and supplements are billed separately. Everyone's pattern is different, so what you actually need — which panels, which supports — is different too. Bundling a one-size-fits-all lab package into the price would mean either overcharging people who need less, or undercutting the depth of testing for people who need more. Separate billing keeps your plan genuinely individualized instead of built around a package price.
This is offered on a case by case basis rather than as a set, standing program right now — schedule a Discovery Session and we'll build the right plan and timeline together.
Have more questions about cost, labs, or how this fits with your existing care?