What Triggers Migraine

If you are a person who is prone to headaches and migraines then there are some activities which you may need to curtail or avoid. Although it seems really unfair that some people can indulge in all types of activities without any adverse consequences but when you do the same thing, these same activities can actually give you an excruciating headache or migraine. You will have learned from bitter experience that you really have no choice over this matter otherwise it will mean an inevitable pounding agony of a headache or migraine the very next day.

Over the years, certain factors that are common causes of headaches and migraines have been identified by the medical experts. These factors are called triggers and could be specific foods and drinks, habits or aspects of the environment.

How to Identify Migraine Triggers

The very first thing you need to do is to try to identify the things that set off your migraines. By becoming aware of your own personal trigger factors and then trying to control or eliminate those factors will help greatly in reducing the occurrences of migraine headaches and/or decrease the severity of the pain.

Each one of us is unique so your own migraine triggers will differ from those of other people. Very often, those more prone to migraines may find that they need a combination of triggers to bring on a migraine attack.

Another difference is that some migraine triggers can affect you more than other people and even more complicating is the fact that the migraine triggers can vary from one migraine attack to another. For example, there are times where you will find yourself having no migraine problem when eating blue cheese while at other times, the very same food can bring on a migraine attack. To make matters worse, your personal triggers can even change over a period of time.

Keep a Migraine Trigger Diary

To identify your own personal migraine triggers, one of the best way is to keep a diary of your headaches and migraines with notes of any associated trigger factors. These records will help you in pinpointing the migraine headache pattern and identifying migraine triggers as well as helping your doctor to provide more accurate diagnosis. At the same time, these records can help in identifying the most significant triggers and provide and indication of how many triggers is needed to set off a migraine or headache.