Migraine JournalTracking
Tracking migraines properly
A neurologist will ask how many days a month you lose. Most people can't answer, because pain compresses memory and a bad month feels like every month. These are about building a record that answers the question — and about not fooling yourself while you do it.
Also in this section
Alcohol and Migraines: The Same Night or the Next Morning
Red wine is the most-blamed drink and works less than one time in ten. The onset timing is what separates a real trigger from an ordinary hangover.
Exercise and Migraine: Prevention or Trigger?
Both, and the difference is timing. Aerobic exercise reduces migraine days in trials, while exertion during an attack makes it worse — two different things.
Screens and Migraines: It's Probably Not the Blue Light
Flicker and glare have better evidence behind them than blue light does — and unlike blue light, both are things you can change and then test in a fortnight.
Driving With a Migraine: When to Stop, and What to Tell DVLA
Having migraine doesn't stop you driving. Driving through an attack is a different question, and aura is the part where the answer is clearest.
Vestibular Migraine: Dizziness Without the Headache
Episodes of vertigo with no head pain still count. The criteria ask for five episodes, a duration range, and migraine features in half of them.
Perimenopause Migraines: Why They Get Worse First
Attacks often intensify years before periods stop, then settle. Why the usual menstrual counting method breaks in perimenopause, and what to record instead.
How Long Before a Migraine Preventive Works?
Eight weeks at the target dose for tablets, three months for monthly injections. The trial only means something if you took a baseline count before day one.
Migraine or Tension Headache? You Need Two Weeks, Not One
The two definitions side by side, as six things to record. Why one headache can't answer it, and why most people asking turn out to have both kinds.
Migraine Warning Signs Before It Starts: Find Your Own
Tiredness, a stiff neck, trouble concentrating. In one diary study these predicted a full attack 72% of the time — here's how to find which ones work for you.
Migraine Aura Without Headache: What It Is and Why to Log It
Yes — aura can arrive with no headache at all. It's a recognised migraine subtype, and silent attacks belong in your record: they change what a doctor sees.
Migraine Postdrome: Why the Day After Still Counts
Migraine postdrome is the documented day-after phase of the attack, not weakness — what it feels like, how long it lasts, and why to log it.
Barometric Pressure Migraine App: When the Reading Is Taken
A barometric pressure migraine app is decided by one thing: whether it stamps the pressure change as you log, or looks the weather up afterwards.
The Best Migraine Tracking App Is the One You Still Use
Written by someone who makes one, so read it accordingly. The four questions that decide whether a migraine tracking app survives to month three.
Free Migraine Tracker App: How to Tell Which Free You Get
Free means three different things in a migraine tracker app. A 30-second check on the App Store page tells you which one you are about to install.
How Many Migraine Days to Qualify for Botox?
Botox's licence is chronic migraine: 15 or more headache days a month, at least 8 migrainous, for over 3 months — and what your diary has to show.
How to Track Migraines in Apple Health (and Its Limits)
Apple Health will log a headache in four taps. Here's how, what it records, and the three fields it has no place for that a neurologist asks about first.
Menstrual Migraine: What Helps Once the Pattern Is Confirmed
Your three-cycle count came back positive. What helps menstrual migraine now is an appointment agenda: three things to ask about, and what to bring.
Migraine Buddy Alternative: What You Lose by Switching
Looking for a Migraine Buddy alternative? What actually transfers, what you give up, and how to read both apps' Apple privacy labels before you move.
Sinus Headache or Migraine? What to Record for Two Weeks
In 2,991 people with self-diagnosed sinus headache, 88% met migraine criteria. Four things worth recording, and one sign that settles nothing.
Sleep and Migraines: Why 'Sleep More' Is Useless Advice
The link between sleep and migraines runs both ways, and both short nights and weekend lie-ins are reported triggers. What to log so the pattern shows.
What Counts as a Migraine Day? The Rules Trials Use
A migraine day is a calendar day, not an attack — one long attack can be three of them. The counting rules behind every threshold your neurologist quotes.
Caffeine and Migraines: A Two-Week Test You Can Run
Caffeine can ease an attack, cause one, or cause one by its absence. A two-week protocol that tells you which of those is happening to you.
Migraine Trigger Foods: Why the List You Found Is Wrong
Chocolate, cheese, red wine. The famous migraine trigger foods list has a causation problem, and the factor with the best evidence is not on it at all.
Why Do I Get Migraines at the Weekend? The Let-Down Effect
Attacks often arrive after stress ends rather than during it. One study found a near five-fold rise in the six hours after stress dropped — and it's testable.
How to Tell If Your Migraines Are Hormonal: Count 3 Cycles
No symptom marks a migraine as hormonal. Telling if your migraines are hormonal is arithmetic: do attacks land in a five-day window in two of three cycles?
Does Barometric Pressure Cause Migraines? Why Studies Disagree
Sometimes, for some people. Whether barometric pressure causes migraines splits the research for a reason that decides what you need to record.
How Many Migraines a Month Is Chronic? The Two Numbers
Chronic migraine is not simply fifteen headache days a month. The definition needs a second number most articles leave out — and it changes the diagnosis.
How to Tell If Your Migraine Medication Is Actually Working
"It helped" is too vague to act on. Here is the endpoint drug trials actually use, and the timing mistake that makes a working drug look useless.
Medication Overuse Headache: How Many Days Is Too Many?
The limit is not 15 days for everything. Triptans, opioids and combination painkillers cross the line at 10 — and mixing types counts too.
Why Your Migraine Comes Back After the Medication Works
Two different things get called rebound: a drug clearing before the attack ends, or a pattern that builds over months. Telling them apart changes what to do.
The five things worth recording
Date, severity out of ten, roughly how long it lasted, what it stopped you doing, and any medication you took for it. That's it. Every column you add past those five is a column you'll stop filling in by week three, and an abandoned diary is worth less than a sparse one.
The medication line is the one people skip and the one that gets asked about first. Treated days a month is the number behind medication overuse headache, and it is checked before any preventive is approved.
Log the attack before you take anything. Afterwards you will misremember when it started, and the timing is one of the few things a doctor can genuinely work with.
If you're keeping this for someone else, the person having the attacks is often the worst-placed one to see the shape of them. Supporting someone with migraines is the section written for you.
And when there's a date in the diary, the record has a job to do: getting more out of a neurology appointment is about the ten minutes all of this is for.
Start on paper if you'd rather
Nothing here needs an app. The printable diary is three pages and designed so that filling it in produces the numbers a neurologist asks for, and the action plan card is a one-page version for the household.
Get the free printablesNothing here is medical advice. What you do with the record — medication, referrals, anything you decide to change — is a conversation with your GP or neurologist.
Or let it take under a minute
Migraine Journal logs an attack in seconds, records the barometric-pressure change automatically, and prints the summary a neurologist asks for.