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How to keep a migraine trigger diary (and find the triggers that show up a day later)
A gentle, practical guide to keeping a migraine trigger diary, from what to write down to how long it takes, and why some triggers are so hard to spot on your own.
If you live with migraines, you probably already have a list of suspects. The second coffee. A late night. Skipping lunch. That heavy, grey feeling in the air before a storm.
Some of those suspicions will be right, and some won’t. A migraine trigger diary is one of the simplest ways to tell the difference, and to bring something clearer than “I think it might be…” to your next appointment.
This guide covers what to write down, how long to keep going, and why some triggers are so hard to see without a little help.
This is a guide to keeping notes, not medical advice. If your headaches are new, changing, or worrying you, please talk to a doctor.
Why triggers are so hard to spot
Three things make migraine triggers slippery.
They’re often delayed. A short night on Tuesday might show up as a migraine on Wednesday afternoon. By then, Tuesday is a blur, and the obvious suspect is whatever you had for lunch.
They often stack up. Many people find that one trigger on its own is fine, but two or three together (poor sleep, a stressful day, a missed meal) tip things over. That makes any single trigger look inconsistent.
Some “triggers” are early symptoms. Before a migraine, some people crave sweet things, yawn a lot or feel unusually tired. It’s easy to blame the chocolate, when the craving was actually the attack beginning.
A diary helps with all three, because it remembers the days before, not just the day itself.
What to write down
You don’t need to log everything. Start with the migraine itself, and a few things you suspect.
Every time you have a migraine or headache
- When it started, and roughly how long it lasted
- How strong it was, on a simple scale like 1 to 10
- Whether you took medication, and whether it helped
A few possible triggers, most days
Pick the ones you’re curious about. Common ones people track include:
- Sleep: hours, or simply how rested you felt
- Caffeine: cups of coffee or tea
- Meals: especially skipped or late meals
- Stress: a quick 1 to 5 is enough
- Alcohol
- Your cycle, if you have periods
- Screen time or long stretches at a desk
- Weather: many people suspect changes in air pressure
Three to five of these is plenty. A short list you keep up is far more useful than a long one you abandon after a week.
Log the good days too
This is the part people most often skip. If you only write things down on migraine days, there’s nothing to compare against. A quick note on ordinary days (“slept 7 hours, 2 coffees, fine”) is what makes a pattern visible.
How long should you keep it?
Give it at least two to three months. Migraines don’t follow a weekly timetable, and a few weeks can easily be misleading, especially if your migraines are linked to your cycle or the seasons.
It’s fine to miss days. A diary with gaps is still far better than no diary at all. Nobody is grading it.
How to read your diary
After a couple of months, look for things that tend to come before your migraines, on the same day or the day before.
Ask yourself:
- Do migraines tend to follow short nights, or long lie-ins?
- Are there more on certain weekdays, or at certain times?
- Do they cluster around a particular part of your cycle?
- Do they arrive more often after the weather turns?
Be gentle with what you find. Two things happening together doesn’t prove that one causes the other. A pattern is a good question to explore, perhaps with your doctor, rather than a final answer.
Paper, spreadsheet or app?
Any of them can work. The best diary is the one you’ll actually keep.
- Paper is simple and private, but it’s hard to spot patterns across months by eye.
- A spreadsheet can show patterns, if you’re comfortable building charts.
- An app can do the comparing for you, and some can fill in things like sleep and weather automatically.
If you choose an app, check where your data goes. Health diaries are personal, and many health apps store what you write on their own servers.
How Patterns can help
We built Patterns to do the slow, careful part of this for you, privately.
- It looks for delayed links. Patterns checks what tends to come before your migraines on the same day and up to three days earlier, so a Tuesday night can be linked to a Wednesday migraine.
- It can track the weather for you. With the optional Weather connection, it records daily air pressure and pressure change, so you don’t have to.
- It can bring in sleep. With Apple Health, sleep and other measures arrive automatically, which helps on days you don’t feel like logging.
- It’s careful about coincidences. It only shows links that are unlikely to be chance, so you aren’t sent chasing false leads.
- It stays on your iPhone. No account, no server. Your diary is encrypted on your phone.
There’s a ready-made starting setup on our page about understanding migraines and headaches.
A kind place to start
You don’t need a perfect system. Tonight, write down three things: how you slept, how many coffees you had, and how your head felt. Tomorrow, do it again.
In a couple of months, you’ll know your own patterns a little better. That’s worth a lot, whether you use it to make small changes, or simply to feel a bit more prepared for the next appointment.