Lifestyle changes that promote overall good health can often help decrease migraine frequency and severity, including standard sleep hygiene advice, regular exercise routines, and keeping a diary to track triggers.
Dietitians strongly advise seeking guidance before embarking on more restrictive diets like gluten-free or low histamine eating plans, which carry the potential risk of nutritional deficiencies.
Getting Enough Sleep
Sleep is one of the key lifestyle changes that can help reduce migraine attacks. By following the SEEDS (sleep, exercise, eating and diary) system as a guideline for change in their daily lives, patients can make this transformation.
Sleep deprivation increases your risk of migraines and can set off their aura phase – flashing lights or zig-zag patterns that often precede weakness and confusion. To improve sleep, try staying on a regular schedule, limiting screen time before bed, and creating a relaxing winding down routine. Regular, low-impact exercise is another powerful tool against migraines as it releases natural endorphins while stabilizing blood sugar levels to help prevent migraines altogether.
Avoiding Trigger Foods
Many everyday foods like chocolate, caffeine and alcohol may act as migraine triggers for some individuals. A food journal can help identify possible dietary triggers; if a pattern emerges, try eliminating one food at a time to see if your symptoms improve as a result of changing diet alone.
As important, maintaining a regular eating schedule is. Skipping meals can cause sudden blood sugar fluctuations and dehydration, both of which may contribute to migraine attacks.
Regular exercise can help lower stress levels – another common migraine trigger – as well as promote relaxation and better sleeping patterns. As with any new exercise regime, however, always consult your physician first before beginning a new regimen. As well as eliminating specific migraine triggers, wellness plans with preventive medication may also reduce their frequency and severity.
Keeping a Diary
A migraine diary can be an invaluable aid to helping identify specific triggers. By recording their diet, exercise routine, sleep pattern, stress level and even weather factors in their diary entries, patients can identify which aspects contribute most to their migraine attacks.
Keep your diary up-to-date regularly – daily if possible – in order to identify patterns. A simple system using green, yellow and red dots may assist with this: If the migraine was mild or did not impact daily function write “green”, moderate/disabling migraines write in “yellow”, and severe migraines require “red”.
Women should record menstrual days as these can provide insight into hormonal influences. The more information included in their diary, the better it will serve when reviewing it with their healthcare practitioner.
Getting Regular Exercise
Regular exercise releases endorphins and reduces stress, both of which are key elements in helping to avoid migraine attacks. But starting an intense fitness program suddenly may trigger one; therefore, it is wise to gradually work up to greater exertion as your body adjusts.
Exercise can also help to regulate sleep patterns, which is another common trigger of migraines. Make sure that you are getting sufficient rest by going to bed and rising at roughly the same time each night. This will ensure a more relaxing and restful sleeping experience and may reduce headaches as a result of better routine.
Select low-impact exercises such as walking, swimming or cycling. Simplify your life and find ways to decrease workload and stress levels; try stress management techniques such as deep diaphragmatic breathing from the diaphragm, meditation or mindfulness as tools for doing this.
Increasing Your Water Intake
Studies suggest dehydration to be one of the leading causes of migraines, so encourage patients to stay hydrated by drinking water regularly and eating regular meals – this will prevent blood sugar fluctuations which could contribute to migraines.
Exercise may also help alleviate migraines by releasing chemicals to block pain signals in the brain, and by helping manage stress – two factors known to make migraines worse. Encourage patients to find low-impact exercises they enjoy doing such as walking, swimming or cycling to help control migraines.
Lifestyle changes won’t prevent migraines completely, but they may significantly lessen their frequency and intensity. Patients should be encouraged to implement lifestyle modifications and track their progress with a migraine diary. If more relief is desired, discuss beta-blockers, antidepressants or abortive medicines which stop migraines before they occur as preventives or abortives.
