Migraines can be immensely painful, yet there are ways to treat and prevent them. Medicine may help, while healthy lifestyle choices could also provide benefits.
Avoiding triggers — including weather changes, light, noise, smell and food items — is crucial in effectively managing migraines. Some effective tools for doing so include keeping a headache diary and following a regular schedule (including not skipping meals).
Identify Your Triggers
Monitoring triggers can help both you and your healthcare provider identify strategies to prevent or lessen migraine attacks. One effective method is keeping a headache diary and tracking similarities among your attacks (there are apps available that can assist here).
Certain triggers cannot be avoided, such as stress, changes in hormone levels during menstruation or pregnancy, or weather patterns; but you can try to mitigate others, like skipping meals or sleeping too much, by maintaining a regular schedule and engaging in regular physical activity.
Avoid triggers by following a prescription medication regimen that includes analgesics like NSAIDs; abortive medications like ergot alkaloids; and antiemetics (which reduce nausea). Your physician can recommend the best medication to suit your symptoms.
Get Plenty of Sleep
Migraines are often brought on by inadequate sleep, so it is vital that you make time for adequate restful slumber each night and try not to go to bed too late. Furthermore, try limiting electronic device usage (phone or TV usage) prior to sleeping.
Recent research from Cephalgia provides more reliable data regarding how sleep habits and migraines interact. They tracked thousands of participants as they slept and woke up, giving researchers greater insights into the correlation between sleeping habits and migraines.
Sleep can help alleviate some of the symptoms of migraines, including throbbing pain and light/sound sensitivity. Aim to maintain a regular sleeping schedule by avoiding daytime naps and going to bed at the same time each night.
Eat a Balanced Diet
An optimal diet should contain all the essential nutrients your body requires, helping reduce migraine episodes as a result. A healthful eating plan may even help.
Exercise can help maintain both body and mind wellness, as well as assist with migraine attacks. If you are new to physical activity, be sure to take it slowly at first; gradually increasing activity levels so as not to set off an attack.
Maintain a regular sleep and meal schedule to help manage your circadian rhythms and reduce migraine attacks, and to maintain a healthy weight as obesity increases your risk for daily headaches. Other beneficial lifestyle changes may include stress management techniques such as biofeedback or relaxation training to manage stress more effectively.
Exercise
Exercise can play an essential part in overall health and can even help to prevent migraines. Participation in regular aerobic exercise can reduce stress, which is often the trigger of migraine attacks. Consider exercises like walking and swimming; alternatively you might try yoga or biofeedback as complementary therapies.
These methods teach relaxation techniques that may reduce migraine frequency. Biofeedback uses electronic devices to monitor heart rate, skin temperature, perspiration levels and muscle tension.
Studies have demonstrated that migraine patients treated with both medication and behavioral management experience the most positive results. When combined together, medication combined with healthy living practices may prevent migraine attacks before they even occur. It may be wise to seek professional advice from a headache specialist so as to find an individualized plan for treatment that’s right for you.
Simplify Your Life
Steps taken to enhance your health and manage symptoms can help restore you back to the activities and relationships that matter most to you. But keep in mind that migraine is an intricate neurological condition which needs the appropriate combination of medicine, lifestyle changes and complementary practices in order to prevent and lessen attacks.
Start a headache diary to record when and how often migraine attacks happen, their severity, and any accompanying symptoms. Doing this may reveal patterns.
Start keeping a food and beverage diary, including any potential migraine triggers such as aged cheeses, chocolate, alcohol, and caffeine, then avoid them. Try eating at roughly the same time each day; don’t skip meals or fast. Go to sleep early every evening in an environment free from electronic devices in a quiet, dark space.
