Migraine diaries are a journal kept by migraine sufferers, detailing their experiences with attacks. The general idea is to track your symptoms when they arise, being careful to note what treatments you may currently be on at the time, as well as what triggers may have induced the attack. Migraine attacks can be very varied: in symptoms, duration and triggering factors. Keeping a migraine diary helps one to keep a record of details you may otherwise forget. Reading back old journal entries may help one recognise patterns and triggers you would not have thought about at the time, such as temperature, pollution, hormonal cycles etc.
Why not keep a migraine diary?
Some migraine sufferers argue that keeping a diary is not as beneficial as it seems. First of all, the diaries are highly subjective to the migraineur’s own biases. This means the journal entries may describe attacks in a way which justifies the sufferers already existing thoughts on the condition. Diaries are also hard to stick to. As there is no immediate benefit to noting your attacks down, migraineurs may lose motivation, or delay writing in their diaries to a point where important details about their symptoms are forgotten. Another possible side effect of keeping a migraine diary is stress. It is stressful to recount your attacks. It is stressful to have to relive your attacks whilst trying to make connections, or deduce triggering factors. This stress could itself trigger a migraine attack.
Why keep a migraine diary?
Those are the disadvantages to keeping a migraine diary. The advantages, in most migraineurs’ minds, heavily outweigh the possible drawbacks. As subjective as migraine diaries may be, they are still the best method patients have of keeping an honest account of when, where, how their migraines come about. It is the best method to look for clues into what their most common triggers are, as well as finding ways to ameliorate their attacks.
Doctors need as much information as possible when considering treatment options for migraines; here a migraine diary is invaluable. Future research and innovation in the treatment of migraines can only be helped by increasing the amount of information available on migraines; millions of migraineurs writing their honest account of when and how they get migraine attacks is vital.
Making the best Migraine diary
Whether you feel migraine diaries are indispensable or over-rated, what can be agreed upon by everyone is that keeping a migraine diary is hard work! There seems to be a large variation in the types of diaries people keep, influenced by how verbose and literate the migraineur is, as well as how beneficial he or she feels the concept of keeping a diary is.
So, though you can make it as simple or detailed as you feel like, there are a couple of basics everyone should try to follow to maximise the benefits of keeping a diary.
- There should be a section where you quantify the pain or discomfort you are feeling (a number out of 10)
- There should be an area next to the pain scale where you can describe your pain in words.
- You should timestamp your entries, at least differentiating between morning, afternoon, evening and night.
- There should be a free space for you to write details you find important, such as medication, weather, food eaten, symptoms; anything. Anything you consider important enough to repeat in every entry should preferably have its own section.
Final Thoughts
The most effective migraine diary for you is the one you will feel motivated enough to fill in everyday. If that means keeping it simple, then streamline the diary as much as possible. If you feel happier filling in every small detail surrounding your migraine pain, then you should create a detailed diary. If drawing pictures helps you remember details about your migraine, draw a picture. This resource is for you to make sense of your condition, there is no need to feel any guilt about not doing it ‘right’.