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Key points
- We know we should be keeping better records to track our migraines or chronic illness.
- Staying with it is difficult for a variety of reasons.
- Tracking systems are not a “one size fits all.”
How many of you know that keeping a journal/diary for your migraines (or any chronic illness) would be beneficial for you and your medical professional? How many of you faithfully keep such a record of your symptoms, triggers, pain scale, duration of the attack, medications taken at what times, and more? According to an article in Informed Health on migraine diaries, “Migraine diaries not only help you to find possible migraine triggers. They can also help you to find out more about your migraines—like whether they are chronic. You can see how often the attacks occur—and how frequently you take medication” (Informed Health).
In all honesty, I find that while I realize the importance of keeping up with such tracking, I am often either in too much pain at the time to be charting it all or if I’m having a good day, I don’t think of chronicling it.
Nonetheless, I do see the inherent value of such a journal/diary, and I am aware, too, that they are often used for additional evidence of the necessity of treatment for insurance purposes. While starting to research varied styles/templates available, I realized that they are not a “one size fits all.” There are, in fact, many tracking systems to consider.
Tracking migraine symptoms can be recorded in a variety of ways. According to an article from the American Migraine Foundation, the most common response about this issue from Move Against Migraine group members was that they track their migraine in a smartphone app. Many are available, so search your app store to find the one most conducive for you, one that will keep you engaged with it regularly. Move Against Migraine group member Michelle says that she “adds notes and time stamps to say when the pain increases and decreases or if I needed to take another dose of medications.” When she went to the emergency room for her migraine, she says, “The app made it easier for them to treat me appropriately. I even handed my phone with the app open to a current migraine…to tell them what medications I took and when I took them” (American Migraine Foundation).
Some sufferers may work better with an actual spreadsheet. One Move Against Migraine member, Ashley, uses one to track the symptoms and severity of her migraine attacks: “I timestamp and record severity and symptoms in a notes app on my phone and ‘plug and chug’ into a spreadsheet.”
For those who enjoy writing and reflection, you may have a written headache journal. These can be as in-depth as you wish, detailing your sleep, food, and symptoms across the day or just noting when your migraine symptoms begin, how severe they become, what the cycle is like, and when they end (American Migraine Foundation).
The National Headache Foundation is one of many prominent migraine organizations that provide a sample to download (headache.org). Not all professionals agree on the usefulness of such tracking systems, however.
Interestingly, an article in Wired makes a counterargument to using migraine diaries, quoting research that suggests that the very keeping of such a diary might actually make the patient feel worse:
“This seems to be true across different conditions—insomnia, back pain, and also migraine. One possible explanation is that by constantly paying attention to sensations in the body we can magnify them. These sensations may send an alarm to the brain, oh-oh, a migraine is starting. This in turn leads to anxiety, activation of the fight-or-flight response and soon a real migraine begins. Actually, when a patient comes in with pages and pages of notes that describe each migraine attack with possible triggers, detailed description of each attack, medications are taken and their side effects, I know that these patients will be harder to help” (The Headache Blog).
However, another study, without totally rejecting these points, argues, “We have to pay attention that he or she is not analyzing her/his own diary. That could lead to the increased influence of processing mechanism on the problem” (Bogucka).
This reasoning seems to make sense to me. If we simply record the information and look for patterns we notice regarding warning signs and triggers, the diaries seem very advantageous. The problem, it seems, comes in if we start dwelling on the symptoms, becoming more anxious, that we might actually activate or worsen our condition. We need to let the professionals work with this information, to a large extent.
Since it’s Migraine and Headache Awareness Month, let’s take on the challenge of discovering the best migraine tracking system that works for each of us to see if keeping up with it regularly assists us and our doctors who want to help us.
The website Migraine Again has invited me to include a number of helpful apps now available: https://www.migraineagain.com/apps-for-headaches-and-migraines/.
