- See Migraine preventive medications: too many options to give up! for a list of medications used for Migraine and headache prevention.
- Do you understand the difference between preventive, abortive, and rescue medications? If you're not sure, take a look at Preventive, Abortive, and Rescue Medications - What's the Difference?
- How frequently are you reaching for abortive or rescue meds? Are you at risk for medication overuse headache, aka rebound? Not sure? Check out Medication Overuse Headache: What Do You Know? and Medication Overuse Headache - When the Remedy Backfires.
3. Identify Those Triggers
Do you know what your Migraine triggers are? Trigger identification and management are a vital part of Migraine disease management. If certain foods are triggers for you, you can avoid them. If messed up sleep patterns or missed meals are triggers for you, you can do something about them. Do you think stress is a trigger for you? There's still some controversy, but I hate to see anyone accept that stress is a trigger without at least trying to see if they encounter triggers during stressful times that they either don't encounter at other times or they're only triggers when the body is stressed. The International Headache Society has removed stress from their list of Migraine triggers and put it on their list of exacerbating factors -- things that make us more susceptible to our triggers. I'd have sworn stress was a trigger for me until I kept a very detailed diary for a few months. What I found was that, during stressful times, I didn't drink enough so was dehydrated, skipped meals, didn't sleep well. Those are triggers for me. I hope you'll thoroughly investigate this as I think we do ourselves a real disservice by thinking stress is a trigger for us and not looking closely for other triggers during stressful times.
Helpful links:
- Do you know if any foods are Migraine triggers for you? If not, check out Managing Migraine – Migraine Trigger Foods.
- Do you need a Migraine and headache diary. You'll find a free diary workbook with our article Your Migraine and headache Diary.
- Is Stress a Migraine Trigger?
