Migraine: From Avoiding Triggers to Becoming Flexible

Managing migraines often focuses on avoiding known triggers. The idea is simple: avoid the triggers and you avoid the pain. But this approach is like putting a band-aid on a leaking pipe without understanding why the pipe burst. It's time to dig deeper and ask a more fundamental question: not what triggers your migraine, but why are you susceptible to these triggers?

Take the usual suspects: histamine-rich foods, toxins, strong odors, a busy social event, alcohol, or a sudden change in weather. These don't cause migraines in everyone, so why do they have such a profound effect on some of us?

When our brains are 'energy' deficient, they struggle to process these stimuli effectively. This can be due to various factors, including stress, lack of sleep, the wrong fuel, too few electrolytes or the wrong balance... and usually a combination. Regular attacks can make the trigeminal nerve hypersensitive. This nerve plays a crucial role in migraine pain. As a result, each new stimulus can come in more intensely.

Your brain has a kind of spam filter (the PAG - "Periaqueductal gray") — which should block unnecessary sensory information. Think of external stimuli such as light, sound, smells, etcetera, but also think of the pain stimuli from your migraine itself. If this PAG does not receive the necessary information from the surrounding brain areas that everything is safe, every stimulus is perceived as unsafe, causing your brain to become hyper-alert and your pain threshold to decrease.

Should we then accept a life where a simple glass of wine with cheese and some bad weather make us defenseless? Certainly not. I therefore find the conventional advice to avoid triggers frustrating - they miss the bigger picture. It's not about building a life around our migraines; it's about building resilience within ourselves.

Let's shift our focus to regaining flexibility. By supporting and reprogramming our body and brain, we can create a robust system that can handle a 'trigger' without collapsing. This means looking at lifestyle changes, nutritional support, psychological thought patterns and beliefs, our capacity to detoxify and deal with stress hormones, training stimuli, etc. to restore our brain's ability to cope with potential triggers. Avoiding triggers is only a temporary survival strategy, not a cure. To truly control migraine, we need to look deeper and build a more resilient system.

At the Migraine Clinic, we believe in a holistic approach to migraine — one that is based on the individual and embraces the complexity of the condition. Together we can work towards an individual approach where migraines no longer dictate your life.