got asked this a few times in DMs: if you cut every trigger, do the migraines stop. short answer for me: no. long answer took about 4 months of doing it hardcore before i actually believed that. what i cut: wine, aged cheese, MSG, artificial sweeteners, skipped meals, screen glare (bought the amber glasses), inconsistent sleep.
logged every one of them against attack days for basically a full season. what happened: attack frequency dropped maybe 15%. the baseline headache, 2-3/10, right side, never fully clears, barely moved. and i still got hit on weeks where i did everything right.
what i think is actually going on, and my neuro sort of agreed with this: some of what i was calling triggers are prodrome symptoms showing up early, not causes. craving sugar the day before an attack isn’t sugar causing it, the attack is already starting. same with light sensitivity kicking in a few hours out. i used to blame the light in the room, but the light sensitivity was the migraine, not the reason for it.
so now when i log something i ask does this precede the pattern by hours or days, consistently, or does it just happen to be in the room when it hits. logging from the watch instead of digging for my phone mid-prodrome is the only reason i still catch those early signals instead of just writing “bad day” in the log. anyone else actually managed to separate a real trigger from an early symptom that just looks like one? what convinced you either way, and how long did it take before you trusted the difference?