Migraine Diary

Track triggers, duration, severity, aura, and medication timing — so you can spot your personal patterns and have more productive conversations with your headache specialist.

Why a migraine diary works

Migraines are one of the most common reasons people seek help from a neurologist, and they're also one of the conditions where a well-kept diary makes the biggest difference. The problem is that migraine triggers are often delayed — what you ate or did two days ago may be more relevant than what happened this morning. And frequency is hard to assess from memory alone. Was it five migraines last month, or seven? Did they cluster around a particular week?

A consistent migraine diary answers these questions with data. Over four to eight weeks, patterns that are invisible day-to-day start to surface: hormonal timing, sleep debt catching up, barometric pressure drops, dietary correlations. Neurologists and headache specialists use this information to make decisions about preventive medications, trigger avoidance strategies, and how well current treatments are working.

Medication timing is another area where a diary pays real dividends. Many people find that taking an abortive medication early in an attack — at the first sign of aura or the earliest pain — produces much better results than waiting. When you track when you took medication and how effective it was, you can test this for yourself and share the findings with your doctor.

What to log in your migraine diary

Migraine start and end time Duration is clinically meaningful and hard to reconstruct from memory. Log when it started and when the pain resolved — even an approximate time is useful.
Severity (0–10) A daily pain score lets you see whether attacks are getting more or less severe over time, and whether medications are making a meaningful difference in peak intensity.
Aura Visual disturbances, tingling, speech difficulty, or other aura symptoms are diagnostically important and may indicate different migraine subtypes. Log whether aura occurred and what it felt like.
Potential triggers (prior 24–48h) Note sleep quality, food and drink, stress level, physical activity, hormonal phase, and weather from the 24–48 hours preceding the migraine. The delay between trigger and attack is why retrospective tracking matters.
Medications taken and when Record every acute medication dose and the time you took it. This lets you analyze whether earlier use correlates with better outcomes, and flags if you're approaching overuse thresholds.
Medication effectiveness A simple 1–5 rating for how well the medication worked helps your doctor assess whether your current abortive is the right choice, or whether the formulation or timing needs adjusting.

How to use The Good Tracker as a migraine diary

During an active migraine, the last thing you want to do is type. The Good Tracker's voice logging is designed for exactly this — tap the mic, say "migraine started around 9am, pain is about a seven, had some visual aura beforehand, took sumatriptan at 9:15," and the app captures it. You can add scores later once you're feeling better.

Daily logging between migraines is equally important. Logging your sleep quality, stress level, and any significant foods or activities every day — even on headache-free days — builds the baseline that makes trigger correlations visible. A trigger pattern only becomes clear when you can compare migraine days to non-migraine days.

The flare flag is perfect for migraine days — flag the day, and it shows up clearly in your trend view. After a month, you can look at your flagged days alongside the notes from the preceding days and often spot patterns you couldn't see in real time.

Migraine diary tip: Many neurologists use 15 migraine days per month as a threshold for chronic migraine. If you're tracking your frequency and find yourself approaching that number, it's an important conversation to have with your doctor about preventive options — before the pattern becomes harder to break.

Frequently asked questions

What should I log in a migraine diary?

A useful migraine diary captures: the date and time a migraine started and ended, severity on a 0–10 scale, any aura, likely triggers from the previous 24–48 hours, any medications taken and when, and how effective the medication was. The timing of medication is particularly important — early use of abortives tends to be more effective, and tracking this can help you and your doctor optimize your approach.

How long should I keep a migraine diary before seeing my doctor?

Most neurologists and headache specialists find that at least four to eight weeks of data gives them a useful picture of your migraine frequency, pattern, and potential triggers. If you're being evaluated for preventive medication, three months of data is especially useful — it establishes a clear baseline to measure improvement against.

Can a migraine diary actually help me identify my triggers?

Many people find that consistent logging reveals trigger patterns that aren't obvious day-to-day. The challenge is that migraine triggers often operate with a delay — a trigger from the previous evening or even two days earlier may only show up as a migraine later. Written records make these delayed correlations visible in a way that memory alone cannot.

What is medication overuse headache, and can tracking help prevent it?

Medication overuse headache (MOH) can develop when pain-relief medications are used too frequently — generally more than 10–15 days per month depending on the medication. A migraine diary that logs every dose gives you a clear picture of how often you're using acute treatments. If you're approaching overuse thresholds, you can raise this with your doctor before MOH becomes established.

How is tracking migraines different from tracking other headaches?

Migraines involve a distinct pattern — typically moderate to severe pain, often one-sided, accompanied by nausea, light or sound sensitivity, and sometimes aura. Tracking the full symptom profile (not just pain severity) is important because it helps confirm diagnosis, guides treatment choices, and provides the information a headache specialist needs to differentiate migraine subtypes.

Start your migraine diary — free

No account required to begin. Log your first entry in under a minute — and start building the pattern data that makes appointments count.

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