Migraine Trigger Tracker Guide — References

This page lists the academic and web-based sources that informed the Migraine Trigger Tracker Guide. It is provided for those who wish to review the references used within the guide.

• World Health Organization: Migraine and Other Headache Disorders — Sets out the global burden of headache disorders, their high prevalence, and the need for better recognition and care. Useful for the guide’s opening explanation that migraine is common, serious, and often misunderstood.
• American Migraine Foundation: The Facts About Migraine — Presents migraine as a highly disabling neurological condition affecting more than one billion people worldwide. Useful for the guide’s framing around migraine being more than “just a headache”.
• International Headache Society: ICHD-3 Migraine Without Aura Criteria — Details the formal clinical criteria for migraine without aura, including attack duration, pain features, nausea, and light or sound sensitivity. Useful for the guide’s clinical grounding.
• NHS: Migraine — Explains migraine symptoms, aura, common management routes, and when to seek GP or urgent advice. Useful for the guide’s patient-facing safety and clinical-context sections.
• Mayo Clinic: Migraine Symptoms and Causes — Covers migraine symptoms, prodrome, aura, light and sound sensitivity, and possible trigger categories. Useful for explaining early warning signs and why some pre-migraine changes can be missed.
• NICE BNF: Migraine Treatment Summary — Notes that keeping a headache diary can be useful for identifying potential triggers and states that it should be continued for at least eight weeks. Very relevant for the guide’s daily tracking, weekly review, and monthly summary approach.
• The Migraine Trust: Keeping a Headache Diary — Explains how a migraine diary can aid diagnosis, identify triggers and warning signs, assess medicines, and show attack patterns. Strong match for the tracker tools and clinical-discussion sections.
• American Migraine Foundation: Headache Journals — Tracking Your Migraine — Explains how longer-term tracking can reveal patterns and help healthcare providers understand triggers and treatment response. Useful for the “Why Tracking Works” and “Clinical Context” sections.
• National Headache Foundation: Tracking Diaries — Describes headache diaries as useful before appointments, when symptoms change, when starting or changing treatment, and when tracking patterns over time. Useful for the guide’s “When Tracking Is Most Useful” section.
• American Migraine Foundation: Understanding the Threshold Concept — Explains that migraine attacks are often linked to a personal threshold, where multiple triggers can build up and increase attack likelihood. Directly fits the guide’s “threshold bucket” explanation.
• The Migraine Trust: Migraine Attack Triggers — Covers commonly reported triggers such as stress, lack of sleep, skipped meals, caffeine, alcohol, dehydration, and changes in routine. Useful for the guide’s tracking categories without turning the tracker into a trigger-education guide.
• American Migraine Foundation: The Role of Adherence and Triggers in Headache Management — Discusses how reviewing triggers and maintaining a care plan can aid migraine management, including sleep, exercise, stress, and meal regularity. Useful for the sections on daily adjustments and habit consistency.
• Practical Neurology: Headache Horizons — Migraine Triggers — Discusses cumulative trigger effects and the role of migraine diaries in recognising triggers while focusing on controllable factors such as sleep, hunger, and dehydration. Useful for the guide’s “one factor alone may not be enough” message.
• Migraine Disorders Association: Migraine Triggers — Explains that triggers may be environmental, physiological, or food-related, and that they are not the underlying cause of migraine itself. Useful for keeping the guide balanced and avoiding overclaiming.
• American Migraine Foundation: The Timeline of a Migraine Attack — Explains the premonitory/prodrome phase, which can start hours or days before headache pain. Useful for the guide’s after-migraine reflection and early warning pattern content.
• Cleveland Clinic: Migraine — Symptoms, Phases, Causes and Treatment — Covers migraine phases, including prodrome, aura, headache, and postdrome, plus symptom variation between individuals. Useful for the guide’s explanation of why tracking should include the period before and after an attack.
• NICE: Headaches in Over 12s — Diagnosis and Management — UK clinical guideline covering diagnosis and management of migraine, tension-type headache, cluster headache, and medication-overuse headache. Useful for the guide’s clinical framing and “tracking does not replace care” message.
• NICE CKS: Headache Assessment — Diagnosis — Covers red-flag headache features such as sudden severe headache and symptoms that may indicate serious causes. Useful for the “When to Seek Professional Input” section.
• NHS Inform: Headaches — Sets out urgent warning signs, including sudden severe headache, stroke-like symptoms, fever with stiff neck, drowsiness, and headache after serious head injury. Useful for safety advice and escalation guidance.
• American Headache Society: Red Flags in Headache — What if it Isn’t Migraine? — Explains secondary-headache red flags using the SNOOP4 framework. Useful for clinician-facing safety context and for keeping the guide cautious around unusual or changing symptoms.
• American Migraine Foundation: Migraine in the Emergency Department — Clarifies when migraine-like symptoms need emergency review, including thunderclap headache and new or worsening neurological symptoms. Useful for the safety section.