Managing Vestibular Migraines: The Power of Migraine Diaries and Apps

By Cheryl Wylie, MSc (PT)

If you've ever experienced vestibular migraines, you know how disruptive they can be to your daily life. The severe vertigo, sensitivity to light, nausea, and motion sickness can make even the simplest tasks feel impossible. One of the most effective tools in managing vestibular migraines is a migraine diary. But why is it so crucial? Let's delve into the reasons.

Why Keep a Migraine Diary?

Identifying Triggers

Vestibular migraines are often triggered by specific factors, which can vary greatly from person to person. These triggers might include certain foods, stress, hormonal changes, weather conditions, missed meals or even sleep patterns. By keeping a detailed record of your vestibular migraines, including how much sleep you got, the weather and your stress levels, you can start to identify patterns and pinpoint your personal triggers. Once you know what sets off your migraines, you can take steps to avoid or reduce these triggers, potentially reducing the frequency and severity of your attacks.

Monitoring Frequency and Intensity

A migraine diary helps you track how often you experience vestibular migraines and how severe they are. It can also help you understand your symptoms between migraine attacks, a phase of migraine called the interictal phase. This information is valuable for both you and your healthcare provider. It can help determine whether your condition is worsening or improving over time. For example, if your migraines are becoming more frequent or intense, it might be a sign that your current treatment plan needs to be adjusted. On the other hand, if you see a decrease in migraines, it could indicate that your strategies for managing them are working.

Assessing the Effectiveness of Treatment

Whether you're taking medication, undergoing therapy, or making lifestyle changes to manage your migraines, it's important to know whether these interventions are working. A migraine diary allows you to document your treatment plan and note any changes in your migraine patterns. Over time, you'll be able to see if certain medications or therapies are helping or if they need to be re-evaluated.

Improving Communication with Healthcare Providers

When you visit your healthcare provider, having a migraine diary can be incredibly helpful. It provides a clear and detailed account of your symptoms, triggers, and treatment outcomes. This information can assist your provider in making more informed decisions about your care. Instead of relying on memory or vague descriptions, you can offer concrete data that can lead to a more accurate diagnosis and a more effective treatment plan.

Empowering Yourself

Living with vestibular migraines can sometimes feel like you’re at the mercy of your body. However, a migraine diary gives you a sense of control. By tracking your migraines, you become more aware of your body and its responses to different stimuli. This knowledge empowers you to make informed choices about your lifestyle, treatment, and overall health. It is one of the most valued aspects of migraine tracking for many of the people I work with.

Personalizing Your Care

Migraines are not a one-size-fits-all condition, especially when it comes to vestibular migraines. What works for one person might not work for another. A migraine diary helps personalize your care by giving you insights into your unique migraine patterns and symptoms between attacks. This personalized approach can lead to better outcomes, as you and your healthcare provider can tailor your treatment to your specific needs.

Reducing Anxiety

The unpredictability of vestibular migraines can be anxiety-inducing. Not knowing when the next attack will strike can be stressful and I’ve seen it housebound people. However, by keeping a migraine diary, you might start to notice patterns in your migraines. This predictability can reduce some of the anxiety associated with the condition, as you gain a better understanding of when you might be more susceptible to an attack. For example, you may learn there is a hormonal link to your attacks, which can allow you to schedule trips or activities on days during your cycle when you know you will be feeling your best.

Getting Started with Your Migraine Diary

Starting a migraine diary is simple. You can use a physical notebook, our migraine tracker handout, a digital app, or even a spreadsheet. The key is to be consistent and detailed in your entries. Here’s what to include:

• Date and Time: When did the migraine start and end?

• Severity: Rate the pain on a scale of 1 to 5.

• Symptoms: Note all the symptoms you experienced.

• Possible Triggers: Record anything that could have triggered the migraine, such as food, stress, sleep patterns, or environmental factors.

• Medications/Treatments: Document any medications you took or treatments you tried, and how effective they were.

• Self-care: Record the positive lifestyle changes, such as hydration, good diet, exercise and grounding techniques and how they impacted your symptoms.

• Additional Notes: Include any other relevant details, such as weather conditions, menstrual cycle (for women), or unusual activities.

Our Favourite Migraine Tracker Apps

Migraine apps are a great alternative to a paper and pencil migraine diary. The advantage of computer generated analysis of migraine triggers and the ability to share data digitally with your healthcare provider makes apps a popular choice for many of my patients. Below are a few of my favourite for those with vestibular migraine!

Migraine Insight

Migraine Insight is an app designed to help you understand and manage your migraines through personalized data tracking and analysis. The app focuses on identifying potential triggers, understanding the relationship between daily habits and migraines, and providing actionable insights to reduce the frequency and severity of migraine attacks.

Features

• Personalized daily tracking outside of a migraine episode, allowing you to log your daily activities, including diet, sleep, stress levels and other potential migraine triggers. This is helpful, especially for vestibular migraine, where they may be symptoms between attacks. 

• Migraine attack tracking, including intensity, duration and associated symptoms. 

• Migraine Insight specializes in identifying potential triggers by analyzing the data you input. The app uses advanced algorithms to correlate lifestyle factors with migraine occurrences, helping you pinpoint specific triggers.

• Migraine Insight presents data in an easy-to-understand format, using graphs and charts to visualize trends. This feature makes it easier for you to see patterns in your migraine occurrences and related factors.

• You can generate detailed reports summarizing your migraine history and potential triggers, which can be easily shared with your healthcare provider. 

• The app includes customizable reminders to help you stay on track with your routines, such as medication reminders, hydration alerts, and sleep schedule notifications.

Pros

The app’s focus on identifying specific triggers through data analysis is one of its strongest features, offering users valuable insights into their migraine patterns. I find this especially useful for vestibular migraine, especially in the early diagnosis stage. Migraine Insight allows you to track symptoms outside of an attack, making it easy to notice subtle fluctuations in symptoms and possible triggers. Additional pros to this app include a user-friendly interface, easy data visualization, and its ability to be customizable to you and your needs. 

Cons

The disadvantages to Migraine Insight, like many tracking apps, is that it requires you to do a lot of manual data entry, which can be time-consuming and detouring. It is a paid app, with a large portion available in the free version, however the key aspect of in-depth trigger analysis and comprehensive reports not being part of that. 

In conclusion, Migraine Insight is a powerful tool and a great option for vestibular migraine patients early in the diagnosis stage. It's focus on trigger identification and data-driven insights sets it apart from other migraine apps, making it particularly useful for those who want to take a proactive approach to their health. 

Get the App: Migraine Insight

Migraine Buddy

Migraine Buddy is one of the most comprehensive apps designed for individuals who suffer from migraine. It allows you to log various aspect of a migraine attack including intensity, duration, potential triggers, symptoms, and medication taken. It then uses your data to generate personalized insights and trends, which can help you identify patterns in your migraines. 

Features

• Integrated sleep tracking, an important feature since sleep disturbances are often linked to migraine.

• Integrated physical activity tracking, again a helpful tool as exercise may trigger migraines but can also be used for migraine management. 

• The app includes a community feature where users can connect with others who experience migraine. This support network can be invaluable for sharing experiences and coping strategies.

• Migraine Buddy allows users to generate detailed reports that can be shared with healthcare providers.

• Customizable alerts and reminders for medication, hydration, and other important aspects of migraine management. 

Pros

Migraine Buddy's ability to track a wide range of factors associated with migraines makes it a powerful tool for understanding and managing the condition. Despite its many features, it is still easy to navigate with a clean and intuitive design. The personalized insights generated by the app can help you better understand your migraines and take proactive steps to avoid triggers. And I think above all, the app’s community feature is unique and provides a supportive environment for you to share experiences and advice.

Cons

There are a few cons to this app, the first being the price, with limited options in the free version. In addition, entering detailed information for each migraine episode can be time-consuming, especially for those with frequent migraines. It also doesn't allow you to track interictal symptoms easily, a unique aspect of vestibular migraine. Lastly, the sheer amount of data and options may be overwhelming, particularly if you are new to tracking your migraines. 

Overall, Migraine Buddy is an excellent option and is a highly effective tool for migraine tracking and gaining insight into your triggers and patterns. And truly, the app’s community and data-sharing features add an extra layer of value, making this a great option for your vestibular migraine tracking. 

Get the App: Migraine Buddy

Canadian Migraine Tracker

The Canadian Migraine Tracker is an app designed specifically for Canadian users to help them monitor and manage their migraines. Developed in collaboration with the Canadian Headache Society, this app offers a comprehensive set of tools to track migraine episodes, symptoms, triggers, and treatments.

Features

• The app allows you to log detailed information about each migraine episode, including duration, intensity, symptoms, and potential triggers. You can also record the effectiveness of treatments and medications used during an attack.

• You can log specific symptoms and potential triggers such as food, weather changes, stress, and sleep patterns. This helps in identifying patterns that may contribute to migraine occurrences.

• The app includes features to track medications, including dosage and frequency, as well as non-medication treatments like relaxation techniques or lifestyle changes.

• You can generate detailed reports summarizing their migraine history, including all tracked data.

• The app presents data in graphs and charts, making it easier for you to visualize trends and patterns in your migraine history.

• The Canadian Migraine Tracker is compliant with Health Canada’s regulations, ensuring that the app adheres to Canadian privacy and data security standards.

Pros

As many apps are based out of the USA, this app is tailored specifically for Canadians, with features that are relevant to our healthcare system in Canada. This includes the ability to log medications and treatments that are commonly prescribed and available in Canada. The app is easy to navigate and is very accessible for all ages. And it's ability to generate detailed reports and send them directly to healthcare providers is a valuable features aiding in migraine management. And lastly, as of writing this blog in August 2024, the app is completely free!

Cons

As with the other apps, you need to manually input data which can be time consuming. And similar to Migraine Buddy, it also doesn't have a ability to track interictal symptoms between attacks, a key feature for vestibular migraine. 

Overall, the Canadian Migraine Tracker is a solid choice for those with vestibular migraine looking to better understand and manage their condition. With its comprehensive tracking capabilities and focus on the Canadian healthcare context, the app offers valuable support for you. Lastly, its localized approach and compliance with Health Canada standards makes it a reliable tool and a great option for many of my patients at Healing Vertigo. 

Get the App: Canadian Migraine Tracker

Conclusion

Keeping a migraine diary might seem like a small step, but it can have a significant impact on your ability to manage vestibular migraine. It helps you identify triggers, assess treatment effectiveness, and improve communication with your healthcare provider. Most importantly, it empowers you with knowledge about your condition, leading to better management and potentially reducing the impact of migraine on your life. Start your migraine diary today and take the first step toward a more controlled and informed approach to managing your migraines.

For personalized advice and treatment plans, don’t hesitate to reach out to Healing Vertigo and our expert vestibular physiotherapist. We're here to help you navigate your journey with confidence and ease. Book an appointment today!