What is the difference between primary and secondary headaches?

This content is for educational purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Read more.

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What can I do to try and help with my migraines?

Dr Manjit Matharu, a Consultant Neurologist at Queen Square, says paying attention to your lifestyle factors can help you better understand whats causing your headaches. For example, monitoring your diet to check if certain foods trigger your headaches, limiting alcohol intake, ensuring you stay hydrated and avoiding stress can all help avoid migraines.

Transcript
Things that you yourself can do that will likely help improve your migraine is pay attention to the lifestyle factors that can help. The kind of things that can be very helpful are monitoring your diet to see if there is anything dietary that is triggering your headaches. Making sure that you eat your meals regularly. If your blood sugars are up and down, then you are going to be more prone to headaches. So, an example is making sure you eat meals regularly and not go hungry for too long. Limit the amount of alcohol you drink. People who drink too much alcohol tend to be more prone to headaches and very many patients with migraine tend to get a hangover the next day. And a hangover in a lot of those people in fact is an alcohol induced migraine attack. So limiting the amount of alcohol can be useful. Keep yourself well hydrated. Drink at least two litres of fluids on a daily basis. Have regular sleep. Go to sleep at the same time, wake up at the same time. Make sure that you have enough sleep and in the main, you should be waking up feeling refreshed. Doing regular exercise for at least two and half hours per week is very helpful. And if there is a lot of stress, address that stress. Either address issues that are bringing on stress or put some stress management techniques into place. A very useful thing to consider is mindfulness based cognitive behaviour therapy.

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