Migraines, how to avoid them

There are several things that can cause migraines to occur. For many people something as simple as reflected sunlight can trigger a migraine attack to occur and this can lead to a lot of pain and frustration for many people. A migraine can cause you to miss out on many social events as you need to sit in bed for hours while you wait on it to go away. To manage a migraine attack correctly you need to work on figuring out what triggers them and seek out ways to avoid migraine attacks. Sometimes a migraine can be prevented. Here are some of the best ways to prevent a migraine from occurring:

• Get plenty of rest and develop a sleep schedule. Rest will allow your mind time to relax. By having a schedule your body will create a habit of sleeping at 10pm and waking up at 7 or 8am.
• Watch the foods you eat. Some foods will trigger migraines so you need to develop healthier eating habits to try and avoid migraines.
• Keep your stress levels under control. You need to watch your stress load as higher amounts of stress will trigger a migraine attack. Rest can help you with stress but you must learn how to identify stress triggers in your life and manage them. This may mean you have to ask your employer to reduce your workload in order to help keep your stress under control.
• Certain smells can lead to migraines. Smoking may be one of the migraine triggers but even the smells of perfume or paint can also cause a migraine attack to happen. Smoking is another smell that can create a migraine attack so you must also work on avoiding second-hand smoke as well.
• Steer clear of caffeine. Caffeine can cause a lot of problems for migraine suffers. It is best to avoid it even if you aren't sure that it will affect you. However many of the migraine medications actually contain caffeine and some people do find that when a migraine first starts that drinking caffeine will actually reduce the intensity of a migraine.

There are other events that can cause a migraine to occur as well like a menstrual cycle in women or depression and anxiety can also lead to depression in a lot of women and men. Preventing migraines is one of the best options but it is not always feasible. If this occurs you need to learn how to manage migraine attacks in order to keep them from getting worse. One way to help you manage migraines is by working on developing a headache diary where you keep track of them. Tracking them allows you to see if there are certain times of day when migraines occur or if there are other things that can cause them like foods you have recently eaten.

There are a lot of risks that you may need to watch out for when it comes to migraines. For a lot of people migraines are the worse from the mid teens to late forties. By the age of 50, most migraine suffers see their symptoms diminish rapidly. Women are at an increased risk for migraines and about 3 times as many women will suffer from migraines compared to men. Like other health concerns, migraines tend to run in families and if you have a parent or close relative that has gotten migraines your risk of developing them at some points are very high.

To help manage them you must be aware of mood changes and other things that begin to happen before a migraine attack begins. If you notice you are becoming irritable you need to focus on relaxing and taking time to calm yourself down before you do have an intense migraine occur.