I think that changes in barometric pressure influence my migraines, so I’ve been keeping track of daily pressure and how I feel (almost) every day.  Understanding how exactly my migraines are related to pressure changes is important for me – if I know the types of pressure changes that make me sick, I can choose a place that doesn’t have those sorts of changes for graduate school.  Daydreaming about weeks on end without a migraine is better  than daydreaming about winning the sweepstakes.  If you’d like to see the data and maybe help interpret it, read on. more…

Several weeks ago I posted barometric pressure trends from December along with whether or not I was sick that day.  Unfortunately, I didn’t do a good job recording barometric pressure on days that I wasn’t sick.  I did a better job in January.

If you’re new to this blog, I have frequent migraines that I believe are influenced by barometric pressure.  I think that large and/or fast changes in barometric pressure are likely the cause of most of my migraines.

Below, I present barometric pressure trends on days that I didn’t have a migraine, days that I did have a migraine, and days where I captured a switch (migraine to no migraine or no migraine to migraine).  In these graphs, barometric pressure is on the vertical axis in millibars and the time is on the horizontal axis.  The last time on the horizontal axis is the time that I captured the graph from WolframAlpha and recorded my condition.  So, for example, on January 2nd at ~10pm I didn’t have a migraine, but on January 4 at ~8am I did have a migraine.

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I’ve been keeping track of barometric pressure in order to get a better idea of how it influences my migraines.  I believe that fast and/or large pressure changes are probably triggering many or most of my migraines.  Below are graphs of barometric pressure throughout December when I did and did not have a migraine.  I did not look at the barometric pressure every day, so not all days are represented. Days when I was well are particularly underrepresented.

Time is on the x-axis and barometric pressure (hPa) is on the y-axis.

On these days, I did not have a migraine at the time the data was plotted. However, on two of the days (highlighted in red) I got a migraine later in the day. On December 31st, I had a headache, but it was not a migraine. Click for larger view.

I did not look at pressure on enough days when I did not have a migraine to really determine if small or gradual pressure changes and steady pressure do not trigger my migraines.  I would have expected to have a migraine the night of December 31st if fast pressure changes gave me migraines.  Perhaps they were too small or I slept through the migraine.

These are graphs of barometric pressure on days I did have migraines. The day highlighted in green is a day that triggers other than pressure were present. Red highlighting corresponds to days in the "no migraine" picture where I began the day without a migraine, but developed one later on. Purple indicates days that I began with a migraine and it became more severe. Click for larger view.

Fast pressure changes are certainly associated with many of the days that I had a migraine, but not all.  The pressure changes on December 2nd and 5th seem slow and gradual.  December 10th’s pressure changes also did not seem that extreme.  Yet I still had migraines.  December 2-10 I was frantically working on papers and studying for finals, so perhaps I was more stressed than I thought and that triggered those migraines.

It’s possible that pressure change only causes migraines for me or is more likely to cause migraine for me in conjunction with another trigger, or that they aren’t related at all.  I’ve been trying to do a better job of keeping track of pressure and my migraines this month, so hopefully January’s data will be more helpful.  More data on my migraines in the archives.