Articles
Writing about chronic migraine, the CGRP era, vestibular migraine, and the things trackers keep getting wrong.
Article · October 30, 2026
Vestibular migraine is diagnosed from your history, so clean scans and balance tests support the diagnosis. Here's what each test checks and what to bring to the next appointment.
Article · October 28, 2026
Most trackers seal the record when the pain stops. The fog, light sensitivity and fatigue that follow get thrown out, and so does the real length of the attack.
Article · October 28, 2026
The "up to 24 hours" figure mostly reflects how long migraine studies kept asking. Patient reports describe an after-phase that runs well past it.
Article · October 27, 2026
The short list a headache specialist actually uses, a track-this, skip-that table, and how to log the hours after the pain ends.
Article · October 26, 2026
The guideline answer is a number: your monthly migraine days before treatment against the count after three months. Here's that count worked through, plus what counts as a response.
Article · October 23, 2026
If the coverage described your dizzy spells, the next step is a log that records attacks with zero pain and a one-page note a clinician can act on.
Article · October 21, 2026
Migraine apps count attacks because drug trials count attacks. In chronic and postdrome-heavy weeks, that inherited unit erases most of what you actually live through.
Article · October 21, 2026
Skip the extra dose, the caffeine push and the hard reset. What to avoid in the after-phase, and where the rebound-headache line sits.
Article · October 20, 2026
No treatment ends the postdrome early. Here's an evidence-graded look at what eases a migraine hangover, what backfires, and when to call your doctor.
Article · October 17, 2026
Attacks that begin in sleep get logged at wakeup. That hides the prodrome, any overnight aura and the evening-before trigger window, and it quietly skews your pattern data.
Article · October 16, 2026
Rest and hydrate treats photophobia, brain fog and fatigue as one problem. What each one needs in the 36 hours after the headache, and what drags it out.
Article · October 15, 2026
CGRP step-therapy criteria are built on headache days, so the 24 to 72 hours after each attack never reach the prior-auth record. Here's how to document both halves honestly, before a denial.
Article · October 14, 2026
Pain stopping ends the headache phase. Four observable markers (light, thinking speed, neck and scalp, mood) tell you when the attack itself has ended.
Article · October 13, 2026
Yes. The diagnostic criteria don't require head pain. What they do require, how it compares with typical migraine, and how to log a pain-free attack.
Article · October 12, 2026
Tiredness is the most-reported postdrome symptom. Here's what the research shows, what's still unknown, and how to track the recovery tail your log keeps missing.
Article · October 9, 2026
Cutaneous allodynia marks the point where triptans start losing ground. Almost no migraine tracker asks about it, so it rarely reaches your neurologist.
Article · October 7, 2026
Dizziness is a recognized postdrome symptom. Here's how to tell it apart from vestibular migraine and BPPV, and which combinations mean you should get checked now.
Article · October 6, 2026
Most advice tells you how long postdrome lasts. The better question is what makes yours longer, and four trackable variables point toward an answer.
Article · October 6, 2026
Research puts the average postdrome at about 25 hours, within a 24 to 72 hour range. Here's how that compares to the rest of the attack, and why your own number matters more.
Article · October 2, 2026
Trigger diaries assume you felt fine before the exposure. With chronic migraine, the days between attacks are rarely clean, and the correlations built on them aren't either.
Article · October 1, 2026
When postdrome and prodrome overlap, attack counts turn into guesses. The diagnosis, the CGRP trials and the prior-auth file all run on days. Log those.
Article · September 30, 2026
Yes, it's normal. Post-migraine brain fog is part of the postdrome, usually lasts about a day, and follows a pattern you can learn to spot.
Article · September 29, 2026
A CGRP prior auth is a ruling on how disabling your migraine is. Headache-only logs leave out the days where much of that disability lives.
Article · September 28, 2026
After a vestibular migraine, the after-phase often leads with imbalance, visual motion sensitivity and fog. Logging it as its own phase changes what your neurologist can see.
Article · September 25, 2026
Why you sleep so much after a migraine, why most trackers never see that sleep, and how logging it turns a lost day into a pattern you can read.
Article · September 24, 2026
FMLA protects your job. The ADA changes how you do it. How to turn a postdrome-inclusive log into the functional-limitation language an accommodation request runs on.
Article · September 23, 2026
Migraine drug trials stop counting at 120 minutes. Your recovery doesn't. Here's how to judge whether a treatment works using the whole attack.
Article · September 22, 2026
The ICHD-3 threshold for chronic migraine is measured in headache days, not attacks. Event-based trackers count the wrong unit, and patients arrive at the neurologist months behind the line.
Article · September 21, 2026
Craving chocolate, carbs, or a third coffee hours before the pain starts is a documented premonitory symptom. Logs that begin at headache onset record it as the cause.
Article · September 18, 2026
Mood change is a documented phase of the attack, not a separate diagnosis. The difference is timing, and no tracker is capturing it.
Article · September 17, 2026
Word-finding failure and exhaustion get logged as one 'brain fog' tag. Splitting them shows a neurologist whether a preventive fixed your thinking or only your pain.
Article · September 16, 2026
Most tracking exports log attack dates and pain scores. The three variables a headache specialist actually queries live somewhere else, and you can't add them retroactively.
Article · September 15, 2026
Prodrome to postdrome, one attack can run for days. Most trackers open a form at head pain and close it when the pain stops, which records only the middle third.
Article · September 14, 2026
For a lot of migraineurs the pain isn't the most disabling part of the attack. The postdrome is, and it lands exactly when you're trying to work again.
Article · September 11, 2026
The five-question disability form your neurologist hands you is scored in days of lost function, not headaches. Most trackers close the attack before those days are over.
Article · September 11, 2026
UnitedHealth, CVS Caremark, and Express Scripts have each quietly updated their CGRP formularies. Here is what changed, which tier ubrogepant landed on, and how to use it at your next appointment.
Article · September 10, 2026
Headache-day counting is the unit your diary, your neurologist's intake, and your insurer all run on. It can undercount what an attack actually costs you by three to four times.
Article · September 9, 2026
Trigger logging is an experiment that runs on headache-free days. Past 15 a month, those days are gone. The fix isn't more logging, it's a different question.
Article · September 8, 2026
The attack doesn't land during the stressful week. It lands the moment you relax. The mechanism has a clinical name, and it changes how you should be logging.
Article · September 7, 2026
Every trigger guide watches the 24 hours before an attack. The 24 to 72 hours after are when your threshold drops and the next one gets built.
Article · September 4, 2026
Every tracker hangs your log on headache onset. For headache-absent vestibular migraine, that anchor never fires, and the timeline you hand your neurologist quietly falls apart.
Article · September 3, 2026
For working adults, the head pain is often the smallest slice of a migraine. The fog that follows eats the week, and every tracker records it as a clean day.
Article · September 2, 2026
Every authority answers 'how long does postdrome last' with a population range. Your real number is tighter, personal, and hiding in your own attack log.
Article · September 1, 2026
The attack is the one part of a migraine an app can neatly log. The 24 to 72 hours after it, the part that flattens your week, is where nearly every tracker goes dark.
Article · August 31, 2026
The only preventive that worked is $900 a month, and your insurer just called it 'not medically necessary.' Here's the appeal ladder, step by step.
Article · August 28, 2026
The days of fatigue and brain fog after the pain lifts aren't a comedown you earned. They're postdrome, the migraine's fourth phase, and most trackers ignore them.
Article · August 26, 2026
The pain lifts and the fatigue, brain fog, and residual photophobia stay. Postdrome can outlast the headache. Here's how to move through the 72 hours after and track it when you can barely look at a screen.
Article · August 25, 2026
Medication overuse headache is a recognized diagnosis, and the drugs that stop your attacks can quietly start feeding them. Here is where the line sits and how to see it coming.
Article · August 24, 2026
The label makes it sound like a headache with a spinning chaser. For the already-diagnosed, the dizziness often shows up with no headache at all, on its own clock.
Article · August 21, 2026
For chronic migraineurs, progress rarely means no attacks. It means shorter postdromes and fewer bad days, and those are the numbers worth logging.
Article · August 20, 2026
The postdrome hours are when logging matters most and when your brain can least do it. A field guide to capturing an attack you can barely see.
Article · August 19, 2026
Fail-first protocols make you try and fail older migraine drugs before your insurer covers a CGRP therapy. The game is real, and so is the way out.
Article · August 18, 2026
Migraine ranks second among global causes of disability, yet ADA accommodations get denied every day. The gap isn't the law. It's the evidence.
Article · August 13, 2026
Aura Mode lets you log a full attack at the worst possible moment, no typing required, no squinting at a form, no data lost because the screen hurt too much to look at.
Article · August 12, 2026
CGRP biologics rewired how migraineurs experience their attacks. The tracking tools they rely on were designed for a different era entirely.
Article · August 11, 2026
75% of people with migraine are women. Most tracker apps were built as if that number doesn't exist. Here's what gets missed, and why it matters.
Article · August 10, 2026
Clinical guidelines moved CGRP preventives to first-line. Most step-therapy policies didn't. The gap runs straight through your paperwork, and this week it moved again.
Article · August 7, 2026
The exam room clock isn't your enemy, but an unstructured answer is. Here's how to compress four phases of symptoms into a conversation that fits.
Article · August 6, 2026
A manifesto for building health apps that treat your symptom log as yours: on-device by default, no account, and portable on the way out.
Article · August 5, 2026
Most trackers give aura one checkbox. The clinical literature says the shape, order, and duration of what you see carries far more signal than yes-or-no.
Article · August 4, 2026
Most CGRP prior-auth appeals stop counting at the headache. The 24 to 72 hours of postdrome after it are disabling days your insurer never sees.
Article · August 3, 2026
The fix for tracking burnout is not a better app with more fields. It is logging less, and logging the things your neurologist can actually act on.
Article · July 31, 2026
The privacy question for a migraine tracker isn't what the policy says. It's where your symptom data physically goes, and how many companies touch it on the way.
Article · July 30, 2026
We read what the r/migraine corpus actually says about tracking apps. The pattern: patients log the spike, then get abandoned by every app for the 72 hours that hurt most.
Article · July 29, 2026
A fresh payer policy change puts CGRP access back in the spotlight. Here is what it means for the after-phase your appeal never documents.
Article · July 28, 2026
Self-reported diaries get discounted for recall bias. A tamper-evident export shows your neurologist the data is exactly what your phone recorded, unedited.
Article · July 27, 2026
FMLA and SSDI adjudicators decide on paper, not pain. What a claim-grade migraine record actually contains, and why the postdrome days you skip are the ones that count.
Article · July 24, 2026
Run the real arithmetic on a lifetime with migraine, and the recurring tracking subscription is the one line item designed to compound instead of end.
Article · July 23, 2026
When an insurer denies a CGRP preventive for missing prior-therapy documentation, the appeal turns on evidence you can only build across weeks, not remember in a portal.
Article · July 22, 2026
The headache gets the appointment. The recovery day after it rarely reaches your neurologist's notes. Here is how to put postdrome on the record, with the research to back you.
Article · July 21, 2026
Menstrual and perimenopausal migraineurs get one sex toggle and no cycle-day correlation. What a tracker built around hormonal state would actually show.
Article · July 20, 2026
Leaving a migraine tracker feels like erasing years of attacks. It isn't. Here's why your history is portable, and how to keep the timeline going.
Article · July 19, 2026
Chronic and vestibular migraine tracking sprawls across six apps and a paper journal. Here is what consolidates when a continuous timeline becomes the record.
Article · July 17, 2026
Headache specialists cleared CGRP drugs as first-line care. Most insurer step-therapy protocols still make you fail older, cheaper drugs first. Here is the gap, and what to document.
Article · July 15, 2026
The subscription model charges chronic-migraine patients the most when they are least able to decide. Here is why we chose one price, once.
Article · July 14, 2026
Insurers deny CGRP coverage counting on you to quit. Here is the appeal ladder, stage by stage, and the documentation that overturns a 'not medically necessary.'
Article · July 13, 2026
Most tracking apps end the entry when the pain stops. The 24 to 72 hours after are where the fog, fatigue, and residual light sensitivity actually live, and they belong in the record.
Article · July 10, 2026
Postdrome brain fog hits exactly when logging gets hardest. Voice memos, single-tap capture, and a screen you can actually stand to look at.
Article · July 9, 2026
Trigger correlation is arithmetic that runs on your phone for free. The subscription that gates it after 90 days of your logging is a pricing choice, not a compute cost.
Article · July 8, 2026
The Bárány Society criteria don't require head pain, yet 'no headache means it isn't migraine' keeps sending people to the wrong diagnosis for years.
Article · July 7, 2026
Most people with migraine feel wrecked for a day or more after the pain lifts. Here is how to log the postdrome so your neurologist stops ignoring it.
Article · July 6, 2026
A referral, a six-week wait, then twenty minutes with the specialist. Here is the one page that makes those minutes work harder.
Article · July 5, 2026
You fought prior authorization to get the medication. Then the app tracking your response locked your own history behind a renewing subscription. That is the second paywall.
Article · July 5, 2026
Insurance, disability, trials, triggers, treatment, appointment prep, awareness: each reason demands a different data shape, and most apps build for the easiest.
Article · July 5, 2026
Insurers make most CGRP patients fail older preventives first. The step-therapy exception process exists to skip that, and almost nobody files it.
Article · July 5, 2026
An Explanation of Benefits is not a bill. Here is how to read the columns, decode the denial codes, and tell which number you actually owe after a CGRP claim.
Tool · June 12, 2026
The denial says step therapy. Our free letter builder maps your preventive history and migraine-day count onto the criteria a reviewer actually checks.
Article · June 5, 2026
Most vestibular migraine attacks bring no headache, so clinicians who pattern-match migraine to head pain filter these patients straight into a years-long diagnostic odyssey.
Article · May 6, 2026
A practical script for the appointment: how to describe postdrome symptoms quickly, what to ask about treatment, and the line that gets the conversation past acute migraine and into the days after.
Article · May 5, 2026
The day after a migraine, you should be fine. Your manager said so. Your headache eased. The literature says you're not fine, and there's a name for it.
Article · May 1, 2026
If your migraines don't end, your tracker doesn't know what to do with you. The data model in every major incumbent assumes a discrete attack with a start time and an end time. The chronic and vestibular cohort, roughly 5.5 million Americans, has been excluded from category tooling for fifteen years by a schema choice nobody calls a schema choice.
Article · May 1, 2026
The 24-72 hour migraine after-phase is documented in clinical literature, named by the people who live it, and tracked by zero major incumbents as a first-class entity. The category fails it in four predictable shapes, and the gap is wider than the rest of the design choices put together.