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What if autumn itself is changing your migraine pattern?
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Welcome to Migraine Heroes. For anyone living with migraine and wondering why nothing has fully
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worked yet, I'm Diane Ducarme. In seven years of working with people with migraine, I've learned
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that no two migraine stories are the same and none of them are simple. But your migraine has
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its own patterns. Here we look at them from different angles so you can start recognizing
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them for yourself. A quick note, this is educational. For diagnosis or medication,
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please keep working with your doctor. Now take a deep breath and let's dive in.
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In this episode, you will learn why changing weather and atmospheric pressure may matter more
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than cold temperatures themselves. How shorter days, indoor heating, allergies, and changing
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routines can quietly lower your migraine threshold. And how to identify which autumn
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factors may actually matter for your body instead of trying to avoid everything.
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Stay with me till the end because at the end of this episode, you will have a simple way to look
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at autumn differently, not as one gigantic migraine trigger, but as five smaller signals you can
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actually observe. So, October slide. Patients and headache specialists often refer to the seasonal
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uptick as the October slide. I don't know if you've ever heard of this term. I had not,
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but it kind of makes sense. So noting that emergency visits and headache frequency tend
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to rise between the month of September and November. And so if your migraine seems to get
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worse at every autumn, it can be incredibly frustrating. Maybe summer was relatively
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manageable, although I have to say, you know, these days with the summer heat that we've had
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recently in Europe, but also sometimes the United States, we also see summer heat waves of migraines,
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but we also see for some people, it's more manageable, it's a relaxed time of year. And
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then suddenly September and October arrive, we're waking with headaches again. And you feel more
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sensitive and your sleep is different. And one rainy day seems to just knock you sideways. And
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perhaps the hardest part is that nothing obvious has changed. And you may start wondering, am I
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imagining this or is this my new norm for the rest of the year? And I just want to tell you,
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you're not imagining. Your environment has changed dramatically in autumn. But there's
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an important distinction here. Autumn itself is not a single migraine trigger. Migraine appears
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to involve a nervous system that can become particularly sensitive to changes in internal
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and external conditions. And autumn is going to bring many changes all at once. And that is why
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I want you to think less about one cause and more about a stack of small to medium changes.
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So we're going to talk about five triggers that accompany autumn. So trigger one, rapid weather
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and atmospheric pressure changes. So the first one is probably the most famous one, the weather. But
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saying rain gives me migraine may be way too simplistic. What may matter more is the change
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surrounding that rain. So autumn often brings rapidly moving weather systems. So atmospheric
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pressure rises and falls, temperatures can change dramatically from morning to evening,
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and winds patterns change, humidity changes. So there was in 2025 a systematic review and
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meta-analysis published in the Journal of Neurology that examined 31 studies and found
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associations between migraine attacks and several weather variables, including temperature and
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atmospheric pressure. But there's something important to understand. Not everyone with
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migraine is weather sensitive. And even in someone who is weather sensitive, atmospheric pressure may
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not act alone. Weather may combine with sleep, stress, hydration, hormones, and other factors
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before an attack appears. So rather than asking, does bad weather cause my migraine? Try asking,
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do rapid weather changes seem to reduce my margin for everything else? And so that is a much more
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useful question. Because you cannot control the atmospheric pressure, but if you know that certain
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weather patterns make you more vulnerable, you may be able to pay more attention to the things you
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can influence around them. Now, that being said, okay, I'm going to say that generally. In the
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Migraine Heroes Method, we work on your body to be less weather dependent. That'd be cold,
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that'd be barometric pressure, that'd be heat. All of these are things that you can improve.
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And the only proof point you can have to believe me that it's feasible is if you think of other
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people around you. And you might think, I'm really sensitive to changes in barometric pressure, but
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maybe my daughter is very sensitive to heat and doesn't handle heat really well. Whereas my sister
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might not handle the cold so well. She always has cold feet, cold fingers. And there are differences
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in the environment and in the ecosystem of the body. And that ecosystem can be changed and can
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be improved if that makes sense. So this is something that has always pertains to Eastern
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Medicine and is incredibly important in the Migraine Method. Now, however, I'm conscious that in the
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day-to-day for everyone, it is more reasonable to assume that you can't change that or everything
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else around it. And so you just try to calibrate and not to have too many exposures to too many
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things at the same time. I hope that makes sense. It really doesn't come from any place,
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I hope you know me by now, any place of arrogance, but just intellectual integrity, that things are
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not static in either outside nor inside your body. Trigger number two, shorter days and a changing
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body clock. So the second autumn change that can happen to gradually, you barely notice it, is that
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the light disappears. So morning is going to come later, evening is going to come earlier. And so
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daylight is one of the signals that normally helps your brain coordinate its internal 24-hour rhythm.
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And so migraine and sleep have a complicated two-way relationship. We've seen that quite a lot
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in this podcast. If you haven't listened to that, there's multiple podcasts on sleep. So there was a
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systematic review published in the Journal of Headache and Pain in 2020. And it found that
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sleep disorders and migraine frequently occurred together and that shared brain systems involved
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sleep regulation also appear to be involved in migraine. So it doesn't mean that one late night
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automatically causes an attack. And it does not mean that every autumn migraine comes from your
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body clock. But it does mean that regularity matters. And when autumn arrives, perhaps you begin
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waking up in darkness. You spend less time outside. You become sleepier earlier. Or you stay up at the
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same time, even though your natural light exposure has completely changed. And then the clocks may
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change as well, right? We change time in many of our geographies. And for a nervous system that seems
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to appreciate predictability, all of these little shifts, they may matter. They do matter. So notice
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whether your autumn migraine patterns appear alongside changes in when you sleep, when you wake,
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when you eat, and when you see daylight. Sometimes it's not as simple as too little sleep.
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It's irregular sleep. And that's really a two-way relationship. That's something that
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in the Migraine Heroes app, it's something we really care about. Like you need to sleep.
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You need to be able to love your sleep, fall asleep easily, stay asleep, and have a pain-free
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sleep. Now trigger number three. Indoor heating and hidden dehydration. So that's one that people
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can often miss. When you're in the summer, summer makes you think about hydration because you feel
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hot. Autumn does not. So you stop carrying that water bottle you had everywhere. And you typically sweat
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less. Then you may drink more coffee or tea. And then the heating comes on. And suddenly you're
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spending hours in warms of dry indoor air, while feeling almost no urge to drink. And for some
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people with migraine, this insufficient fluid intake appears to act as one contributing factor.
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But I don't want you to turn this into another migraine rule. Whether you feel you must, you know,
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obsessively drink water all day. The idea is much simpler. Autumn may change your hydration habits
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without you noticing, without you deciding. You can gently ask yourself, am I drinking
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differently than I was two months ago? Am I replacing my water with more caffeinated drinks?
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Am I waking with a dry mouth? Is the heating running on all day? And perhaps most importantly,
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does my own migraine diary show a pattern? Migraine management becomes much more useful
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when you stop collecting universal rules and start to collect your evidence about your body.
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Okay. Trigger number four, autumn allergies, mold and indoor air. So people often associate
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allergies with spring, but autumn can also bring its own challenges. Different plants that release
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pollen at different times of year and fallen leaves and damp environments can support mold.
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And as temperature drops, we close windows and thus we spend more time indoors. So your exposure
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profile changes and migraine and allergic conditions can coexist. Although this does
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not mean that allergies directly cause migraine in everyone, but the overlap may involve inflammatory
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pathways, sensory sensitivity, nasal symptoms, sleep disturbances, or simply several stresses
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arriving at the same time. And honestly, you have heard me. This is my first autumn back in Europe
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and I got trapped. I got a flu and some of my last podcasts I've recorded, you know, you can hear my
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nose. My sinuses were a bit blocked for a couple of days. It was super uncomfortable. Now there's
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also another practical problem. Now also sometimes what feels a sinus headache can actually be a
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migraine. The nuance is very subtle. And so the clue I want you to remember is that autumn changes
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the air you breathe outside and inside. And that adjustment can be very tiring. Now trigger number
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five, the autumn routine shock. Perhaps finally the most interesting and underestimated trigger
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is your life changes. Summer ends and school restarts and work intensifies and traffic returns
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and schedules fill up and you travel differently and you exercise differently. Meal moves and
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bedtime moves and morning alarms move. And sometimes your stress does not explode dramatically. It
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simply rises 10% everywhere. This is exactly the kind of situation where looking for one trigger
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can become misleading. Perhaps Monday gives you a migraine, but Monday is not the trigger. Monday
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might contain less sleep, a rushed breakfast, an earlier alarm, more commute, less water,
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one coffee, bright office lights, a stressful morning meeting. And then add a falling atmospheric
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pressure system and suddenly seven small factors have arrived together. And this is why I often
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prefer the idea of a migraine threshold to the idea of a single migraine trigger. Think of your
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nervous system as having a certain capacity on a particular day and one change may be manageable,
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two changes may still be manageable, but eventually enough things accumulate that
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the system crosses a threshold. That explains why something can trigger an attack sometimes,
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but not every time. Your coffee did not suddenly change. The context around the coffee changed
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and autumn changes a lot of the context. Now let's go east for a minute. In traditional Chinese
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philosophy, humans are actually not considered separate from the seasons. And as nature changes,
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we change with it. And autumn is traditionally associated with dryness, with contraction,
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with letting go, and with preparing for winter. And so the lung system here has a particular
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association with autumn in traditional Chinese medicine. It does not refer simply to the
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anatomical lungs as Western medicine understands them, but belongs to a broader traditional
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framework involving breathing, involving skin, boundaries, and the movement of energy throughout
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the body. There's a beautiful idea hidden inside this framework. They do not live in autumn as
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though it were still summer. Summer expands, but autumn contracts. The light changes, the temperature
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changes, your rhythm may need to change too. And traditional Chinese medicine also frequently
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describes the wind as something associated with sudden change. You can think about the quality
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of wind. It moves quickly, it changes direction, it comes and goes. And the metaphor can feel
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surprisingly familiar to somebody whose migraines become unpredictable during an unstable autumn
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weather. And again, philosophically, it gives us something valuable. Instead of asking your body to
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maintain exactly the same rhythm throughout every season, perhaps autumn is asking, what needs
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adjusting right now? Maybe you need more regular sleep. Maybe warm food feels better than skipped
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lunches and cold snacks. Maybe you need quieter evenings. Maybe your body wants earlier rest.
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Maybe you need more time outdoors, while daylight is still available. The point is not to follow a
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rigid set of seasonal rules. The point is to notice the transition. The Chinese medicine often emphasizes
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balance rather than extremes. That is useful in migraine too. You do not need to live in fear of
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weather. You do not need to avoid every food. You do not need a perfectly controlled environment.
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You're trying to understand what pushes your particular system away from equilibrium,
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and what gently helps bring it back. And if autumn has become a season you dread,
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because you expect more migraine attacks, I want you to remember something important.
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Your job is not to control everything around you. You cannot control the clouds,
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and you cannot control atmospheric pressure, and you cannot stop the days becoming shorter,
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and you should not have to build your entire life around avoiding possible triggers.
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What you can do is become more curious about the pattern underneath your attack. Maybe weather
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matters enormously to you. Maybe it hardly matters at all. Maybe the real autumn shift is sleep,
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or meals, or allergies, or the combination of five small things happening together.
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Your migraine deserves that level of curiosity, not blame, not another impossible list of things
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you're forbidden to do, but curiosity, observation, and gradually a clear understanding of what your
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body has been trying to tell you. Because individual days can be noisy, but patterns
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tell a story. Embrace the season of autumn, and I wish you a big self-hug and moment of happy
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retreat, of having a bit of calm, being on your own, and having empathy for body and brain adjusting.
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That's all for today. I hope this episode helped you notice some new things. If you'd like to keep
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exploring your patterns, you can find us on MigraineHeroes.com. Your body has a story to tell.
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Let's keep listening. I will be back with you soon.
