Why Do I Keep Getting Migraines?

Your head feels like it might split open. Light hurts. Sound hurts. You cannot think clearly. The next several hours of your day are gone. And if you are reading this, you have probably been through some version of this scene more times than you can count.

For people who get migraines once or twice a year, the experience is brutal but manageable. For people who get them every week, every two weeks, or every month, the condition takes over life in ways that are hard to explain to anyone who has not been through it. The work missed. The plans canceled. The medications that work some of the time but not others. The constant low-grade fear of the next one.

If you have been on this cycle for years and feel like you have tried everything, the underlying picture may not have been explained to you fully. Here is what is actually happening, why it keeps happening, and what you can do about it.

What Migraines Actually Are

Migraines are not just bad headaches. They are a neurological condition that involves the nervous system, the blood vessels in the head, the inflammatory pathways, and the brain chemistry all working together to produce a specific cascade of symptoms.

A typical migraine includes severe head pain, often on one side and often throbbing. Many migraineurs experience nausea, vomiting, sensitivity to light and sound, and difficulty thinking clearly during an attack. Some experience visual disturbances called auras before the pain begins. The whole event can last hours to days, and the recovery from a migraine often takes another day or two beyond the headache itself.

Roughly 12 percent of the population deals with migraines. Women are three times more likely to be affected than men.

Why They Keep Happening

The honest answer to why your migraines keep happening is that your nervous system has become sensitized over time. The threshold for what triggers a migraine has dropped. The same level of stress, the same hormonal shift, the same poor sleep, the same trigger food that might have produced no response in someone else now produces a full migraine in you.

This sensitization process has a name in neuroscience. Central sensitization. The nervous system has been firing the migraine response so often that the response has become easier to fire. The migraine has become a learned pattern.

The underlying drivers of this sensitization include chronic stress, sleep disruption, hormonal fluctuations, dietary inflammation, and a genetic predisposition that some people carry. None of these alone causes migraines, but together they create the conditions where the nervous system stays primed to fire.

The full picture of how chronic stress drives these patterns is covered in What Is Cortisol and Why Do I Have So Much of It?. The role of chronic inflammation in conditions like this is in What Is Inflammation?.

The Trigger Picture

Most people who experience severe migraines have a personal set of triggers that may differ from anyone else’s. Common ones include hormonal changes around menstruation, lack of sleep or too much sleep, dehydration, skipped meals, certain foods (aged cheeses, processed meats, alcohol, MSG, artificial sweeteners, sometimes chocolate), strong sensory input (bright lights, strong smells, loud noises), and weather changes.

Stress is the most universal trigger, but the way stress produces a migraine is often delayed. The migraine often hits during the let-down phase after a stressful period rather than during the stress itself. This is why many people get weekend migraines or vacation migraines.

Tracking your own triggers is useful but rarely gives the full picture. The triggers are often the spark, not the underlying tinder. Reducing exposure to triggers helps. Addressing the sensitization that makes you vulnerable to them helps more.

The Hormonal Connection

For many women, migraines are tied to the hormonal cycle. The most common pattern is a migraine that hits in the day or two before a period or during the first few days of bleeding, when estrogen levels drop sharply. Migraines may also intensify or shift patterns during perimenopause and may improve after menopause for some women while worsening for others.

The hormonal trigger is not just about the hormones themselves. It is about how the nervous system responds to hormonal change. The sharper the estrogen drop, the more intense the response. Hormonal patterns that include big fluctuations tend to produce more frequent and severe migraines.

The full picture of how perimenopause affects the nervous system and the migraine pattern is in Perimenopause, Anxiety, and Brain Fog.

The Limitations of Conventional Treatment

Conventional migraine treatment has two main categories. Abortive medications taken at the start of an attack to stop or reduce it. Preventive medications taken regularly to reduce the frequency and severity of attacks.

The abortive options include triptans (sumatriptan, rizatriptan, others), NSAIDs, the newer gepants (rimegepant, ubrogepant), and combination medications. These work for many patients but not for all, and overuse can produce medication overuse headache, which is its own problem.

The preventive options include beta blockers, antiepileptics, antidepressants, the newer CGRP inhibitors (Aimovig, Ajovy, Emgality, Vyepti, Qulipta), and Botox for chronic migraine. The CGRP class has been a meaningful advance for many patients. Even with this advance, many migraineurs still have attacks despite preventive treatment.

The conventional approach often produces partial relief. The underlying nervous system sensitization is not addressed by medications that work on specific neurotransmitters or receptors. The medications manage the condition without reversing the pattern.

The Traditional Chinese Medicine View

Traditional Chinese Medicine has been treating migraines for centuries and frames them through several distinct patterns rather than a single condition.

Liver Yang rising is the most common pattern in modern stressed adults. Plain language, the energy in the body has been driven upward by chronic stress and is pushing against the head. The migraine is often on the side of the head, throbbing, intense, and worsened by stress and frustration.

Liver Qi stagnation with internal wind produces a different pattern, often with neck and shoulder tension and migraines that feel like something is moving or pulsing.

Phlegm-Dampness produces duller, foggier migraines, often with nausea and a heavy sensation in the head.

Blood deficiency patterns produce the migraines that follow hormonal cycles, often with pale appearance, fatigue, and migraines that hit when the body is already depleted.

Each pattern requires different treatment. This is why an experienced acupuncturist will spend time identifying the pattern before treating, rather than using the same set of points for every migraine patient.

Where (and How) Acupuncture Fits

The research base for acupuncture in migraine prevention is strong. Studies have shown that acupuncture reduces the frequency and severity of migraine attacks, often comparable to preventive medications and with fewer side effects. The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health acknowledges acupuncture as evidence-supported for headache and migraine.

Acupuncture works by addressing the nervous system sensitization that has made you vulnerable to triggers, not by blocking the migraine after it starts. The treatment is most effective as a preventive approach over a course of sessions, rather than as a rescue treatment during an active attack.

Where to Start

If you have been dealing with migraines for years and want to address the underlying pattern rather than just managing the attacks, the next step is a clinical conversation about your specific situation.

Reach out to Above and Beyond Acupuncture on North Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard in Scottsdale to schedule a consultation.

Schedule an appointment online or call us today to start your journey to relief.

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