One of the very first things many of us hear after being diagnosed with migraine is:

“You need to identify your triggers.”

On its own, this advice is incomplete and honestly, often unhelpful.

Migraine is a threshold disease, which means migraine attacks are rarely caused by one single trigger. Instead, attacks usually happen when multiple triggers stack together, overwhelming the nervous system and pushing the brain past its threshold.

Some triggers carry more weight than others. Certain triggers can cause an immediate migraine attack for some people. But for most of us, it’s rarely just one thing. It’s the combination.

Triggers are also deeply individual, and this is where stigma tends to grow. When people don’t understand migraine as a neurological disease, triggers get oversimplified or dismissed, leading to comments like “just avoid stress” or “stop eating chocolate.”

This post focuses on the education side of migraine: how threshold works, how to raise it, and how to track symptoms and triggers in a way that’s actually useful without obsessing or blaming yourself.

Cup Theory is one of the most helpful analogies I’ve ever learned for understanding migraine.

Think of your cup as your nervous system’s capacity to tolerate triggers before a migraine attack begins.

When you wake up, your cup starts relatively empty. Throughout the day, triggers add water to the cup. 

Now imagine this kind of day:

You wake up late → skip breakfast → have a stressful commute → miss lunch → work under fluorescent lights → your menstrual cycle starts.

Each of those experiences adds water to your cup. Once the cup overflows, a migraine attack starts.

Cup overflow = threshold reached.

This is why migraine management isn’t really about “avoiding triggers.” It’s about keeping the cup from overflowing.

When the nervous system is overwhelmed, it reacts with a migraine attack.

Here’s something I firmly believe: Identifying triggers when your cup is already full is nearly impossible.

If your cup is full every day, you’re often already in a migraine attack or on the edge of one. At that point, tracking only tells you what pushed you from bad to terrible, not what truly contributes to your baseline threshold.

This is why many people feel frustrated with trigger tracking. It can feel random, discouraging, or even blame-filled.

The goal isn’t to document every single thing in hopes of predicting the next attack.

The goal is to:

• Understand patterns over time

• Reduce baseline stress on the nervous system

• Raise your threshold so your brain can tolerate more without tipping over

Raising your threshold means increasing how much your nervous system can handle before a migraine attack starts.

Migraine brains love routine and predictability which is ironic, because the disease itself is anything but predictable. You can do everything “right” and still have attacks.

Raising your threshold is not about perfection.
It’s not about control.
And it’s definitely not about preventing every attack.

It’s about support.

If you’re currently experiencing migraine attacks daily, raising your threshold is a gradual process. This is normal. It takes time, patience, and consistency.

One of the most common frameworks used in migraine care to support threshold is SEEDS.

SEEDS stands for: Sleep, Exercise, Eat, Drink, Stress

You may have heard of SEEDS before but rarely is it explained in detail. Let’s break down how each one affects migraine threshold and what support actually looks like in real life.

Sleep helps regulate how reactive the migraine brain is. It supports neurotransmitter balance, pain processing, hormones, and inflammation. When sleep is inconsistent—too little, too much, or irregular timing—the nervous system becomes more sensitive, lowering threshold.

For migraine, consistency is often more protective than total hours.

Sleep is one of the most powerful tools for raising migraine threshold and also one of the most sensitive.

Common sleep-related migraine triggers include:

• Too little sleep

• Too much sleep

• Inconsistent sleep schedules

• Poor sleep quality

• Changes in routine (weekends, travel)

For migraine brains, consistency matters more than perfection.

Supportive sleep tips:

• Aim for the same bedtime and wake time daily (within 30–60 minutes)

• Focus on sleep quality, not just hours

• Create predictable wind-down routines

• Protect sleep during high-risk times (illness, hormonal changes)

• Track sleep patterns, not one-off bad nights

Sleep doesn’t need to be flawless to help raise threshold but instability can lower it quickly.

Exercise places a temporary demand on the nervous system. It changes blood flow, increases heart rate, activates muscles, and increases overall physiological load. For a migraine brain with a low threshold, that added demand can be enough to fill the cup and trigger a migraine attack.

At the same time, when movement is introduced thoughtfully and built gradually, exercise can strengthen the body’s ability to tolerate stress. Over time, it can support healthier circulation, reduce baseline muscle tension, improve sleep quality, and increase overall nervous system resilience, helping raise migraine threshold rather than lower it.

This is why exercise is often so confusing in migraine care. It can feel like a trigger at first, but become protective later. The difference isn’t motivation, willpower, or discipline, it’s how and when movement is introduced in relation to your current threshold.

To learn more about how to add exercise gently and safely with migraine, I break this down in more detail in my blog post on migraine and exercise.

The migraine brain is highly sensitive to energy changes. Skipping or delaying meals can quickly lower threshold by increasing stress hormones and inflammation.

Regular eating helps stabilize blood sugar, support neurotransmitters, and reduce nervous system stress.

Migraine brains are highly sensitive to energy fluctuations.

Common food-related threshold-lowers include:

• Skipping meals

• Long gaps between eating

• Blood sugar drops

• Dehydration related to eating patterns

While specific food triggers vary by person, irregular eating patterns are a common issue.

Supportive eating tips:

• Eat regularly, even on low-appetite days

• Pair protein with carbohydrates

• Avoid long fasting windows unless medically guided

• Track timing patterns before cutting foods

This isn’t about restriction, it’s about stability.

Hydration affects blood flow, circulation, and pain sensitivity. Even mild dehydration can lower threshold and stack with other triggers.

For migraine brains, hydration is quiet but powerful support, especially during heat, illness, hormonal shifts, or activity.

Dehydration is a well-known migraine trigger, but hydration isn’t just about water volume.

Electrolyte balance, caffeine timing, and illness all play a role.

Supportive hydration tips:

• Sip consistently throughout the day

• Increase fluids during heat, illness, or exercise

• Be mindful of caffeine timing and withdrawal

• Track hydration patterns alongside symptoms

Hydration helps regulate blood flow and nervous system signaling, both crucial for migraine brains.

Stress is one of the most significant and misunderstood factors in migraine threshold. Stress activates the nervous system and keeps it in a heightened, alert state. For a migraine brain, which already has a lower tolerance for stimulation, this constant activation can quickly lower threshold.

What matters most isn’t the presence of stress, but how often your nervous system gets a chance to come back down. Without recovery, stress continues to stack, filling the cup even when nothing else seems “wrong.”

Stress management helps raise migraine threshold by supporting nervous system regulation. This includes reducing prolonged activation, improving recovery after stress, and creating moments of safety and calm throughout the day.

Effective stress management isn’t about eliminating stress or staying calm all the time, it’s about giving your nervous system regular opportunities to reset so it can handle more without tipping into an attack.

If you want to learn more about the mental health and stress-management tools I use to support migraine, I break them down more deeply in a separate blog post focused on mental health and migraine.

When it comes to tracking migraine, the most helpful place to start is with the things that raise your threshold.

Before trying to identify every possible trigger, it’s important to understand what supports your baseline. Sleep, hydration, regular meals, stress management, and routine all influence how much your nervous system can handle. When your threshold is low, almost anything can feel like a trigger, not because everything is a trigger, but because your cup is already close to full.

This is why tracking works best in phases. Early on, the focus isn’t on pinpointing foods or weather patterns. It’s on tracking the foundations that stabilize the nervous system and help make the cup bigger. Once your threshold is better supported, it becomes much easier to notice additional triggers—like weather changes or certain foods—without overwhelm or confusion.

It’s also important to remember that single data points rarely tell the full story. Just because you slept well one night doesn’t mean sleep wasn’t still a contributing factor. Just because you drank water doesn’t mean hydration wasn’t part of what filled your cup. Migraine is cumulative, and patterns emerge over time, not from one “good” or “bad” day.

SEEDS-based tracking helps shift the focus from chasing triggers to understanding capacity. By paying attention to sleep, eating patterns, hydration, movement, and stress over time, you’re tracking the factors that have the biggest impact on your threshold. Everything else becomes easier to interpret once those foundations are supported.

The goal of tracking isn’t to do more. It’s to focus on what gives your nervous system the most support, so it can tolerate more before an attack starts.

Migraine isn’t a failure of willpower, discipline, or effort. It’s a neurological disease with a sensitive threshold.

You can do everything “right” and still have migraine attacks and that doesn’t mean you did something wrong. Raising your threshold isn’t about control or perfection. It’s about support, consistency, and learning what your nervous system needs to function with a little more room.

When you shift your focus from chasing triggers to supporting your baseline, things start to make more sense. Patterns become clearer. Self-blame softens. And even when migraine shows up, it feels less confusing and less personal.

This work takes time. Progress is rarely linear. But every small step that supports your sleep, nourishment, hydration, movement, and stress adds capacity back into your system.

You’re not broken.
Your cup isn’t failing you.
You’re learning how to support a brain that simply needs more care.

And that understanding alone can be powerful.