You do not need a perfect record for a useful headache appointment. A short report should show how often headaches occurred, how they affected you and what medication you used. It should also flag anything new or unusual.
What to put on the first page
Lead with the numbers your clinician needs to scan:
- number of headache days in the reporting period
- number of days with migraine-like symptoms
- number of days you used acute headache medication
- typical and longest attack duration
- usual intensity, using the same scale throughout
- days when work, school, care tasks or sleep were limited
Add the date range and note any preventive treatment, dose or routine change that happened during it. Do not combine periods before and after a change without marking the date.
A headache diary app can calculate these totals, but a paper calendar works too. If you are starting from scratch, first decide which diary fields you need and what to look for in a migraine tracker. HeadYogi can export PDF and CSV files. The PDF is easier to scan in a consultation; the CSV contains row-level data for someone who wants to analyse it. Ask the clinic which format it can actually use. HeadYogi's clinician page explains the report fields.
Describe a typical attack
- where the pain starts and whether it stays on one side
- whether activity makes it worse
- nausea, vomiting, aura, light sensitivity or sound sensitivity
- neck pain or other symptoms that occur with it
- what you took, when you took it and what happened next
Keep your wording observational. "Headache followed a short night" is more accurate than "poor sleep caused the headache" unless you and your clinician have tested that relationship. A diary records timing and association; it does not establish cause.
Include medication days, not only doses
List prescribed, over-the-counter and combination headache medicines. Record the product, dose, time and response, but also total the number of calendar days on which you used each type. Medication-day counts help a clinician assess treatment use and the possibility of medication-overuse headache.
Do not change a dose or stop a prescribed medicine because of a diary pattern. Use the report to ask what the pattern means for your treatment plan. This guide to tracking frequent analgesic use explains why medication days are worth discussing without setting a personal limit here.
Why daily records help
Recall over several weeks can differ from daily entries. In a study of people with migraine, a four-week recall questionnaire underestimated headache days by an average of 1.7 to 3.4 days compared with an electronic daily diary. Another prospective headache-clinic study found material differences between self-estimated and diary-based counts of migraine days, other headache days and acute medication days.
Those findings support prospective recording, but they do not make an app a diagnostic tool. In the clinic study, the physician's diagnosis based on an interview and examination remained the reference standard.
A five-minute appointment check
- Confirm the date range and check for missing days.
- Put the main totals on one page.
- Mark the date of each treatment change.
- Write down your two most important questions.
- Add a medication list and relevant medical history if the clinic does not already have them.
Bring the detailed entries as backup. The summary should stand on its own, so the clinician does not have to interpret pages of raw data during a short appointment.
HeadYogi stores records on the device or in the user's private iCloud account and can create reports for a selected period. Review the export features and how the app works before deciding whether to share a file. Send health information only through a route the clinic considers secure.
Do not wait for a report in an emergency
Seek urgent medical help for a sudden extremely painful headache, new weakness or numbness, trouble speaking, fainting, fever with severe headache, headache after a significant injury or a pattern that is clearly different from your usual headaches. A tracking report is for planned care, not emergency triage.
Sources
- Comparing prospective headache diary and retrospective four-week headache questionnaire over 20 weeks: Secondary data analysis from a randomized controlled trial (2020; PMCID: PMC9060397)
- E-diary use in clinical headache practice: a prospective observational study (2021; PMCID: PMC8504420)
- The International Classification of Headache Disorders, third edition (International Headache Society, 2018)
A useful report gives your clinician a reliable starting point. Diagnosis and treatment decisions still belong in the consultation.