What are the triggers of migraine?

  I. Lifestyle triggers 1. High mental and psychological stress, depression or drastic mood changes: The fast-paced social environment, the discomfort and pressure of life and work, and the cautious consideration of various affairs and relationships often make people’s brains nervous and depressed, which leads to the occurrence of migraine. Emotional changes are one of the significant triggering factors of migraine.  2. Improper diet: Certain foods can cause changes in the body’s internal environment, leading to the occurrence of migraine.  3. Excessive exercise.  4. Irregular sleep: lack of sleep, too much sleep, irregular sleep, etc.  Drug induced 1. Oral vasodilators.  2. Contraceptive pills.  3. Hormone replacement drugs and other drugs.  4. Frequent use of ergotamine, opioids, tretinoin and other single-component painkillers (barbiturates, caffeine, isooctenamines).  Migraineurs should avoid cold food and cold, which can cause headache after 10 minutes of cold or cold stimulation.  In winter, forgetting to wear a hat when going out and exposing the head to cold air; the water temperature is too low when swimming; eating ice cream or cold drinks can cause cold stimulation headache. The mechanism may be related to the vasodilation disorder caused by the dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system. It was found that in the cold environment, the bilateral temporal arteries and their branches spasm and become thin before the headache, and the arterial rage, filling and pulsation are enhanced during the headache period. After eating cold drinks, the cold stimulation of the tongue and oral mucosa by cold drinks reflexively causes spasm of the temporal arteries, and when the spasm reaches the maximum, it turns into passive dilation, and the blood flow impacts the nociceptive nerve endings on the wall of the dilated arteries, triggering headache.  In conclusion, external exposure to cold or eating cold drinks is the condition of cold irritation headache, and the basis of the pathogenesis is related to the physical and neurological dysfunctions of the blood vessels that easily induce sympathetic hyperfunction. Therefore, care should be taken to stay away from cold environment and eat less or no cold drinks.  4. Female physiological triggers 1. Before puberty, the prevalence of the disease is similar in both sexes.  2. After puberty, the incidence of the disease is significantly higher in women than in men.  3. When women have menstruation, headache attacks are common.  4. After menopause and during pregnancy, the headache decreases.  Menstrual cycle changes have a direct trigger effect on migraine attacks, and this condition may be related to changes in hormone levels. The onset of some female patients is directly related to the menstrual cycle and is called menstrual migraine, a special type of migraine related to the ovarian cycle. Modern medicine believes that the sudden drop in estrogen levels (lower estradiol) during the premenstrual period causes the intracranial and extracranial blood vessels to be sensitive to the consequent changes in biochemical factors (e.g., vasoactive substances such as 5-hydroxytryptamine), which affects the function of target organs by interfering with the sympathetic nerves, causing migraine headaches due to changes in the diastolic function of the intracranial and extracranial blood vessels in susceptible individuals.