Understanding a Holistic Approach
People are often puzzled when I say I don't recommend trigger diaries, or trying to pinpoint the "cause" of a migraine.
It would seem like that should be precisely what a migraine expert should do!
But that is and always will be a losing strategy. Because that’s not how migraines actually work.
The search-for-the-smoking-gun strategy that results from the application of a reductionist approach to health and migraine prevention.
How so?
Imagine there's a thunderstorm raging outside and a 5-year-old girl walks up to you and says "Excuse me, but what caused this storm?"
What would you say?
You might vaguely describe something about pressure systems, temperature, and humidity.
But none of that would actually answer her question. Because she wants to know the exact thing that caused this storm.
Was it a drop in air pressure that occurred 3 hours and 46 seconds ago at 79.23 degrees latitude -134.6 degrees longitude? And if so, what caused that drop in air pressure to happen?
Of course, the answer is there is no answer to her question. The question itself doesn't make sense, because that’s not how weather works.
Weather is an emergent phenomenon of a complex system, and no weather event can be traced back to a single, isolated cause or set of causes.
So why am I talking about the weather?
Because migraines are also an emergent phenomenon of a complex system, and no migraine event can be attributed to a single, isolated cause or set of causes.
Now imagine you're walking through the Louvre, and your 5-year-old asks you which brush stroke was the one responsible for the Mona Lisa.
Which brush stroke, if we took it away, would destroy the image altogether?
Again, the question doesn't make sense.
The Mona Lisa isn't the result of any single stroke of Davinci's brush.
It "emerges" from the combination of every single brush stroke. And one and only one combination of those brush strokes produces the Mona Lisa as we know it.
The Mona Lisa is also an emergent phenomenon. It's not the result of any one thing (or one brush stroke), but ONLY the result of ALL the things, acting in combination.
Neither the weather nor the Mona Lisa can be reduced to any single thing. Both can only be understood holistically.
Obsessively analyzing our past experience to find the cause of a particular migraine event is no different than trying to pinpoint the exact thing that caused our thunderstorm, or trying to identify the exact brush stroke that gave us the Mona Lisa.
It cannot be done.