Exploring migraine through the quiet conversations between energy, rhythm, environment, nourishment, and the body's continual work of adaptation.
If you've been living with migraine for any length of time, you've probably become a careful observer.
Not because you wanted to.
Because you had to.
Over time, you've learnt that the smallest details sometimes seem to matter.
A missed meal.
A poor night's sleep.
Bright light.
A change in routine.
A perfume worn by someone passing in the street.
The weather.
The day before your period.
A stressful week.
Or sometimes, nothing you can easily recognise at all.
You have searched for patterns.
You've experimented with foods, routines, supplements, medications, perhaps even entire ways of living.
You've hoped that if you could only identify the missing piece, the picture would finally make sense.
And yet, for many people, it never quite does.
The same thing that seemed to matter last month doesn't always matter today.
Something that once helped quietly stops helping.
An attack appears on a day when everything seemed to be going well.
If this feels familiar, perhaps it's because you have been listening carefully to a conversation whose richness we are only just beginning to appreciate.
That is where this article begins.
Migraine may be one of the clearest examples of how a living body continually responds to the accumulation and interaction of many signals over time.
When we think in terms of triggers, we naturally begin looking for the one thing that caused today's migraine.
When we begin thinking in terms of relationships, a different picture starts to emerge.
We notice that the same bright light doesn't always have the same effect.
The same meal doesn't always lead to the same outcome.
The same stressful conversation may be manageable one week and overwhelming the next.
The question quietly changes.
Not, "What caused this?"
But, "What else was happening in the landscape at the same time?"
And then perhaps another question begins to emerge.
This is the Terrain Lens.
It invites us to become curious about the patterns that emerge when many signals unfold together, within us, around us, and between us.
Those conversations may include your genes, because they influence how your body meets the world.
They may include the rhythms of your days and nights, the food that nourishes you, and the ways your body creates, restores and shares its energy.
They may include the air you breathe, the places you spend time, the products you use, the seasons, the light, the people around you, and the pace at which life unfolds.
None of these voices speaks alone.
Together they help shape the terrain from which your body's responses emerge.
That terrain has been shaped over a lifetime, through your body’s continual adaptation to the many signals it has encountered along the way.
Those responses may be expressed through your nervous system, your hormones, your immune system, the way you produce energy, repair tissues and adapt to change.
Each is a different expression of the same living terrain.
If these ideas feel unfamiliar, you may wish to begin with What Else Shapes the Terrain?, which explores the wider perspective from which this series emerges.
How has our understanding of migraine changed?
For many years, migraine research understandably focused on identifying individual causes and treatments. Genetics, hormones, neurotransmitters and blood vessels have each contributed important pieces of the story. [1–4]
Over the past two decades, researchers have gradually begun to widen the picture.
Rather than asking whether one pathway explains migraine, they are increasingly exploring how many biological systems interact, influence one another, and together shape the conditions from which migraine emerges.
Scientists are also looking more closely at how the brain creates and manages energy.
Although the brain represents only around two percent of our body weight, it uses around twenty percent of the body’s resting energy.
Meeting that remarkable demand depends on healthy mitochondria, an adequate supply of nutrients and oxygen, and the continual production of ATP—the molecule that provides energy for almost every process within our cells.
A growing body of research suggests that some people living with migraine may have a brain that is unusually energy-demanding while, at the same time, having a smaller margin for meeting those demands. [5]
Mitochondria have therefore become an important focus of research, because every process within the body requires energy.
Understanding how that energy is produced, shared and restored may help explain why the same brain can feel remarkably adaptable on one day, yet much less able to respond to ordinary demands on another. It may also help explain why bright light feels manageable after several nights of good sleep, yet overwhelming after exhaustion, or why a missed meal passes unnoticed one week, yet seems to matter the next.
Researchers are also asking whether total biological load matters.
For many people, migraine does not follow one single event.
It often follows the gradual accumulation of several demands.
Poor sleep.
Skipping meals.
Psychological stress.
Hormonal changes.
Illness.
Some of those demands arise largely from within the body.
Others arise from the environments in which we live.
The quality of the air we breathe.
Strong fragrances.
Noise.
Bright or flickering light.
The materials that surround us.
Everyday chemical exposures.
Time spent indoors and outdoors.
Each of these has been studied individually.
Increasingly, researchers are asking whether many small demands together move the nervous system closer to the point where migraine becomes more likely. [6]
That shifts the emphasis from trigger to threshold.
Rather than asking what finally tipped the balance today, we begin to ask how much the nervous system was already holding.
I explore these ideas in more physiological detail in Migraine: When the Signal Is Too Loud, where we look more closely at energy, signalling, load and threshold.
Another area attracting growing attention is how the body regulates itself.
Long before symptoms appear, the body is adjusting.
The autonomic nervous system shifts between activity and restoration.
Hormones rise and fall across the day and throughout different stages of life.
The immune system continually exchanges signals with the nervous system.
Circadian rhythms help coordinate thousands of biological processes, including sleep, hormone release, energy production and immune activity. When those rhythms become disrupted, the effects may ripple through many different physiological systems. [7,8]
The nervous system does not regulate alone.
It continually exchanges information with the immune system, the endocrine system and the body's energy-producing machinery.
Researchers are increasingly interested in these conversations because they appear to unfold together, each influencing the others as the body continually adapts to its surroundings.
Perhaps this helps explain why the same stressful meeting, the same journey home or the same busy day can feel very different depending on everything else that has already been asked of your body.
Researchers are also taking a fresh look at nourishment.
Researchers are investigating how meal timing, metabolic flexibility, micronutrient status and the body's ability to generate energy influence the stability of the nervous system.
At the same time, nutrigenomics is revealing something even broader.
Food is more than a source of calories or individual nutrients.
It also carries information that influences how genes are expressed, how cells communicate and how physiology adapts to its surroundings. [9]
Alongside the familiar questions about food, another question quietly emerges.
What conversations might become possible when the body is more generously nourished?
This is a theme we will return to throughout this series: exploring what current research suggests, where new questions are emerging, and how our everyday environments may participate in the conditions in which migraine becomes more likely.
What do these observations have in common?
None of these conversations, on their own, fully explains migraine. [1–9]
Together, they invite us to see migraine as a response emerging from a terrain shaped by many interacting signals.
The scientific question is gradually changing.
Less,
"Which single factor caused this?"
More,
"How did many signals shape the conditions from which this response emerged?"
That is a different scientific question.
It is also a different way of living with migraine.
What does this change?
What appears to be a single attack may be the visible expression of a much longer conversation.
That possibility changes the question.
Instead of asking,
"Which trigger caused this?"
another question begins to emerge.
"What conversations might have been unfolding before my body responded in this way?"
For many people living with migraine, that is a surprisingly gentle shift.
It does not ask you to become hypervigilant.
Nor does it ask you to investigate everything at once.
It simply invites a different kind of attention.
One that notices relationships.
Perhaps your nervous system feels steadier after several days of regular meals and restful sleep.
Perhaps time outdoors quietly changes the quality of your thinking.
Perhaps strong fragrances affect you more after a demanding week than after a restorative holiday.
Perhaps bright light feels different when you are well nourished than when you are exhausted.
None of these observations needs to become a rule.
Each is simply another conversation becoming visible.
Over time, those conversations begin to reveal something deeply personal.
Not the migraine that everybody has.
The terrain that is uniquely yours.
Some conversations may matter greatly.
Others hardly at all.
Some may change with the seasons, with different stages of life, or as your health evolves.
The aim is not to predict every migraine.
It is to become increasingly familiar with the terrain from which your body's responses emerge.
That is a very different relationship.
You are no longer searching for one elusive answer.
You are learning the language of your own terrain.
If you would like practical ways to begin exploring your own patterns, rhythms and supports, the Migraine Self-Care Guide offers a gentle place to continue.
Living in partnership with your terrain
Awareness is not only about recognising what asks more of your body.
It is also about recognising what allows it to give more back.
The conversation between your body and the world did not begin with symptoms.
It has been unfolding throughout your life.
Sometimes it is easy to hear.
The quiet after a good night's sleep.
The ease that follows a nourishing meal.
The clarity of thought after time outdoors.
The steadiness that arrives when life briefly falls into rhythm.
Sometimes the conversation becomes more difficult.
Pain.
Fatigue.
Restlessness.
Migraine.
These, too, are part of the language of a living body.
Like moments of ease, they invite us to pay attention.
Modern life asks a great deal of all of us.
Its pace.
Its opportunities.
Its complexity.
We are still learning how to live well within it.
We do not begin that learning from the beginning.
Our bodies are the living expression of countless generations of adaptation.
Every moment, they continue sensing, responding and adjusting to the conversations unfolding within us, around us and between us—long before we become consciously aware of them.
The invitation is not to hear only the difficult conversations.
It is also to notice the quieter ones.
The moments when your body feels more settled.
More spacious.
More resilient.
Those moments matter.
They tell us something about the conditions in which this particular terrain is able to flourish.
Awareness gradually reveals a relationship that has been there all along.
And from that relationship, reciprocity begins to grow naturally.
Not because we owe our bodies anything.
But because we recognise that we belong within the same living system.
A little more rest.
Fresh air.
A nourishing meal.
Time with people who leave us feeling lighter.
Moments of quiet.
These are not rules.
They are small ways of responding to a conversation that has never stopped.
Migraine may still visit.
Some conversations may remain beyond our understanding.
Yet the landscape no longer feels quite so unfamiliar.
You are no longer trying to outwit your body.
You are learning its language.
And perhaps, little by little, beginning to speak it too.
Where you might begin
You do not need to listen to every conversation at once.
Choose one.
Stay with it for a little while.
Become familiar with it before moving on.
Perhaps, for one week, you might simply notice the air in the places where you spend most of your time.
Or notice whether your brain feels different after time outdoors compared with indoors.
If your meals are often irregular, you might experiment with making just one meal each day a little more predictable.
Or perhaps keep a notebook not only of migraine days, but also of the days when your mind felt unexpectedly clear, settled or spacious.
Those quieter days are part of the conversation too.
They tell us something about the conditions in which your own terrain is able to flourish.
Begin there.
One conversation.
One week.
One observation.
One small act of reciprocity.
That is enough.
Returning to yourself
Perhaps migraine will feel no different tomorrow.
Or perhaps something already has.
Not because another answer has been found.
But because another way of seeing has begun to emerge.
The conversation was never waiting to be created.
It was already there.
Within you.
Around you.
Between you and the world you move through each day.
You do not need to understand every conversation.
No one can.
You do not need to notice everything.
No one does.
You simply begin where you are.
With curiosity.
With patience.
And with the understanding that your body has never stopped participating in life.
Awareness is one way of taking part in that conversation.
Perhaps you've been listening all along.
Now, little by little, the conversation is becoming easier to hear.
Part of the series
What Else Shapes the Terrain?
Introduction
Exploring health through the Terrain Lens.
Migraine
Understanding the conversations beneath the symptoms.
Asthma
Coming soon.
Cardiovascular health
Coming soon.
Metabolic health
Coming soon.
Fertility & reproductive health
Coming soon.
Neurodevelopment
Coming soon.
Neurodegeneration
Coming soon.
Breast cancer
Coming soon.
References
- Friedman DI, et al. Migraine and the environment. Headache. 2009.
- Portt AE, et al. Migraine and air pollution: a systematic review. Headache. 2023.
- Yeh PK, et al. Influences of genetic and environmental factors on chronic migraine: a narrative review. Current Pain and Headache Reports. 2024;28:169–180.
- Elser H, et al. The environment and headache: a narrative review. Headache. 2024.
- Bohra SK, et al. Current perspectives on mitochondrial dysfunction in migraine. European Journal of Neuroscience. 2022.
- Peles I, et al. Acute environmental triggers and intermediate-term modulators of emergency migraine-related health care encounters. Neurology. 2026.
- Benkli B, et al. Circadian features of cluster headache and migraine: a systematic review, meta-analysis, and genetic analysis. Neurology. 2023.
- Holland PR, et al. Is it time to think about chronotherapy in migraine? Neurotherapeutics. 2025.
- De Marchis ML, et al. The genetic bases of the nutritional approach to migraine. Nutrients. 2018.
