Migraine: Why Your Headache Diary Matters to Research

Every figure in this guide comes from a published source, linked where it appears and kept in CureCircle's evidence base with the source's own words. It is not medical advice. Read on 6 November 2026.

Migraine is one of the most common conditions in the world, and much of it never reaches a health record: many attacks are treated at home and never appear in a doctor's notes. What a migraine is actually like, how often it comes, what sets it off and what stops it is recorded, if at all, by the person who has it. That is why the most valuable record of migraine is often a diary.

How many people live with it

The Global Burden of Disease study counted 1.158 billion prevalent cases of migraine worldwide in 2021, and 90.18 million incident cases, up 58% and 42% since 1990. Ninety million new cases a year is one new person every third of a second.

The record the guideline asks you to keep

NICE's guideline on headaches in over 12s asks doctors to "consider using a headache diary to aid the diagnosis of primary headaches", and sets out exactly what it should hold. If a headache diary is used, the person is asked to record, for a minimum of 8 weeks:

• the frequency, duration and severity of headaches,
• any associated symptoms,
• all prescribed and over the counter medications taken to relieve headaches,
• possible precipitants,
• the relationship of headaches to menstruation.

The same guideline uses the diary to diagnose menstrual-related migraine over at least 2 menstrual cycles and to monitor the effectiveness of headache interventions, and asks for a review of preventive treatment 3 to 6 months after starting it. It is also clear about what is not usually needed: people with migraine should not be referred for neuroimaging solely for reassurance.

So for most people with migraine, the medical file is thin: a diagnosis letter, a medication history, perhaps a review. The rich record is the diary.

What research learns from it

A diary kept over weeks shows what no single appointment can: how often attacks come and how that changes, which treatments shorten them, which triggers recur, and how they line up with sleep, stress or a menstrual cycle. Multiplied across thousands of people, that is the kind of evidence that shows which preventive treatments work for whom, and how often medication overuse turns migraine into daily headache. NICE asks doctors to be alert to medication overuse headache in people taking triptans, opioids, ergots or combination painkillers on 10 days per month or more for three months or more, a pattern a diary makes visible.

What a diary does not hold is the story around it: how the migraine started, what you have tried over the years, and how well each thing worked. That is the part an interview captures.

What sharing it is worth

CureCircle values every contribution with a public benchmark built from what health data has sold for. A complete migraine story with a year of the records the guideline lists comes to about $97 per licence on the benchmark today. The same story with 90 diary entries comes to about $340 per licence: a diary adds a kind of data research rarely gets from the same person, and data linked to the person's own account of their treatments is worth more. You can value your own and see the source behind every line on the migraine page.

A licence is not a one-off sale: the same de-identified story can be licensed to several research teams, and you earn a share each time.

How to share it

On CureCircle, you start by writing what you live with in your own words; a few quick questions follow, then an AI interviewer asks about the details only you know, and you rate every treatment you tried. You can add pages of your diary as photos or PDFs, and the AI reads each dated entry into your own medical file, alongside any letters or prescriptions. Before anything is shared, you read the de-identified summary and decide.

If you already keep a diary, in a notebook or an app, you are holding one of the most useful records of migraine there is. Start your story, or read what your health data is worth first.