Living With A Migraine Brain
The neck tightness wasn’t a warning. It was the migraine.
You blamed the pillow. Two days later you were in the dark room. The stiff neck may not have been a warning at all.
It is a Tuesday, and you are standing at the kitchen counter with your hand on the back of your neck.
You roll your head left. Then right. Something at the base of your skull feels like a rope pulled tight.
“Slept wrong,” you say, to nobody. The dishwasher hums. You rinse a glass.
By dinner the overhead light has an edge on it. You yawn three times in one conversation and cannot say why.
Thursday morning you are in the dark room with the ice cap from the freezer. You are going back over what you ate.
The aged cheddar. It must have been the cheddar. You write it in the diary.
The migraine did not start on Thursday. It may have started at the counter.
The neck was the first sign
You know the stiff neck. You know the light that is too bright. You know the yawning you cannot stop.
You have called them warnings for years. The thing you feel first, so the thing that tells you the pain is coming.
The American Migraine Foundation calls the first phase of a migraine attack the prodrome. It says the prodrome can begin several hours or days before the aura or the headache.
And the symptoms it lists are the ones on your counter. Neck pain or stiffness. Yawning. Sensitivity to light or sound. Food cravings. Fatigue. Trouble concentrating. Difficulty speaking or reading. Irritability.
Those are not a heads-up. They are the first phase.
Why your diary blamed the cheddar
If the migraine began at the counter, then the cheddar came after it.
Dr. Rashmi Halker Singh, a neurologist at Mayo Clinic Arizona, writes for the American Migraine Foundation that some well-known triggers may be signs that an attack has already started. The craving for the cheese. The smell that suddenly bothers you. People can mistake the early symptoms for the cause.
So you cut the cheese. You cut the wine. You cut the chocolate.
The migraines kept coming, because the diary was written from the pain backward. The start was always earlier than the page.
Why the neck, of all places
Researchers do not fully agree on why the early phase feels the way it does.
A 2025 trial analysis in Nature Medicine, led by Dr. Peter Goadsby of King’s College London and UCLA, described these early symptoms as highly predictive of a headache to come. It also noted that brain imaging shows activity in the hypothalamus during this phase.
The hypothalamus helps run sleep, appetite and hormones. Sleep that goes strange. Cravings out of nowhere. The yawning. That is the same list.
The trial tested a prescription drug. We cite it for what it says about the early phase, not for the drug.
What to do with this on your next Tuesday
Next Tuesday your hand will go to the back of your neck again. This time you will know what you are looking at.
Write down the time. Add it to the diary, in its own column, next to what you ate and how you slept.
Tell your doctor what you notice early, in the order you notice it. The American Migraine Foundation says that treatment in this phase may stop or lessen an attack. Ask what that could look like for you.
And stop blaming the cheddar. You were already on your way.
Where the line comes in
If the start is earlier than the pain, then the real question is not “what did I do today?”
It is “how close was my brain to the edge when the day began?”
There is a name for that edge. The Migraine Tipping Line™. The same line for everyone. The difference is how much it takes to cross it.
Read what the Migraine Tipping Line™ is, and why your diary never found it →Your turn
What was the first thing you noticed before your last migraine?
The stiff neck. The yawning you could not stop. The light. Something else entirely. Tell us below. Someone reading along may see their own first sign in your answer.
Tell us what you noticed first →We read every comment. Comments are reviewed before they appear, so please do not share personal medical details.
- American Migraine Foundation. Migraine prodrome: symptoms and prevention.
- Halker Singh R. The science behind migraine triggers: are migraine triggers real or part of the prodrome phase? American Migraine Foundation, 2023.
- Goadsby PJ et al. Ubrogepant for the treatment of migraine prodromal symptoms: an exploratory analysis from the randomized phase 3 PRODROME trial. Nature Medicine, 2025.
*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Content on this site is educational and is not medical advice.