A migraine is wholly unwelcome at any time, but when it always hits just as the weekend starts and ruins your precious time off it’s especially horrible. It’s not just bad luck though, there’s a reason that you might regularly suffer from migraines at the weekend. It’s so well-recognised as a migraine variant in fact that these attacks are even termed “weekend migraines”.
The primary reason why you can experience an increase in migraine symptoms over the weekend is down to changing routines.
One change that’s common to the weekends is a change to your sleeping habits. It’s tempting when you have the opportunity to do so to spend some extra time in bed and get a lie-in, or stay up a bit later and watch a late-night film. Any change in sleep schedule can be a migraine trigger. As well as disrupting your natural body clock, it means you’ll get a different amount of sleep to that which you’re used to, and both too much and too little sleep can be a major migraine trigger, so it’s important to keep your sleep schedule the same, even on the weekends!
Another reason why people can find themselves suffering from a migraine attack on the weekend is because they’re finally able to relax – as strange as that may sound. Stress can sometimes trigger migraines, but so can a release of stress. If your body is used to being under constant stress then when that stress level lowers the change can result in a “let down” migraine.
Essentially, when the weekend comes and we’re able to do something a bit different, we need to be careful not to do everything differently. Keeping our mealtimes the same, what kind of things we eat the same, our bed time and waking-up times the same, and (as odd as it may sound) not suddenly stopping dead to relax if we’re used to a fast-paced workplace, is key in keeping weekend migraines at bay.
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