Living with migraine may affect your life in more ways than you realize. It can affect your social life, your mental and emotional health, your job, your family life, and your ability to function in daily life. Medications that prevent migraine attacks may offer a route to improving your quality of life with migraine.

You are not alone in this experience. Over 1 billion people around the world live with migraine.⁵ A MyMigraineTeam member shared, “Migraine has changed my whole life — friends, family, and career.”

Migraine Can Affect Different Areas of Your Daily Life

Keep reading to learn more about ways migraine can impact your daily life. Understanding the effects of migraine on your life can help you communicate them to your health care provider. From there, you can figure out the treatment plan that’s right for you.

Preventive Treatment Is a Key Approach To Treating Migraine

Whereas rescue treatments target symptoms after a migraine attack begins, preventive treatments can prevent migraine symptoms, helping to keep them from disrupting your life.⁴ Rescue treatments alone aren’t always enough for everyone with migraine.⁷ Experts suggest evaluating a person for preventive migraine treatments for situations in which migraine significantly affects a person’s quality of life despite the use of a rescue, or acute, treatment.⁷ Preventive treatment may also help reduce the reliance on or use of rescue treatments.⁴

According to the American Headache Society (AHS), preventive treatments aim to improve quality of life and lessen disability by reducing the frequency of migraine attacks and how severe they are.⁴ However, only a small proportion of people who qualify for preventive migraine treatments actually use them.⁴ Some of the reasons people may stop using preventive treatments include issues with efficacy and tolerability.⁴

Improving Quality of Life Is an Important Goal of Migraine Prevention

Previously, preventive migraine treatments were focused on how they affected the frequency and severity of a person’s migraine attacks.^4,8 Now, preventive treatments are measured by not only those factors but also how they affect a person’s daily functioning and quality of life.^4,8 Experts use tools called patient-reported outcome (PRO) measures to assess how migraine and preventive treatments affect different aspects of life, including^9,10:

• Relationships and social life
• Concentration and clear thinking
• Work, home, and/or leisure activities
• Physical activity, tiredness, and/or energy levels

Using these measures when studying newer migraine treatments shows that researchers recognize the importance of improving the quality of daily life as a goal of newer preventive migraine treatments.⁸ However, a study showed that while providers report the negative impact of migraine on function as one of the most important factors in determining how a person is doing on their treatment, providers do not always ask about it, and people often do not bring it up if not asked.¹¹

If you’re living with migraine, understanding the effects of the disease on your daily life and discussing this with your provider can help you figure out if your migraine treatment is working for you and if you might need to adjust your treatment plan (such as switching or adding treatments).

Newer Preventive Treatments Specifically Target Migraine

Researchers recently came up with newer preventive drugs that are specifically designed and approved for migraine. These newer medications are called calcitonin gene-related peptide targeting treatments — or CGRP treatments for short.⁴

Studies show that these newer treatments are safe and work well for preventing migraine attacks.⁴ CGRP treatments have demonstrated how they may help improve the quality of life and daily well-being of people with chronic or episodic migraine.^4,8

The American Headache Society has recommended CGRP treatments as a first-line treatment option for preventing migraine, alongside other first-line treatments.⁴ Other first-line preventive treatments include non-migraine-specific treatments (originally developed for other diseases) such as beta-blockers, anticonvulsants, and antidepressants.⁴

Based on the AHS recommendation, you may not need to try non-migraine-specific treatments before being eligible for a CGRP treatment.⁴ CGRP treatments also come in various forms, including injections, infusions, and oral pills, so you can choose the treatment that best fits your lifestyle.⁴

Talk to a Health Care Provider

The different facets of daily life discussed in this article — like relationships, social life, mental health, energy levels, and work — are all important to your overall quality of life. Preventive migraine treatment options can help reduce the frequency of migraine attacks and stop them from disrupting your life.⁴ Newer preventive treatments specifically developed for migraine have been shown to help reduce migraine attacks and improve quality of life.^4,8 If migraine has a great impact on your daily life, talk to a health care provider about your options for preventing migraine attacks.