The secret of how I beat my chronic migraine – and it WASN’T by using medication, therapy or avoiding triggers: My method could work for YOU
It was while working a summer job at the Wimbledon Championships that Amy Mowbray noticed flickering lines on the edges of her vision.
At first, the then 21-year-old university student tried to push through until the end of her shift. But within a few hours, the zigzagging, shimmering lines were blocking virtually her entire sight.
‘I managed to get back to my nearest train station, but I didn’t feel safe to walk the five minutes home and had to get a cab,’ says Amy. ‘I was absolutely terrified.’
Unable to see and with a thumping headache, Amy crawled into bed and fell asleep – and woke up to find that she felt back to normal.
But the following January, when the debilitating headache returned just as suddenly, it didn’t go away. Instead, within just a few months, Amy went from living the typical life of an ambitious recent graduate to being bed-bound, back in her childhood home.
‘The more scheduled my day became, the better I began to feel. And my migraines grew much less frequent’
‘The pain was suffocating,’ she says. ‘I was so sensitive to noise that the sounds of my mum emptying the dishwasher several closed doors and a floor below me could set me off. I had to eat with earplugs, or the sound of the cutlery could trigger an attack.’
Amy was diagnosed with chronic migraine – a disabling neurological condition which primarily affects women between 20 and 50.
Nearly 10 million people in Britain experience migraine, which causes severe headaches often accompanied by nausea, vomiting and visual symptoms, like Amy’s, known as aura. Roughly one million have chronic migraine – meaning they spend more than half of each month struggling with intense, throbbing head pain.
Doctors aren’t sure what causes the condition, and it has no cure.
For Amy, a severe sensitivity to light and sound, as well as a never-ending headache, meant she had to quit her job and move back home, where she was bed-ridden for nearly a year.
Today, however, the charity worker, now 32, says she has almost completely rid herself of migraines – purely through lifestyle changes.
‘For years I tried different therapies and medications for the pain, but nothing seemed to touch it,’ she says. ‘It was a very lonely and isolating time.’
As well as painkillers, traditional treatments for migraine include beta blockers and antidepressants, which work to reduce the frequency and severity of attacks by blocking pain pathways and reducing inflammation in the brain.
While effective for some, they only reduce the number of migraines patients have by about 40 per cent. And for as many as half of all sufferers – including Amy – they do not work at all.
‘The pain was suffocating. I was so sensitive to noise that the sounds of my mum emptying the dishwasher several closed doors and a floor below me could set me off’
Newer medications, called anti-CGRPs, target specific pathways in the brain to block pain signals and reduce migraine frequency. Likewise, not all patients are triggered by the same pathways, so they can be ineffective in up to 40 per cent of chronic migraine sufferers. Some advice also recommends patients identify and avoid migraine triggers, which can range from bright lights and high-stress environments, to cheese and even weather changes.
‘All the focus on treatments and triggers took me down a path of feeling worse – I felt everything was a trigger,’ says Amy.
But eventually she made a simple change that worked: sticking to a strict routine.
She wakes up everyday at 7.30am and is sure to be in bed by 10pm – with weekends looking no different. Amy also makes sure to eat regular meals, never skipping lunch.
Though she’s able to be a little more flexible now, at first, the rigid routine did interfere with her social life – but Amy says it’s a small price to pay.
‘The more scheduled my day became, the better I began to feel,’ she says. ‘And my migraines grew much less frequent.’
Thousands of other chronic migraine patients could benefit from a similar lifestyle shift, says Professor Peter Goadsby, director of the King’s Clinical Research Facility at the National Institute for Health and Care Research, and winner of the 2021 Brain Prize for migraine research.
‘We know that the structure of the brain changes day to day, and is influenced by sleep and circadian rhythm,’ says Prof Goadsby. ‘So the brain can be pushed into sensory overload simply by changes to their routine.’
A 2025 Harvard study found that when a migraine patient’s day was more unexpected than usual, their risk of a migraine attack increased by 88 per cent.
The solution, says Prof Goadsby, can be as simple as regular sleep patterns, meals and even exercise.
‘It won’t be the answer to everyone’s prayers,’ says Prof Goadsby, ‘and there are plenty of new medications that have been developed in recent years, but if you’re more careful with your daily rhythm, on average, you’ll do better.’
Since 2022, Amy no longer qualifies as having chronic migraine, getting an attack only every few months. She says: ‘Relief came from such a simple change – I can’t believe how far I’ve come.’
