SEEDS for Migraine: What Is This Framework and How Can It Help Me?

Written by Kate Rope
Medically Reviewed by Jabeen Begum, MD on October 14, 2025
10 min read

As many as 75% of people who have migraine have a family history of it. But there are also specific aspects of your environment — how much sleep you get, whether you’re eating consistently, or how much stress you are under — that can cause an attack or make you more likely to have migraine. 

“Genetics can determine susceptibility, but other external factors often determine when and how migraine attacks occur and are often highly individual and variable,” says Alison Thaler, MD, assistant professor of neurology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital. In other words: Everyone has their own triggers and responses to them, but following the SEEDS framework may help you both identify and lessen yours.

SEEDS stands for sleep, exercise, eat, diary, and stress. These are all “lifestyle changes that can directly target trigger mechanisms, reduce attack frequency and severity, and prevent progression from episodic to chronic migraine,” Thaler says. 

SEEDS is a tool that you can use to help with migraine. Knowing your history with migraine, talking with your provider, and experimenting can help you figure out which elements of the framework can be helpful to you, says Teshamae Monteith, MD, board member and editorial board co-chair of the American Migraine Foundation and chief of the Headache Division at the University of Miami.

Rather than looking at each letter as one step in a to-do list, “it’s an opportunity to think about ways that you can improve your lifestyle, but not every person needs a major change,” Monteith says.

Sleep and migraine are tied closely together in a number of ways. Research has shown that too little or too much sleep can trigger migraine attacks in about half the people who get them. Both can also make it more likely that episodic (14 or fewer migraines a month) migraine will become chronic (15 or more). Experts don’t know exactly why, but sleep plays an important role in regulating brain chemicals such as serotonin and dopamine, which can, among other things, increase sensitivity to pain. 

Some studies suggest that sleep interruptions, rather than the length of sleep, are the culprit. People with migraine are also three times more likely to have trouble sleeping, possibly due to headache (the pain), anxiety about sleep and attacks, or other biological reasons. All of this means that working on consistent quality sleep can be a really helpful way to manage migraine.

Follow these sleep hygiene tips:

  • Reserve your bed for sleep. This way, your body associates it only with sleeping. Work and watch shows somewhere else.
  • Give yourself a bedtime. Hitting a specific number of hours is less important than getting the same amount of sleep each night. Once you know how much sleep you need, figure out when you need to be asleep to get that number, and then stick with your bedtime as much as possible.
  • Power down. It can be so tempting to do a last scroll of your feed at the end of the night, but the light that screens emit makes it harder to get good sleep. Pick a time to shut down screens, and do your best to stick to it. 
  • Create a calming nighttime ritual. Experiment with the things that help you wind down. Ideas: taking a warm shower or bath, following a soothing skin care regimen, using essential oils, reading for a set period of time. When you have a routine you like, follow it. That will tell your body it’s time to relax and sleep.

Troubleshooting sleep when you don’t have a regular schedule

Getting consistent sleep can be particularly challenging for folks who do shift work. In fact, Monteith has written letters to employers to advocate for a more regular schedule for her patients. “Have your doctors and health care team be an ally for you,” she recommends.

But, often, there is no wiggle room. “I have patients who work as flight attendants, and they have to wake up early to be at work.” When that’s the case, one possible solution Montieth offers is starting a short course of preventive meds when you are heading into a shift schedule that makes it more likely you will have migraine. She also suggests “having good abortive therapies, too.”

Exercise is a power player when it comes to managing migraine. A number of studies have found that less frequent exercise is associated with more frequent migraine attacks, and increased levels are connected to fewer migraine attacks. Consistent exercise has also been shown to lower pain levels and make it less likely that migraine gets in the way of doing your normal activities.

Exercise releases the feel-good and pain-relieving chemicals endorphins, which also help decrease depression and anxiety that can often come along with migraine. Plus, it improves sleep and lowers stress, meaning it helps you hit three out of the four lifestyle changes that help with migraine.

Aerobic (cardio) exercise has been shown to be the most helpful. Some options:

  • Walking
  • Running
  • Biking
  • Swimming

If your lifestyle allows for it, 30-60 minutes three or more times a week is recommended by the American Migraine Foundation.

But, “it doesn’t need to be this two-hour experience in a gym,” Monteith says. “Adjust your exercise to what you’re actually going to do and to your lifestyle. For people that like to jog, go ahead and jog; if you prefer yoga, do your yoga. If you like to walk or you have a dog and access to a park, do that. Walking can be very helpful.”

She also advocates for short bursts when you can get them in, such as walking up stairs when you’re at work. “Integrating activity in your day-to-day experience is probably the most efficient way to utilize exercise.”

There are some studies showing that exercise can trigger a migraine attack, possibly because of certain chemicals released in the beginning of exercise. But there is much more research showing the benefits of exercise, which is why experts say it is so important to try it. If you do get increased pain or migraine with exercise, talk with your provider.

Food triggers such as red wine or chocolate used to be a big no-no for folks with migraine, but things have changed. There actually is not a lot of scientific evidence for specific foods being consistent triggers for most people, and there are some reasons something might seem like a trigger when it isn’t. 

“The earliest sign of a migraine may be food cravings, and it might be specific food cravings,” Monteith says. “Chocolate is a great example of that, where people crave chocolate, they eat the chocolate, and they think it caused the migraine, but the craving actually was a sign that migraine was going to happen no matter what.”

That said, if you notice something consistently brings on migraine, you should talk to your provider about it. “If a food trigger is very obvious, very consistent, there’s a biological basis for it; it makes sense to try and avoid it, especially if it’s on the more unhealthy side of things. For instance, processed meats contain nitrates, and we know that they can be triggers for people with migraine,” Monteith says.

But, the field has moved away from harsh and hard-to-follow elimination diets, which can deprive you of foods that are good for you. Instead, the focus is on consistency.

  • Eat consistently throughout the day without skipping meals (especially breakfast).
  • Have breakfast within 30-60 minutes of waking up.
  • Stay hydrated. The general recommendation is to have eight 8-ounce glasses of water a day, but an easy way to tell is to periodically take a look at your urine. If it’s pale yellow and clear, you’re hydrated. 
  • Limit caffeine. The general recommendation is staying below 200 mg a day (one to two cups of brewed coffee, three to four cans of cola, two energy drinks, or 3-10 cups of tea, depending on the type). It’s also a good idea to talk with your provider about how much caffeine you drink and how it seems to affect you.

You don’t have to keep an exhaustive record of your daily life, but a migraine diary can be very helpful for you and your provider. “We’re kind of moving away from excessive documentation,” Monteith says. “We know it’s very burdensome to our patients. But there are free apps that are available that are very user-friendly.”

“At a minimum, you want to be able to document the number of migraine days you have per month,” Monteith says. You can then rate the pain on a 0-10 scale, put “mild, moderate, or severe,” or use a stoplight scale: green for a headache day that wasn’t difficult, yellow for one that made it hard to do your usual activities, and red for any day when you had to take to your bed. 

Monteith also recommends adding in symptoms such as vomiting or severe nausea, any treatments you used and whether or how much they helped, and, for people who menstruate, where you are in your cycle.

When you have episodic migraine, it’s only natural to be on the lookout for the early signs, and that kind of vigilance can cause stress and anxiety. At the same time, stress and anxiety — features of almost all of our lives — can be migraine triggers, which seems so unfair. But there are effective ways to lower or manage your stress and anxiety. 

Start with where you can cut back or say no. Monteith asks her patients to reflect on where their stress is coming from and see it as an opportunity to get in touch with their boundaries and practice expressing them.

She also recommends breaking tasks down into manageable chunks and adding in some coping skills such as meditation, or, her favorite, deep breathing. “Those can be things that you do two minutes at a time or in between your big meetings throughout the day.”

Experiment with stress relief approaches to find one that works for you:

  • Mindfulness can be done in short periods of time whenever you can fit it in (you can even practice it in the shower by just focusing on each step of getting clean instead of running through your to-do list for the day), and there are lots of good apps to help you get started. If migraine is really affecting your life, there is strong scientific evidence that something called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction can improve chronic pain, including headache. The eight-week course is often taught at hospitals or community centers and can be a great way to establish a lasting mindfulness practice.
  • Relaxation techniques, such as breathing exercises, progressive muscle relaxation, or guided imagery, may help you keep calm. 
  • Biofeedback, usually done with a trained practitioner, helps you focus on your body’s sensations and learn to actually slow down things such as your heart rate or relax muscles to minimize your body’s stress response.
  • Yoga, particularly classes focused on breathing, stretching or restorative poses, can also help. 

If none of these approaches are working for you and stress is extremely overwhelming, “it’s really helpful to see a psychologist — someone that can help teach you cognitive behavioral therapy,” Monteith says. This may help you understand how behaviors and thoughts are affecting your well-being and find ways to change them.

“While migraine is disabling,” acknowledges Monteith, “there are opportunities for empowerment in sorting out some of these issues. It can actually make you a more intuitive person, more aware of your own stressors, your own boundaries, the things that you want to achieve, as well as your limitations, and how to reduce stress in your life.”

“Almost all migraine patients will benefit at least somewhat from SEEDS interventions. For some, SEEDS can significantly decrease attack frequency and severity,” Thaler says. But for most patients, SEEDS alone can’t effectively manage migraine and “is better thought of as simply another tool in our toolbox to help manage this disease.”

You won’t see the benefits of SEEDS overnight. It can take many weeks to a couple of months before you notice a difference in your symptoms, Thaler says. “The more consistent you are, the greater and more lasting the effect. But that doesn’t mean that you lose all benefit if you need to pull an all-nighter or if you skip a week or two of exercise.”

“It is so important to understand that you do not need to be perfect nor follow every single SEEDS guideline to a T in order to see benefit,” Thaler reassures. “Many of my patients lead busy, complicated lives, and despite their best intentions, it is not always possible — in fact, rarely possible — to maintain a regular sleep schedule, exercise consistently, eat well-balanced meals, keep a careful headache diary, and manage stress with yoga, meditation, or other behavioral strategies.”

She tells her patients that finding small ways to make changes can still make a big impact.