Afternoon naps and vanilla scent seem to

Understood — you're not asking to quit the good parts, you're asking how to find *your* two levers without flattening your life. Here's a map you can run tonight.

First, one thing that changes the whole method: a "trigger" you noticed after the fact is often a *warning sign* of the attack already starting, not the cause. People get light- and smell-sensitive during the prodrome stage (hours to a day or two before the head pain), and yawning or craving food is part of the same early phase. If afternoon naps and vanilla both sit near that window, they may be markers, not culprits. The Migraine Trust's threshold theory says it's usually several small things at once, not one thing. So the goal this week is timing, not elimination.

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1) What you tried vs. a better lever

Your app, four fields minimum: nap start + length · scent exposure start (clock time) · first symptom + clock time · what you'd have been doing anyway. Add wake time, mealtimes, caffeine, and the "let-down" note.

2) Tonight and this weekend — concrete moves

Tonight (under 25 min, all with what's in the house):

1. Add the four fields above to your app so tomorrow morning takes 2 minutes to fill in. That's it — that's the whole task tonight.
2. Set one anchor: same wake time Monday–Sunday, including baking weekend. No weekend lie-in. Sleep *change* — in either direction — is a commonly reported migraine trigger, and weekend catch-up sleep is the classic school-week shape.
3. If you nap: move it earlier and shorter — before 15:00, ~20 minutes, phone out of reach. If the nap is what you'd genuinely do to keep the evening functioning, take it and log it; don't fight it, just date it.
4. Last caffeine cup relative to planned sleep, not to "evening" — it still works ~8 hours. No sudden caffeine cut; gradual only, since stopping abruptly can itself trigger an attack.
5. Eaten? Meals at regular times, fluids through the day. Skipping meals and dehydration are the two lowest-effort levers there are.

Baking weekend, since vanilla is the thing you named:

• Air the house *before* you start, windows cracked and door open while baking; lid on the vanilla when the recipe allows.
• The detergent you already switched to — keep using it, and skip scented candles, fabric softener, and plug-in fresheners that day. This is a household lever you already paid for.
• Do not schedule the vanilla bake and a disrupted sleep schedule in the same 48 hours. Weekend baking for a caregiver is a classic "let-down" setup: stress builds all week, then drops at once. Attacks often land the day *after* the relax, not during it. Protect the wake time and the meal times that day; the smell exposure is one variable, the schedule collapse is a second, and you don't want both in one experiment.
• Screenshot line: one test day, wake time held, scent logged. That's it.

Communication script for whoever's in the house:
> "I'm running a two-week migraine experiment, not a detox. I still want to bake Saturday — I just need the window cracked and the scented laundry stuff skipped that day. If I go quiet for an hour, that's the diary, not a fight. Nothing changes about my pills."

3) Red flags — when to stop the DIY

Call your local emergency number now (I don't have your location, so I won't guess digits — the 111/999-type numbers are country-specific, check your local one):

• A headache that comes on suddenly and is extremely painful
• Problems speaking or remembering
• Loss of vision, blurred or double vision
• Feeling drowsy or confused
• A seizure
• One-sided arm or leg or face weakness or inability to move
• Recent head injury, or very high fever with meningitis symptoms

Urgent — same day, ask for an urgent appointment or urgent line:

• An attack lasting longer than 72 hours
• Aura longer than 1 hour at a time
• Pregnant or just had a baby

Book a routine appointment (not urgent) if:

• Attacks are severe, worsening, or lasting longer than usual
• More than once a week
• You're finding them hard to control
• They cluster before or during your period — those tend to run longer and more severe, and there are prevention options a clinician decides

What I don't do here: no diagnosis, no medication changes, no dose advice for you or anyone in the house, and nothing about what's off a device or app readout. Whether an attack needs anything beyond lifestyle is the prescriber's call.

What success looks like in 24 hours — not a cure

• Tomorrow morning: one diary row with three timestamps on it (nap, scent, first symptom). That's the win.
• By the weekend: you can say for *one* of the two triggers, "trigger or warning sign?" — because you have clock times.
• Saturday: you bake, the window is open, your wake time held, and you did not give up dessert.

Right now I'd treat this as a two-week recording fortnight, and if attacks are already coming more than once a week or getting worse, that's the branch where the appointment matters more than the diary.

Sources:

• Migraine Trust, *Migraine attack triggers* — trigger vs. prodrome/warning signs, threshold theory, and what a migraine diary records: https://migrainetrust.org/live-with-migraine/self-management/common-triggers/ (accessed 2026-10-06)
• NHS, *Migraine* — self-help measures, when to see a GP, urgent advice, and 999-level red flags: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/migraine/ (page reviewed 10 March 2026, accessed 2026-10-06)
• Sleep-side anchors (fixed wake time, nap before 15:00 if it steals night sleep, caffeine still working ~8 hours): MedlinePlus Healthy Sleep https://medlineplus.gov/healthysleep.html · NHLBI sleep deprivation https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/sleep-deprivation/healthy-sleep-habits · NHS insomnia https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/insomnia/ (accessed 2026-09-02, via the sleep-coaching pack)

Hand off: the diary and the timing are yours to run; the diagnosis, any prevention plan, and every medication question belong to a clinician — and the emergency thresholds above are the point where DIY stops and that clinician (or emergency care) decides.