crunched the numbers on my personal google spreadsheet that i use to track symptoms, medication, and food, and disproved my hypothesis that salt loading was leading to more migraines due to increasing intercranial pressure from volume expansion, and in fact migraines are less likely, slightly, if i have been taking salt pills and therefore more fluid also (taking a salt pill is the only time i "feel" the sensation of thirst). so that's good. BUT, i found a modest correlation with worse SEVERITY of migraines when they DID occur. which is bad.
i guess logically this would suggest that while dehydration is one trigger for a migraine starting, it is not primary trigger, and being more hydrated is preventative, but there may be something fucky going on with my intercranial pressure anyway.
there are over 2200 entries on the sheet and fully 26% of them had some presence of a migraine. which is actually in line with what i would tell a doctor if they asked me "how much of your life do you spend with a migraine", i probably would actually say about 25%, or around twice a week.
it has been interesting, to say the least, to finally get a large volume of data which proves what i have been describing about my syndrome for my entire life, eg, that it doesnt make sense, is not really controllable with diet, and that the majority of episodes of symptoms seem to be basically unmoored from any controllable cause and effect, often because something that treats one symptom ends up worsening a different one
