Migraine Headache:

The Relationship Between Barometric Pressure, Humidity, and Your Headaches

When barometric pressure drops, it doesn’t just bring bad weather—it causes blood vessels to dilate (expand), which can trigger a throbbing migraine.

1. Throbbing Pain (Migraine)

  • Characteristics: A throbbing or pulsating pain; hurts worse when shaking your head or taking a warm bath. Often triggered by lack of sleep or drinking too much alcohol. It can start right when you wake up, or hit you suddenly around noon. Severe headaches frequently occur on rainy days.

  • The Mechanism of Barometric Pressure: Barometric pressure is the invisible force of air pressing down on our bodies and the earth from the outside. When a low-pressure system (which brings rain) approaches, this external pressure weakens, allowing blood vessels to expand and press against nearby nerves.

  • Relief Strategy: For migraines, constricting the expanded blood vessels will ease the pain. Cool down the affected area (apply a cold compress).

2. Dull, Heavy, or Tight Pain (Tension Headache)

  • Characteristics: A dull, heavy, or constricting pain (like a tight band around the head); pain actually decreases during a warm bath. Often accompanied by shoulder and neck stiffness or a lack of exercise. People with this type can usually tell rain is coming even before it starts to fall.

  • The Mechanism of Humidity: High humidity is the culprit here. When humidity rises above 75%, sweat cannot evaporate easily, causing heat to become trapped inside the body. This disrupts your body’s temperature regulation and throws off the autonomic nervous system, leading to a tension-type headache.

  • Relief Strategy: Warming the area improves blood flow to the muscles, releases tightness, and soothes the headache. Additionally, there is a pressure-sensing “sensor” deep inside the inner ear. Massaging and rolling your ears can recalibrate this faulty sensor, balance your autonomic nervous system, and help prevent or alleviate weather-related headaches.

The 4-Step Ear Massage Technique:

  1. Pinch your ears and gently pull them Upward, Downward, and Outward (sideways) for 5 seconds each.

  2. While pulling your ears gently, roll them backward 5 times.

  3. Fold your ears over (so the top and bottom touch) and hold for 5 seconds.

  4. Finally, cover your entire ears with your hands and move them in a circular, backward motion 5 times.

Hidden Hotspots Check: What to Look for Inside Your Home

Inhaling mold spores that have grown inside your house can cause mold to multiply inside your lungs. Headaches and flu-like symptoms are the two major ailments that emerge during consecutive rainy days.

Hotspot 1: The Air Conditioner

  • The Problem: When the AC cools the indoor air, condensation forms inside the unit. Because it also sucks in dust (which acts as food for mold), the inside of an air conditioner becomes a hot, humid, and perfect breeding ground for mold. Turning on the AC scatters these mold spores into the room. Inhaling them causes an unstoppable, flu-like cough.

  • The Culprit: Trichosporon (a type of fungus/mold).

  • Solution: When you leave the house, turn the AC setting to “Fan Only”. This simply circulates the air in and out, drying up the internal moisture.

    • Rule of thumb: Use “Cool” (冷房) or “Dehumidify” (除湿) while you are home, and switch to “Fan Only” when you go out. Don’t forget to clean or replace the filters regularly.

Hotspot 2: The Bathroom

  • The Problem: Look closely at the showerhead—is there limescale or water buildup?

  • The Culprit: Aspergillus (a mold that lurks in wet environments). It causes a sore throat and severe coughing do not stop.

  • Solution: Spray the bathroom walls with hot water at 50°C first, and then rinse them down with cold water. This type of mold is completely destroyed at 50°C.

Food and Migraine Connection:

#1. Gluten and Dairy Food Sensitivity – This is the Gut and Brain Axis connection. What is happening in the gut is triggering your migraine to occur via the vagus and enteric nervous system (second brain). Why dairy? At the molecular level, these two are almost identical long amino acid peptides. This is the major problem for my migraine headache attacks I have had for 25 years until I discovered the brain-gut connection. If you have SNPs called HLA and HLA DQ2 genes, we are not talking about Celiac Disease (autoimmune problem) but food sensitivities to gluten and dairy. You can order 23&me saliva genetic testing and plug the raw txt file into TrueReport (Nutrigenomics Report) $29- to get the long genetic report contains 250 SNP’s. I consult with my patients based on this report not only migraine headaches but many other findings. This is the eye-opener report for many of my patients in order to prevent diseases from occurs in the future.

#2. Hypersensitivity – mostly light (photophobia) and smell. I highly recommend ordering two pairs of glasses made by TheraSpecs. One for indoor used when you are at the front of the computer and the phone and other pairs for outside use include driving. This eyewear reduces migraine frequency, relieves photophobia and protects from fluorescent and blue light triggers. These are articles from PubMed (NIH)

#3. Mold, Heavy Metal, and Environmental Toxicity – If my patients do not see any or very little progress with dietary changes like GF/DF, this is the next step for me to drill down my investigation. These are the tests out of pocket but it is worth the penny if we are able to narrow down the root cause “what’s really triggering it?”. This ND’s story is very compelling. Her triggers were not from the diet, but environmental toxins and her genetic mutation. Please read her article HERE is you are interested in.

Cluster Headache – This is the worst headache imaginable. Often they have pre-attack symptoms like aura and people has cluster headache are also dealing with various sensitivities includes light sensitivity I posted above as well as severe neck stiffness and some have severe nausea and vomiting. I highly recommend people who have cluster headache to get a pair of theraspecs eyeglasses for outdoor and indoor when you are at the front of computer or with iPhone, cut down gluten & dairy, sleep extra hour, apply a drop of peppermint oil on the area pounding (Pranarom is my favorite essential oil company from France. You can purchase from rosemarysgarden.com). This is TheraSpecs Cluster Headache article.

Vertigo (things around you are spinning)

#1. Vestibular Migraine Headache – I have many patients, mostly women between 30-50, came to see me with this diagnosis with the symptoms of vertigo or dizziness and disequilibrium symptoms might be caused by this type of migraine or some people are told they have Meniere’s disease which is an autoimmune disease problem with the inner ear. Some people have migraine headaches with aura. I found this article very interesting. Please check it out.

#2. Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo (BPPV) – often caused by an ear infection and patients are often told it will go away in a few weeks by itself and chances are you may go to see a physical therapist 2 x / week to learn the semont maneuver exercise. What I recommend is to avoid getting high oxalate foods. BPPV happens when tiny crystals of CALCIUM carbonate in your inner ear become clogged and float to other parts to it. Those patients might have had frozen shoulder, gout, or other big joint issues due to calcium carbonate stiffened the tissues around the joint. Please visit my page “Oxalate Toxicity“. Definitely cut down the DAIRY intake and you should not be driving until the dizziness is gone.

#3. PPPD – The cause will be the accumulation of stress comes with the lack of sleep, alcohol consumption, virus attack, sudden hormonal changes in women, a couple of things happens at once so that your body got so overwhelmed. Be careful if you have been experiencing dizziness lasts for more than 3 months or repeats many times. New national disease PPPD that affects 3 million people, 40% of dizziness cases don’t work! Dizziness increases rapidly in June. If it persists or doesn’t get better within 3 months, it may be a new disease, PPPD, Persistent Perceptual Postural-Induced Dizziness, which is the persistent dizziness that doesn’t respond to medicine.

“I’m constantly feeling light-headed and dizzy, and when I go out, my symptoms get so severe that I think there’s an earthquake!” I have been suffering from these symptoms for several months now, but tests at an otorhinolaryngologist and a neurosurgeon have not found anything abnormal, so no treatment is possible.” Originally, it started in June, the start of the rainy season. It is said that the symptoms of dizziness become stronger due to changes in air pressure, but as mentioned at the beginning, there are many people who suffer from dizziness of unknown cause. According to a study by Niigata University, about 40% of patients suffering from chronic dizziness. It is said to correspond to PPPD. It is not a mild dizziness that makes you lightheaded, or a spinning type of dizziness that makes you unable to stand up, but a “PPPD” in which the surrounding scenery spins around you. About 40% of patients who suffer from dizziness experience vertigo. According to a university study in Japan, it is not a severe chronic condition. “I often get dizziness when I ride a train or other vehicle,” PPPD may be suspected by looking at display shelves, cars, buses, vehicles, supermarkets and home improvement centers, or by looking at moving objects. When you move, you may experience a strong sense of unsteadiness. Similarly, symptoms are severe when there is irritation to the body and eyes.

The frustration arrives you are diagnosed as “normal” after seeing ENT doctors and other specialists. There are numbers of vertigo and hearing loss clinics in Japan which test various motions and hearing tests but PPPD patients do pass all tests but the symptoms continues.

Acupuncture treatment or / and herbal medicine can be one of the best treatment method along with physical therapy and bring your circadian rhythm back to your life.

This is the great article about vestibular migraine, POTS (postal orthostatic tachycardia syndrome), and natural strategies may help your migraine headache. Definitely try acupuncture treatment! I have my own protocols and I am sure other practitioners see a lot of migraine/dizziness/vertigo patients.