Personal data and health decisions

A few weeks ago I went to the doctor. Nothing urgent. It had been five years since I had a physical and one year since I came in for headaches and shoulder pain. I started in at the chiropractor in winter and that resolved the shoulder issue. However, as the new year started, the headaches were persistent and that’s not normal for me.

I know all the usual triggers for headaches, but couldn’t tell by passive observation whether or not I was experiencing them. I also couldn’t tell if my treatment was working. So I did what any normal scientist would do, I starrted tracking it.

The parameters I was most interested in were:

• Whether the medication was effective
• If the medication was effective only in some circumstances
• If there was a trend with other cofactors
• Where were the headaches occurring on my head
• basic info like duration, intensity and number of days between headaches

I tracked this info for 109 days in the spring using Google forms. I don’t have seasonal allergies, so I didn’t track pollen and allergens. I also didn’t look at the data until several months after I collected it. Partly due to time constraints, partly due to avoiding bias.

What I found was interesting. First, the data required more processing than I originally thought to get it into a form that I could work with. I would log the times that I was experiencing headaches, but it was sometimes hard to tell two headaches from one long headache. I set an somewhat arbitrary cut off at 24 hours. If it was less that that, the I considered it continuous.

Second, when I got to my physical I wasn’t sure how she was going to receive this information. Having data turned out to be very helpful. I was experiencing headaches 29% of the time. They are mostly on the top of my head and 50% of the time in my sinus area (without congestion). The most frequent co-factor was sleep issues, either deprivation or off schedule. This was followed by menstruation, weather changes, and stress.

Third, I discovered that I wasn’t that good at taking my medication. I had a hard time deciding if I should take it when I was experiencing pressure as opposed to pain. Most often, if the episode was categorized at 1 (mild irritation), then I wouldn’t take it. Even when the category went to 2, I wasn’t much better.

The end result of all of this data was that I was better able to answer the doctors questions. I felt solid about what I was reporting because I had numbers as opposed to relying on memory. I also knew where I needed improvement on my overall habits to make this problem change.

We ended up changing my headaches from tension to migraines without aura. She gave me a stronger medication to try. And, we discussed a better approach to taking the mediation since I’m not taking them well enough to break the headache cycle. On my own, I’m also quitting my gym membership. I need to get up early in the morning to make that happen. I can work out at home and I have a membership at the part district. Until I get the headaches under control, managing sleep is more important. I also will pursue stress management through therapy.

The process of keeping my own data helped me participate in my own healthcare decisions, and in a way that was more directly relevant than I expected.