Migraines are close to invisible on paper. They come and go, they rarely happen in a doctor's office, and by the time an exam comes around most people can only guess how many they had last spring. A dated log fixes that. This guide explains what the VA's rating criteria and its headaches exam form actually ask about, so you know what a useful log records, and it ends with a blank log you can print tonight. It explains how the system works; it does not tell you what to claim. That conversation belongs with a free accredited VSO.
Why a log matters for migraines
Most conditions leave a trail on their own: an MRI, a hearing test, a surgery. Migraines mostly don't. The facts that matter are how often the attacks come, how long they last, and what they stop you from doing, and those live in your memory unless you write them down. Memory is a poor witness for this. It blurs frequency, rounds everything to "a lot," and forgets the details that make a description believable.
A log written at the time of each attack turns "I get them pretty often" into dated entries anyone can count. The general case for keeping a symptom journal is in how to keep a symptom journal; this guide is the migraine-specific version.
What the VA's criteria look at
The VA rates migraines under 38 CFR 4.124a, Diagnostic Code 8100. You can read the exact wording and the percentages at each level in the regulation itself. Without restating the table, the criteria are built from a small set of ideas:
- Frequency, averaged over time.The levels are described by how often attacks happen on average "over last several months," not in a single bad week.
- Whether attacks are prostrating.Only attacks that meet the VA's meaning of prostrating (next section) count toward the frequency levels.
- At the top level, how prolonged the attacks are and their effect on work, in the regulation's words "productive of severe economic inadaptability."
Every one of those is something a log can document and memory usually can't.
What "prostrating" means to the VA
"Prostrating" carries the weight in these criteria, so the VA's own definition is worth knowing exactly. The public headaches Disability Benefits Questionnaire, the form an examiner completes, defines it as "causing extreme exhaustion, powerlessness, debilitation or incapacitation with substantial inability to engage in ordinary activities."
In plain terms, it describes what an attack did to your day: you had to stop, lie down, leave work, cancel plans, or couldn't function until it passed. That is why a useful log records what each attack stopped you from doing, not just that your head hurt.
What to record for each attack
The headaches exam form asks the examiner about specific things. A log that records the same things, attack by attack, gives the examiner and your VSO real numbers to work from:
- Date and start time. Frequency is counted from dates, so every attack gets its own entry.
- How long it lasted. The form sorts typical duration into less than a day, 1 to 2 days, or more than 2 days.
- How bad it was, on a steady 1 to 10 scale you use the same way every time.
- Whether you had to stop what you were doing, and what that looked like: lay down in a dark room, left work early, missed a shift.
- Other symptoms. The form lists nausea, vomiting, sensitivity to light, sensitivity to sound, changes in vision, and sensory changes like pins and needles.
- What it kept you from doing, especially work. The form has a whole section on how the condition affects the ability to work.
- Medication taken and whether it helped.
Record what happened, in your own words, at the time. A log is a record of facts, not a place to argue your case, and it is more believable for it.
A blank log you can print
Print this page and use the table below, or copy the columns into a notebook. One row per attack.
| Date | Start time | How long | Severity 1-10 | Had to stop? What happened | Other symptoms | What it kept you from doing | Medication |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Habits that make a log credible
- Write it the same day. An entry made during or right after an attack carries its own date. A month of entries written in one sitting reads like what it is.
- Log the mild ones too. A log with only the worst days looks selective. A complete record, good weeks included, is more believable and shows the real pattern.
- Be specific."Left work at 11:40, lay down in a dark room until 6pm, threw up twice" says more than "bad migraine."
- Never go back and edit old entries to sound worse. If you need to add something later, add it as a dated note.
- Keep it going for months. The criteria talk about averages over several months, so a steady log over time matters more than any single entry.
Using the log
Bring the log to your VSO. They can advise on whether and how to submit it with a claim; a written account like this is commonly filed as a personal statement, and the VA explains what counts as evidence on its evidence page. Bring a copy to a C&P examtoo, so you can answer the examiner's questions with numbers instead of guesses. Keep the original.
The digital version
MusterVault's symptom journal has these fields built in: date, severity, a description, the impact on your day, and how long it lasted. It stamps each entry with the moment you wrote it, marks any later edit with its own timestamp, and exports the whole log as a dated PDF for your VSO. Everything stays encrypted on your own computer. Paper works too. What matters is that the log exists, starts now, and keeps going.