MigraineMe's risk score is built on a simple picture that migraine specialists often use: the bucket, sometimes called the threshold theory. Once you have this picture in your head, the whole app makes more sense.
The bucket
Imagine you carry a bucket. Every trigger pours a little water in:
- A bad night of sleep, a splash.
- A skipped meal, a splash.
- A pressure drop in the weather, a splash.
- Stress, hormones, bright light, red wine, each their own splash.
Nothing happens while the water stays below the rim. But when the bucket overflows, an attack starts. That is your threshold.
This explains something confusing that almost everyone with migraine notices: the same trigger does not always cause an attack. Chocolate on a calm, well-slept day might be fine. The same chocolate after a stressful week on poor sleep tips the bucket over. The trigger did not change. How full your bucket was did.
Water drains out again
The bucket also empties over time. A trigger from this morning pushes your risk hard; the same trigger from five days ago barely counts any more. In MigraineMe this is called the decay curve: each logged trigger fades day by day until it stops counting at all.
How the app uses this
Your risk score is the water level in your bucket, calculated from the triggers and early warning signs you have logged over the last week, each one weighted by how strong it is for you and how recent it is. The coloured level word under the number shows which threshold you have crossed:
- Green (Low): plenty of room in the bucket.
- Amber (Mild): triggers are piling up. A good day to avoid adding new ones.
- Red (High): the bucket is close to the rim. Be gentle with yourself and keep your medicine nearby.
You can see and adjust all of this yourself under Risk Model in the Settings drawer (the gear icon). With Premium or during your trial, the weekly calibration also suggests changes to your thresholds and decay curves based on which days actually came before your attacks.
Why this is good news
The bucket picture turns migraine from something random into something you can influence. You cannot stop the weather or your hormones, but on a day when the bucket is already half full, you can choose to protect your sleep, eat on time and skip the extra glass of wine. Knowledge of the water level is what buys you that choice.
