Migraine hangover (postdrome): how long does it last?
A migraine hangover usually ends within a day: 93% did in a diary study. When it lasts longer, how it differs from the prodrome, and how to record it.
The short answer
A migraine hangover, or postdrome, is the tired, foggy spell that can follow the head pain of a migraine attack. ICHD-3, the headache classification, describes it as lasting up to 48 hours after the pain has gone. In a 2016 electronic diary study of 97 people, funded by GlaxoSmithKline, they felt back to normal within 6 hours after 54% of the attacks that had one, and within 24 hours after 93%.
A day or more is not unusual: in a large, industry-funded survey of people with frequent migraine, 27% said theirs lasted longer than 24 hours. Weeks is outside the definition, and worth raising with a GP. In your diary, end the attack when the pain ends, and note when you felt back to normal.
What is a migraine hangover?
A migraine hangover is an everyday name for the postdrome, the phase after the head pain of a migraine attack has gone. The International Classification of Headache Disorders (ICHD-3) defines the postdrome as a phase of symptoms that can last up to 48 hours after the pain resolves, in migraine with or without aura. It names tiredness, a raised or low mood and difficulty thinking among the common symptoms.
The name is informal. A 2024 Danish study notes that the postdromal phase is “often referred to as the ‘migraine hangover’”, and in a 2006 US clinic study, 10.7% of the people with a postdrome described it in their own words as feeling hungover. The American Migraine Foundation uses the name; ICHD-3 and the NHS do not.
The NHS page on migraine says: “Migraine attacks usually last between 4 hours and 3 days, with early symptoms (such as feeling very tired) starting hours or up to 2 days before the head pain starts and finishing after the headache stops.” (Information from the NHS website, as at 201026: Migraine.)
What a migraine hangover feels like
In both studies below, tiredness was the most common after-effect, followed by difficulty concentrating. They counted symptoms in different ways: the 2016 diary study by the share of postdromes, and a 2024 Danish interview study by the share of people, using a checklist.
| Symptom | 2016 diaries, share of postdromes | 2024 interviews, share of 631 people |
|---|---|---|
| Tiredness | 88% | 67.5% |
| Difficulty concentrating | 56% | 33.8% |
| Stiff or painful neck | 42% | 22.5% |
| Light sensitivity | 36% | 21.7% |
| Thirst | 32% | 30.4% |
| Noise sensitivity | 32% | 19.5% |
| Irritability | 29% | 19.5% |
| Yawning | 14% | 12.0% |
The 97 people in the 2016 study were chosen because they had symptoms besides the headache, so its shares describe their attacks, not everyone’s. In a small 2024 study of 16 people, a working-memory test was 8.9% slower on the day after the headache than at baseline.
The name describes how it feels; it is not about alcohol. For a headache after drinking, our post on alcohol explains a headache the morning after drinking.
How long does a migraine hangover last?
In the studies that measured it, most migraine hangovers were over within a day, and ICHD-3 puts the limit at 48 hours. The studies asked in different ways, so their numbers are not directly comparable.
| Source and participants | What it found |
|---|---|
| ICHD-3, 2018: the International Headache Society’s classification | Defines the postdrome as lasting up to 48 hours after the pain resolves. This is a definition, not a measurement. |
| Giffin et al., 2016: 97 people from 4 headache centres, with an electronic diary for 3 months: 773 attacks with a postdrome | Back to normal within 6 hours after 54% of the attacks, within 12 hours after 79% and within 24 hours after 93%. 7% lasted more than 24 hours and 1% more than 48. GlaxoSmithKline funded the study, which its authors call exploratory. |
| Kelman, 2006: 827 people at a US headache clinic, asked at their first visit | 68% had a postdrome. For 56% of them it lasted up to 12 hours and for 88% up to 24 hours; 12% said longer. The average was 25.2 hours, pulled up by a few very long ones. |
| Blau, 1991: 40 people with migraine, who filled in a questionnaire the day after an attack | On average 6 symptoms, lasting 18 hours on average and usually the whole of the next day. Only the study’s summary is freely available. |
| Martelletti et al., 2018: an online survey of 11,266 people in 31 countries with at least 4 migraine days a month, most of whom had tried preventive medicine | 30% said their postdrome lasted under 4 hours, 40% 4 to 24 hours and 27% more than 24 hours; 3% had none. Novartis sponsored the survey. |
The 25.2-hour average from the 2006 clinic study is higher than the typical case, because a few very long postdromes pull it up: in the same study, 88% were over within a day. An average like this is worth reading next to the spread.
Memory and diaries can give different pictures. Before the 2016 diary began, 82 of the 97 people said they had after-effects, and 49% of them expected these to last at least a day. In the diaries, 7% of the attacks with a postdrome lasted more than 24 hours. One figure counts people and the other counts attacks, so they are not the same measure, but the gap is one reason to write it down at the time.
Can it last for days or weeks?
More than a day is not unusual, but weeks is outside how researchers define the postdrome. Postdromes longer than 24 hours made up 7% of the attacks in the 2016 diaries, 12% of the people in the 2006 clinic study and 27% of the people in the 2018 survey of frequent migraine. In the 2018 survey, the share was 31% among people for whom at least 2 preventive treatments had failed, and 20% among those for whom none had.
None of these studies measured a postdrome lasting weeks. ICHD-3’s limit is 48 hours, and in the 2016 diaries 1% of postdromes went past it. When attacks come close together, the phases are hard to tell apart: a 2025 Danish study of 632 people found that most symptoms reported before attacks were also reported after them.
A headache that is still going after 72 hours is a different question: see how to time a migraine attack and the help section below. Tiredness or fog that lasts for weeks is worth talking to a GP about, because a migraine diary cannot tell its causes apart. Feeling drowsy or confused is different: see the list for calling 999 in the help section below.
Do most people get a migraine hangover?
Most people with migraine report after-effects, but the often-quoted figure of about 80% rests on weak data. A 2023 review of 12 studies, with 13,312 participants, found a pooled estimate of 86% across 4 clinic studies and 97% in one large online survey. Its authors judged these figures unreliable: no study used the ICHD-3 definition, and all had a high risk of bias.
How you ask changes the answer. In a 2024 study of 631 people at a Danish headache centre, 66.7% named at least one postdromal symptom when asked openly, and 80.7% when shown a list of 16 symptoms. Tiredness rose from 50.2% to 67.5%. Most of these people had frequent or chronic migraine.
Not every attack has one. In the 2016 diaries, 773 of 873 attacks (89%) were followed by a postdrome. In the 2006 clinic study, 39% of the people with a postdrome had it after most of their attacks, and 29% after only a few.
Postdrome vs prodrome
The prodrome comes before the head pain and the postdrome after it, and the two can feel alike. ICHD-3 gives both phases the same limit, up to 48 hours, and names tiredness and mood changes in both.
| Question | Prodrome | Postdrome |
|---|---|---|
| When | Before the pain, or before the aura in migraine with aura | After the pain has gone |
| How long | Up to 48 hours | Up to 48 hours |
| Common symptoms | Tiredness, a raised or low mood, unusual hunger, cravings for certain foods | Tiredness, a raised or low mood, difficulty thinking |
| What to write down | When you noticed the first sign | When you felt back to normal |
Because the symptoms overlap, the timing is what tells the two phases apart. Our post on chocolate explains the prodrome, the build-up before the pain, and why a craving there can look like a trigger.
Check your own diary
Your diary can show how long your after-effects last, as long as the attack ends when the pain does. Here is a fictional diary with 4 attacks, each with its head pain and the time the person felt back to normal.
| Attack | Head pain | After-effects until back to normal |
|---|---|---|
| A, Tuesday | 07:30–14:00, 6.5 hours | 18 hours, to 08:00 on Wednesday: tired, foggy |
| B, Saturday | 16:00–23:00, 7 hours | 11 hours, to 10:00 on Sunday: tired, stiff neck |
| C, Thursday | 09:00–13:00, 4 hours | 4 hours, to 17:00 on Thursday: tired |
| D, Monday | 05:00–19:00, 14 hours | 38 hours, to 09:00 on Wednesday: tired, foggy, low mood |
| Total | 31.5 hours | 71 hours |
In this fictional diary, 3 of the 4 after-effects were over within 24 hours. Attack D’s lasted 38 hours: longer than a day, but inside the 48 hours of the definition. Together, the after-effects lasted 71 hours, against 31.5 hours of head pain.
Now suppose each attack had been ended only when the person felt back to normal. The average attack would grow from just under 8 hours to more than 25 hours, and the dates the attacks touched would double from 4 to 8. That matters when headache days are counted by date, and it makes the 72-hour limits in the help section hard to apply. With 4 attacks, this proves nothing, but it shows why the end time matters.
- End the attack when the head pain stops. The 2016 study counted the postdrome from the end of troublesome headache, and ICHD-3 times an attack from the start to the end of the headache. ICHD-3 does not count a mild headache without other symptoms that lingers afterwards, so note it rather than extending the attack. For sleep or pain that comes back, see how to time a migraine attack.
- Write down when you felt back to normal, and which after-effects you had.
- Note whether the headache ended by itself or after medicine. A 2023 review suggests recording this, because a headache cut short by treatment can make other symptoms look like a postdrome.
- Use your own words before a list. In the 2024 study, a checklist raised the share reporting after-effects from 67% to 81%. A few words written the same day show what you noticed.
- Compare across attacks. If your after-effects are getting longer, take the entries to your next appointment.
What Migraine Tracker records
Migraine Tracker for iPhone and Apple Watch has no separate postdrome field, but it keeps symptoms and notes with each attack, so the after-effects can stay with the attack they followed.
- Ending the attack. On the Active Attack screen, Stop Attack asks “How did it end?”: Sleep, Meds Helped, Passed Naturally, Still in Pain or Other, or Skip. The end time is the moment you tap. You can correct it later in Edit Attack, as the guide to timing an attack shows.
- Symptoms. The 17 built-in symptoms include Fatigue, Brain Fog, Neck Stiffness, Dizziness, Light Sensitivity and Sound Sensitivity. They are saved as one list for the attack, without times, so the list does not show which came after the pain. With Premium, you can add your own symptom.
- Notes. When you edit an attack or add a past one, you can write a note, for example “tired and foggy until 08:00 the next day”. The live attack screen has no notes field.
- Average duration. In Reports, Avg Duration averages finished attacks from start to end, so ending attacks at “back to normal” would make it longer, as in the example above. The last 7 days are free; 30 and 90 days need Premium.
- Exports. With Premium, the CSV and JSON exports include each attack’s symptoms, end reason and notes. The PDF report, also Premium, lists your most frequent symptoms but not notes.
The guide to what to record covers the other details worth keeping with each attack.
When to talk to someone
- The NHS says to see a GP if “your migraine attacks are severe or getting worse, or lasting longer than usual”, if “you have migraine attacks more than once a week” or if “you’re finding it difficult to control your migraine”.
- After-effects that last for weeks are worth raising with a GP too, because a diary cannot tell their causes apart.
- The NHS says to “ask for an urgent GP appointment or get help from NHS 111” if you have a migraine attack and “it’s lasted longer than 72 hours”, “aura symptoms last longer than 1 hour at a time” or “you’re pregnant or just had a baby”. Outside the UK, contact your local urgent care service.
- The NHS says to call 999 if you “have a headache that came on suddenly and is extremely painful”, “have problems speaking or remembering things”, “lose your vision, or have blurred or double vision”, “feel drowsy or confused”, “have a seizure or fit”, “have a very high temperature and symptoms of meningitis”, “cannot move or have weakness in the arms or legs on 1 side of your body, or 1 side of your face” or “have recently had a head injury”. In the US, call 911. Elsewhere, call your local emergency number.
Information from the NHS website, as at 201026: Migraine.
Sources
- Giffin et al. The migraine postdrome: an electronic diary study. Neurology, 2016
- Kelman. The postdrome of the acute migraine attack. Cephalalgia, 2006
- Blau. Migraine postdromes: symptoms after attacks. Cephalalgia, 1991
- Martelletti et al. My Migraine Voice survey: a global study of disease burden among individuals with migraine for whom preventive treatments have failed. The Journal of Headache and Pain, 2018
- Christensen et al. What proportion of people with migraine report postdromal symptoms? A systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies. Cephalalgia, 2023
- Thuraiaiyah et al. Postdromal symptoms in migraine: a REFORM study. The Journal of Headache and Pain, 2024
- Thuraiaiyah et al. Overlap between perceived triggers, premonitory symptoms and symptom persistence across migraine phases: a REFORM study. Cephalalgia, 2025
- Ray et al. Cognitive assessment during the phases of a spontaneous migraine: a prospective cohort study. Neurological Sciences, 2024
- International Headache Society, ICHD-3: Definition of terms (prodrome, postdrome and duration of attack)
- American Migraine Foundation: Migraine Hangover – What is Postdrome?
- NHS: Migraine, reviewed 10 March 2026
Sources checked on 20 October 2026. The diary example uses fictional data.
App details checked against Migraine Tracker 1.1.0 on 20 October 2026. The diary example uses fictional data. This post explains research and record keeping, not medical advice. The sources explain general principles and do not endorse Migraine Tracker.