⚡ Migraine & Recurrent Headaches
For everyone · 8 markers · $98.51
with code CAMERON $109.45
Migraines, or headaches frequent enough that you've started planning around them.
🩸 Order this exact panel — 10% off
All 8 markers load into your cart in one click. No doctor's visit, drawn at any Quest location in the US, results by email in about two weeks. Code CAMERON applies automatically.
Add all 8 markers — $98.51 → Open the full Bloodwork Vault →Why this panel
No blood test diagnoses migraine — it's a clinical diagnosis. What bloodwork does is find the contributors and mimics: magnesium and iron status, thyroid disease, and the handful of conditions that present as headache and shouldn't be missed.
What this panel can settle, and by what logic
Eight tests, and they settle two things: whether a treatable contributor is present, and whether a magnesium trial is worth running.
- Magnesium, RBC is the right form of the test and the reason it is first on the list. Serum magnesium is defended within a narrow range and stays normal through genuine depletion, so a red-cell measurement is the more informative one Fiorentini 2021, and modern red-cell assays are run by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry Bithi 2024. Magnesium has a real, if modest, prophylaxis evidence base: a systematic review found five qualifying clinical trials, with 600 mg of magnesium dicitrate the best-supported regimen von Luckner 2018.
- Ferritin with the Complete Blood Count (CBC) with Differential answers the iron question that matters in women with headaches. Heavy menstrual bleeding is common, under-reported and the usual route to iron deficiency Comishen 2024, and stores empty long before hemoglobin falls, so the pairing catches a stage either test alone calls normal Cancado 2025.
- TSH (Thyroid-Stimulating Hormone) with Free T4 (Thyroxine) covers a genuine secondary headache. Headache attributed to hypothyroidism is a recognized entity and it resolves with treatment Klubo-Gwiezdzinska 2022.
- The Comprehensive Metabolic Panel (CMP) is doing red-flag work. Calcium, sodium and creatinine on one panel exclude several metabolic causes of recurrent headache that are treated by fixing the chemistry rather than by a triptan.
What it cannot settle, and what would
Migraine is a clinical diagnosis and nothing here makes it. It is defined by attack features and duration — unilateral, pulsating, moderate to severe, worsened by activity, with nausea or light and sound sensitivity, over a required number of attacks. A headache diary settles this. Blood does not.
This panel carries no ESR (Sed Rate) and no hs-CRP (High-Sensitivity C-Reactive Protein), which is a real gap in a page sold partly on excluding dangerous causes. New headache after age 50 with scalp tenderness or jaw claudication is giant cell arteritis until proved otherwise, and the immediate tests are the sedimentation rate and C-reactive protein, neither of which is here. If that is your situation, buy those two markers today rather than this panel.
It cannot detect a secondary headache that needs imaging. Thunderclap onset, fever with neck stiffness, focal neurology, papilledema, a change in an established pattern, headache worsened by posture or Valsalva, headache in pregnancy or with cancer or HIV — these are the red and orange flags, and they lead to a scan and a clinician, not to a blood panel Do 2019.
And it cannot find the two commonest treatable drivers. Medication-overuse headache, from simple analgesics or triptans taken on too many days a month, and dietary or sleep triggers are both identified from a diary. No marker on this list moves with either.
Draw conditions that decide whether the money is wasted
Three conditions, and the first one is specific to red-cell magnesium.
- Insist on an unhemolyzed sample for the Magnesium, RBC. Red cells hold several times the magnesium of plasma, so a traumatic draw contaminates the result, and red-cell trace-element assays depend on clean separation and careful handling to be accurate Bithi 2024. A hemolysis comment on the report invalidates the marker the panel is built around Fiorentini 2021.
- Time the draw to your cycle if you menstruate. Ferritin sits lowest in the days after a period, which is the honest figure for what you run on across a month, and heavy bleeding is the reason to look Comishen 2024.
- 72 hours off biotin, and note any recent attack. Biotin distorts TSH (Thyroid-Stimulating Hormone) and Free T4 (Thyroxine) on streptavidin-based assays Li 2020, and a panel drawn during or just after a severe attack reflects vomiting, dehydration and analgesia rather than your baseline.
How you would know it answered your question, and what each pattern means next
Four results, and every interval below is set by how long a preventive takes to be judged, not by how long a number takes to move.
- Magnesium, RBC low or low-normal: a reasonable trial. Give any magnesium preventive 8 to 12 weeks before deciding, because that is the standard minimum for judging migraine prophylaxis, and count headache days rather than re-measuring the magnesium von Luckner 2018.
- Ferritin under 30 ng/mL: treat, retest at 12 weeks, and — if your periods are heavy — investigate the bleeding rather than repeating the iron indefinitely Comishen 2024 Cancado 2025.
- TSH (Thyroid-Stimulating Hormone) outside range: repeat at 8 to 12 weeks with Thyroid Antibodies (TPO + TgAb) before attributing the headaches to it Klubo-Gwiezdzinska 2022.
- All eight normal, which is the likeliest outcome: keep a headache diary for 8 weeks, count the days a month you take any painkiller, and review the red-flag list once Do 2019. Another panel will return the same eight numbers.
Sources read for these sections
- von Luckner A, Riederer F. Magnesium in Migraine Prophylaxis-Is There an Evidence-Based Rationale? A Systematic Review. Headache 2018 · PMID 29131326
- Do TP, et al. Red and orange flags for secondary headaches in clinical practice: SNNOOP10 list. Neurology 2019 · PMID 30587518
- Fiorentini D, et al. Magnesium: Biochemistry, Nutrition, Detection, and Social Impact of Diseases Linked to Its Deficiency. Nutrients 2021 · PMID 33808247
- Bithi N, et al. Method validation of an inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) assay for the analysis of magnesium, copper and zinc in red blood cells. Journal of Mass Spectrometry and Advances in the Clinical Lab 2024 · PMID 39469428
- Comishen KJ, et al. Etiology and Diagnosis of Heavy Menstrual Bleeding among Adolescent and Adult Patients: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Literature. Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis 2024 · PMID 39617186
- Cancado RD. Defining Global Thresholds for Serum Ferritin: A Challenging Mission in Establishing the Iron Deficiency Diagnosis in This Era of Striving for Health Equity. Diagnostics (Basel) 2025 · PMID 39941219
- Li D, Ferguson A, Cervinski MA, Lynch KL, Kyle PB. AACC Guidance Document on Biotin Interference in Laboratory Tests. J Appl Lab Med 2020 · PMID 32445355
- Klubo-Gwiezdzinska J, Wartofsky L. Hashimoto thyroiditis: an evidence-based guide to etiology, diagnosis and treatment. Polish Archives of Internal Medicine 2022 · PMID 35243857
The 8 markers — and why each one is here
Anemia both triggers headache and points at the iron cause
Glucose swings, dehydration and electrolytes are common triggers
Ordering the panel tells you your numbers. The protocol tells you what to do with them — the medication-overuse trap that makes headaches worse the more you treat them, the three cheap preventatives with guideline-level support, and the honest read on MTHFR.
Join Skool — $10/mo →What this panel is ordered to decide
A panel is a set of numbers until it settles something. These are the decisions this one feeds — each links the pathway it belongs to, what that pathway claims, and what its test list is read for.
Timing is the whole test. Progesterone must be drawn around day 21 of a 28-day cycle — roughly seven days after ovulation — and a draw at the wrong point is worse than no draw, because it reads as normal.
Related panels
Frequently asked questions
8 markers: Magnesium, RBC, Ferritin, Complete Blood Count (CBC) w/ Differential, TSH (Thyroid-Stimulating Hormone), Free T4 (Free Thyroxine), Vitamin D (25-Hydroxy), Homocysteine, Comprehensive Metabolic Panel (CMP).
$109.45 before discount, $98.51 with code CAMERON applied automatically. Individual markers add a one-time $10 draw fee. Ordered through Marek Diagnostics and drawn at any Quest Diagnostics location in the US.
No. These are ordered direct-to-consumer through Marek Diagnostics — you order online, walk into a Quest location, and results are emailed to you in about two weeks. No physician visit or insurance required. Not available in NY, NJ or RI.
Any time, fasted is easier for the metabolic markers. Off biotin 72 hours so the thyroid result is trustworthy.
Low RBC magnesium → correcting it has reasonable trial support for reducing frequency. Ferritin under 50 in a woman with menstrual migraine is worth treating. Thyroid disease causes headache and is easy to miss. Raised homocysteine is associated with migraine with aura. Sudden severe headache, headache with fever and neck stiffness, or a new headache pattern after 50 is a doctor today, not a panel.
Where this goes next
This page is how to read the panel. What to DO about each result — the dosing, the order to correct things in, the week-by-week schedule and what to retest — is a lesson inside Skool.