Why do I keep getting headaches?

Question

Accepted Answer

Recurring headaches almost always trace to a shortlist of drivers, and finding yours is a pattern game. The common culprits, per MedlinePlus: tension-type headaches (the daily tight-band pressure, driven by stress, posture, jaw clenching, and screen-heavy days); migraine (throbbing, one-sided, with light and sound sensitivity, sometimes nausea, often triggered by sleep changes, skipped meals, hormones, certain foods, or weather); dehydration; too little or irregular sleep; caffeine withdrawal (the weekend-morning headache in daily coffee drinkers); eye strain and uncorrected vision; and the sneaky one: medication-overuse headache, where using pain relievers more than about 10 to 15 days a month turns the treatment into the cause, a trap that keeps people cycling. Also on the list: sinus congestion (overdiagnosed; most "sinus headaches" are actually migraine), teeth grinding at night, alcohol, and high blood pressure in its severe ranges. The productive move is a 2-week headache diary: when it starts, where it hurts, what you ate, slept, and drank, stress, menstrual timing, and what you took. That diary usually reveals the pattern before any test does, and it makes a doctor visit immediately useful. The red flags that skip the diary and go straight to evaluation: headaches that are new after 50, steadily worsening, worst in the morning or waking you at night, or paired with weakness, vision loss, or confusion, plus the thunderclap emergency (sudden, worst-ever) covered elsewhere. Most recurring headaches have a fix once the driver is named, so the goal of the diary is not documentation, it is escape.

Why do I keep getting headaches?

Find answers about headaches

What to do

Related questions

Sources