Recurring headaches usually trace to tension, migraine, dehydration, sleep problems, caffeine withdrawal, screen or eye strain, or medication overuse; a 2-week diary finds the pattern faster than guessing.
Tension-type feels like a tight band and tracks stress and posture; migraine throbs one-sided with light sensitivity and triggers like sleep changes, skipped meals, hormones, and weather. The sneaky driver is medication overuse: pain relievers more than 10 to 15 days a month turn treatment into cause. Also consider teeth grinding, uncorrected vision, and alcohol; note that most self-diagnosed "sinus headaches" are actually migraine. Log start time, location, food, sleep, stress, cycle timing, and what you took; the diary often cracks the pattern before any test and makes the appointment productive. Skip the diary and get evaluated directly when headaches are new after 50, steadily worsening, morning-worst or night-waking, or paired with weakness, vision loss, or confusion. Most recurring headaches have a fix once the driver has a name.
What to do
Common questions
Why do I keep getting headaches?
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.