Why do I get headaches every day? Five causes to check

You wake up with it. Or it creeps in by mid-morning and sits behind your eyes until bedtime.

Most days, you reach for the painkillers before you’ve even thought about it.

One patient described it in her Google review as “daily headaches from the moment I opened my eyes for the day to when I closed them at night.”

If your days look anything like that, you’re not imagining it. Headaches that keep coming back usually have a reason, and often more than one.

Why do I get headaches every day?

A headache is your body reacting to something. You feel the pain in your head, but what sets it off often starts somewhere else.

Each thing working against you brings you a little closer to the point where a headache starts. One on its own might not be enough.

When two or three stack up, it takes very little to set one off.

That’s why headaches can seem random. The trigger you notice is often just the last one on the pile.

What are the most common causes of daily headaches?

Headache care often focuses on the head, so what sets them off can get missed. These five are the places we look most often.

• Your gut
• Hormones
• Stress
• Minerals
• Sleep

Your gut. Certain foods, and how your gut handles them, can set off a headache hours later, long after you’d connect the two.

Hormones. Worse at certain times of the month, or since menopause? Shifting hormone levels are often part of the reason.

Stress. Years of stress keep your body wound up and your shoulders and jaw tight. The headaches often follow.

Minerals. Low on magnesium? It can make headaches come more often and hang on longer.

Sleep. A rough night makes you more sensitive to pain the next day, so poor rest can turn into a headache by lunch.

Our headaches and migraine page explains how each one can set off the pain.

Why do my headaches start at the same time of day?

Blood sugar is often part of it. If you skip a meal, or your blood sugar climbs fast after one and then drops, a headache can follow.

Water and caffeine matter too. Not drinking enough through the day, or having your coffee later than usual, can both bring one on.

A headache that arrives at about the same time most days is a useful clue. Write down when it starts and what you ate before it.

Could my painkillers be part of it?

Painkillers dull the pain for a few hours. They can’t tell you why the next headache is already on its way.

Taking pain relief on many days of the month can sometimes keep headaches going. If you’re reaching for it most days, that’s worth raising with your physician.

Please don’t change or stop anything on your own. Any decision about medication stays between you and your physician.

What can I do about daily headaches?

Start by noticing your own pattern.

When does the headache start? Did you sleep badly, skip a meal or have a stressful day? Does it follow your cycle?

Keep a simple note for two weeks. A diary can’t show what’s happening in your gut, your hormones or your mineral levels, but it gives you something concrete to bring to whoever you see next.

Regular meals and enough water through the day are easy places to start.

It’s also tempting to pick up magnesium from the drugstore. It’s a reasonable guess, but without testing you don’t know whether it’s the right mineral, or the right dose.

At Back to Wellness, Dr. Anthony Alphonso has been in practice since 2007. We work alongside your physician, including any neurologist you see, with patients in New York and South Carolina, all from home.

We look at your gut, hormone patterns, stress, minerals, blood sugar, sleep and what you eat together, then build a plan around what we find. Our headaches page explains how it works.

When to talk to someone

Some headaches need medical help first. Please call 911 or go to urgent care right away for:

• a sudden, severe headache unlike any you’ve had before
• a headache with weakness, numbness, confusion or trouble speaking
• a headache after a fall or a knock to the head
• a headache with a fever and a stiff neck

And if your headaches come with changes to your vision, or you start getting a new kind of headache after age 50, please see your doctor soon.

If none of that applies and you want to find out what’s behind your headaches, book a free 15-minute call.

It’s by phone, with no cost and no obligation. We’ll hear the whole story and tell you honestly whether we can help.