Many people say the lingering pain is affecting their day-to-day lives.
, from taking high amounts of over-the-counter pain relievers, he says. This can turn into a vicious cycle in which someone keeps treating headache pain, only to develop more pain from the medication.
But what about people who deal with headaches for weeks to months after COVID? In a recent research review published in, the paper’s authors theorized that “long COVID headache” could develop in people with a genetic predisposition to headache or migraine due to the “activation” of the trigeminovascular system, which is known to play a key role in migraine headaches.
There are also plenty of other things that can cause persistent headaches, and those possibilities should be explored if someone is really struggling. While chronic headaches “could be a long COVID feature,” Dr. Sachdev says, this persistent pain “is not only caused by COVID, and it is not the most classic sign of long COVID. Persisting headaches, where none existed before, should prompt an investigation.
If headaches suddenly rule your life, whether you had COVID or not, it’s a good idea to check in with a primary care doctor if you can, Dr. Segil says. That’s also true if you’re having “headaches that are disabling you and interfering with your work or life,” he says. Basically, as SELF previously reported, as soon as you ask yourself
, it’s time to go see one. It could be long COVID, or it could be something else—and you deserve to feel better regardless of what’s triggering the pain.