What Does A Covid Headache Feel Like:
Because of this, you may be wondering how you can tell if a headache is due to COVID-19 or not. Headaches in COVID-19 may be a direct consequence of the disease affecting the brain. However, they may just be a symptom of dehydration or hunger due to not consuming enough fluids or food. Non-pharmacological treatment approaches, such as lifestyle changes, psychological therapy, and physical therapy, might not directly treat COVID headache but may be helpful in the everyday management of living with COVID headache. Vegetarians may be less likely to contract COVID-19 than frequent meat eaters because of immune-boosting plant compounds and lower risk of chronic diseases… Problems with memory and attention after COVID-19 infection were reflected in lower IQ scores among people who’d had the virus, according to a new study…
If you have ‘the most horrifying headache of your life,’ seek medical attention immediately because it could potentially signal something life-threatening like a brain bleed, says Dr. Gut. There are no treatments yet that are specific to long COVID, especially for neurological symptoms, but if your post-COVID headaches resemble migraine, your doctor will use migraine treatments. Some of those possibilities, she says, include complications from severe COVID, autoimmune conditions, high blood pressure impacting blood vessels in the brain, or even pandemic stress that results in tension headaches.
Usually, it’s one of the first symptoms to present itself, together with a fever, a cough, fatigue, and a loss of smell or taste. Some studies suggest that the headache may indicate the condition’s outlook, making it an essential factor for diagnosis and treatment strategy. Even though COVID-19 often causes headaches, it’s important to note that not all headaches point to the coronavirus, and not all people infected with COVID-19 have headaches. Simply put, with long-lasting pain, a person’s nervous system stays in a chronically activated state, lowering their threshold for experiencing pain and making them hypersensitive to pain.
But since there are several types of headaches ‘ migraine, tension and cluster being the biggies’ there’s a chance you may not have experienced this exact type of headache pain before. Headaches are among the most common, and troubling, symptoms of COVID-19. If these worrisome symptoms aren’t present and neck pain accompanies someone’s tension-type headaches or migraine attacks, the challenge is to treat both forms of pain so they don’t continue to trigger each other. ‘We want people to be aggressive about treating their neck pain so this problem doesn’t get worse,’ Green says. Of course, a person with long COVID will not experience all of the 203 symptoms recorded by the wide-ranging international study from eClinicalMedicine.
For example, analgesics (painkillers) and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) might be prescribed to help with tension-type and migraine-like COVID headaches. For example, a cross-sectional study of 172 people with COVID-19 found that the average headache duration was six hours. The same study found that people with COVID-19 who had an existing headache see post disorder (marked by recurrent headache) experienced longer COVID-19-related headaches, for an average of 12 hours. The timeline for how long COVID headache typically lasts varies from person to person and may depend on individual characteristics, such as age and the presence of an existing headache disorder (characterized by recurrent headaches).
In these cases, headaches have been reported as occurring prior to the onset of more typical COVID-19 symptoms, like fever and cough. Very rarely, people with COVID-19 will have ‘thunderclap headaches,’ which can cause severe pain within seconds of onset, according to Hartford Healthcare. If you experience this type of headache, you should seek emergency care. Thunderclap headaches can sometimes be caused by life-threatening conditions. With this variant, symptoms usually include runny nose, fever, sore throat, and headache. Some people are infected but don’t notice any COVID-19 symptoms (doctors call that being asymptomatic).
However, if headaches arise as part of long COVID you may have them for several months after recovery, the agency notes. Newer versions of COVID-19, like the Omicron strain EG.5, tend to infect the upper respiratory tract. Common symptoms of the new COVID-19 variants include a runny nose, sore throat, and other symptoms similar to a cold. But people aged 65 and older and those with weak immune systems are more likely to have more serious symptoms affecting their lower respiratory tract. They tend to include sore throat, runny nose, and other symptoms similar to a cold. They may not include lower respiratory tract symptoms such as wheezing, severe cough, or fever.
Listed as one of the many potential symptoms of COVID-19, a headache may seem like the least of your worries when a flu-like illness hits your system. But research shows that for some people a COVID headache tends to linger long after their initial positive test. Medical experts are also finding that headaches are presenting as a Covid-19 symptom in both people who are predisposed (a.k.a previously suffered from headaches pre-infection), and those who have never had a headache before at all.
Fever is uncommon with migraine, as well as with other types of headaches, like tension or cluster headaches. Common long COVID symptoms include heart and respiratory symptoms (such as difficulty breathing or cough), neurological symptoms (such as brain fog, sleep problems, headache), and digestive symptoms (such as stomach pain or diarrhea). In one study of more than 900 COVID patients, their headache lasted a median 14 days, but one in five patients still had it three months later; one in six patients had it nine months later.
In some cases, neck pain that’s accompanied by head pain ‘can be a red flag if someone has chills, a fever, coordination or balance problems, difficulty walking, radiating pain, or tingling in the arms or legs,’ Buse says. In these instances, the neck check these guys out pain could suggest a tumor or meningitis, she notes. In addition, people who are at higher risk for this painful one-two punch include those with bad spondylosis (degeneration of bones and disks in the neck), poor posture, or sports injuries.
“I wake up every day feeling tired, nauseous and dizzy. I immediately start planning when I can lay down again.” Whether the effects are due to viral invasion or immune dysfunction, research has found that SARS-CoV-2 infection can lead to changes in the brain. In the United States, my sources the CDC notes that 6.4% of adults have, at some time, reported long COVID symptoms. Any information published on this website or by this brand is not intended as a substitute for medical advice, and you should not take any action before consulting with a healthcare professional.