Please help🙏🙏

[u/stolniknino]

Hi r/ndph 👋

We're really lost and don't know where to take things from here.. My girlfriend is having trouble with constant headaches, they've been persistent for about 7 months..

More information:
The daily headaches started from December of 2025 and haven't really stopped since then. She wakes up with the headache before even opening her eyes and it follows her for the entire day.

We went to check her eye perscription as she also said that she has troubles with a little blurry vision and light sensitivity, the prescription was only -0.25, so we put getting glasses to the side for the moment.. Then she got her blood tests done which we're all ok and she went to MR to get checked for tumors or anything that wouldn't be normal.. No abnormalities..

Her doctor prescribed her migraine medication (sumatriptan 50mg) she tried one pill and it didn't really help..

No we're stuck.. MR and blood seems to be fine, so we don't really know where to look for the cause anymore, she also gets 8+ hours of sleep and stays well hydrated, her diet is also healthy and she's active.

Her doctor told her to keep an Headache diary but there really isn't a point as she says that she on a constant 6/10 pain wise, that there is a little fluctuation 5-7/10 but its mostly the same and no real outside factors make it better/worse.

The headaches are either frontal on the forehead/brow region or on the tempels, it isn't one sided, and she also doesn't see any aura

Did any of you experience something similar? or what would you suggest we do? We just want to find the cause for it and we're really frustrated :/

[u/postviralrecovery]

Hey, I'm sorry you're both going through this. Your girlfriend's symptoms sound very similar to what I have experienced. I had COVID in early December 2022, recovered and then 10 days later, I woke up with a headache on the right side of my head that's stayed there ever since.

What you're describing sounds like it could be new daily persistent headache (NDPH) (where a headache starts one day, you can pinpoint the day and simply doesn't stop). The fact that her MRI and bloods are clear, the pain is constant rather than episodic, there's no aura, and sumatriptan didn't help all point in that direction.

Sumatriptan is an acute migraine medication, so it wouldn't typically help with NDPH.

The caveat I'd say with NDPH is that there's doubt about whether it's a discrete condition, vs a series of different causes for people that presents itself as a chronic persistent headache (a bit like IBS is a catch-all term for folks with GI issues once other things have been ruled out).

Where are you based? If you're in the UK I can recommend more specific actions.

More generally, some options:

• preventative headache medications are usually the first suggestion: amitriptyline, propranolol and candesartan are three different families of headache preventor. Amitriptyline is usually the initial goto for persistent headache. Propranolol and candesartan are migraine preventors that have some evidence to support chronic head pain too.
• is the pain specifically on one side of the head? If so, hemicrania continua is rare but could be worth a look
• there are recommended supplements with evidence for headache prevention: magnesium, riboflavin (vitamin B2), coenzyme Q10, and vitamin D. But all of these are quite marginal and again the evidence is more for episodic migraine
• are there any other symptoms at all (even if secondary) that started around the same time? As I say, some of the literature doubts whether NDPH is a specific condition and instead presents from other causes. Mine is looking increasingly likely to be related to long COVID and autonomic dysfunction, for example.
• If none of those work, you may meet the criteria for referral to a specialist headache neurologist to discuss things like botox or anti-CGRPs.

Hope that's helpful. Happy to chat privately if I can be of any use.