Part of Neck pain

Can neck pain cause headaches? How often it really does

Yes, a problem in the neck can cause a headache, but it is the least likely of the three common explanations for a headache with neck pain. Neck pain was present in 77.0% of people with migraine in pooled clinic studies, against 23.2% of people with no headache (Al-Khazali and colleagues, 2022), and in a population study of 797 people, 88.4% of those with pure tension-type headache and 76.2% of those with pure migraine reported neck pain over a year (Ashina and colleagues, 2015). Headache actually caused by the neck is uncommon: a review of three studies using the international headache criteria reported a prevalence of 3.9% in its one population study and a relative frequency of 3.1% among 3,165 adults assessed for headache in its two clinic studies (Robinson and colleagues, 2025). So if your neck hurts and your head hurts, the two traveling together is far more likely than one causing the other, and that matters, because a headache put down to the neck is a headache nobody treats. Some headaches with neck pain cannot wait. Call emergency services straight away for any sign of a stroke, even if it goes away, for a sudden severe headache unlike anything you have had before, whether it peaked in seconds or over a few minutes, and for a stiff neck with a fever, a rash or bright light hurting your eyes.

Warning signs, and when to get help

Can neck pain cause headaches, and how often does it?

The mechanism is not in doubt. The international headache classification has a category for it: under ICHD-3 11.2.1, a cervicogenic headache is head pain caused by a disorder of the cervical spine and its bony, disc or soft tissue parts, usually but not always accompanied by neck pain. What is in doubt is how often it is the right answer for the person reading this. Two sets of figures bear on that, and both point the opposite way from what most pages on this question say.

Start with how common the neck-caused kind is. A systematic review and meta-analysis pooled three studies that used the international criteria. Its single population study reported a prevalence of 3.9%, and its two clinic studies gave a relative frequency of 3.1%, with a 95% confidence interval of 2.6 to 3.8, among 3,165 adults assessed for headache in a tertiary unit (Robinson and colleagues, 2025). Two limits come with those numbers. We could not get hold of the full text, so they come from the abstract, and we could not establish which of the three primary studies produced the 3.9%.

A second figure gets quoted beside those and it is not the same number. An older community study in Norway interviewed and examined 1,838 citizens aged 18 to 65 and reported a prevalence of 4.1%, using the Cervicogenic Headache International Study Group criteria rather than the international classification, and among its 41 core cases there were more men than women (Sjaastad and Bakketeig, 2008). Different criteria, a different population, and a sex split the other way round. The two are not interchangeable, and anyone merging them into one figure has lost what each of them actually measured.

Now the other direction, which is where almost nothing written on this question goes. Neck pain is extremely common in the two headaches the neck does not cause. Pooling clinic-based studies, a systematic review and meta-analysis found neck pain in 77.0% of people with migraine, with a 95% confidence interval of 69.0 to 86.4, against 23.2% (18.6 to 28.5) of people with no headache, and the figure reached 87.0% in chronic migraine (Al-Khazali and colleagues, 2022). Those were people who had sought care for migraine, so it describes a clinic population rather than everyone who gets migraines. A cross-sectional population study of 797 people found one-year neck pain in 68.4% overall, 88.4% of people with pure tension-type headache and 76.2% of those with pure migraine (Ashina and colleagues, 2015).

Put the two sets of numbers side by side and the conclusion is uncomfortable. Neck pain sits alongside most migraines and most tension-type headaches, while headache the neck itself causes runs at single figures. Neck pain next to a headache is therefore a weak signal that the neck is the source, precisely because it is so common in people whose headache is coming from somewhere else. The cost of getting that backwards is a year of treating a neck while the headache goes untreated.

There is a second cost, and it is why this page carries a warning list rather than a reassurance. Somewhere else does not only mean migraine or tension-type headache. A small number of headaches that come with neck pain are coming from a torn artery in the neck, a bleed, rising pressure inside the head, an infection, or inflamed arteries in the scalp, and that whole group is what the list at the foot of the page sorts for. Deciding your headache is probably not coming from your neck settles nothing about whether it needs seeing today.

The list is long because each line is a different way a headache with neck pain turns out to be something other than the neck, and it is ordered by how fast to act rather than by how likely anything is. You are not meant to read all of it in one go. Start at the top, where the things that cannot wait sit, and stop when you find yourself.

What if the headache comes with dizziness or feeling sick?

Some of this cannot wait, so the routes come before the explanation.

Call emergency services straight away for any sign of a stroke, even if it goes away: a face that droops on one side, an arm you cannot lift or keep up, speech that slurs, or sudden dizziness with a fall. The warning list below gives the full set of signs. A sudden, severe headache or neck pain that feels new and unlike anything you have had before means calling emergency services straight away too.

Go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself, for a new headache or new pain on one side of your face, jaw or neck with a drooping eyelid, a smaller pupil on that side, or a new pulsing sound in one ear that keeps time with your heartbeat. That can be a tear in an artery in the neck. Call emergency services for a stiff neck with a fever, a severe headache that is getting worse, pain when you look at bright lights, confusion, or a rash that does not fade when you press a glass on it, as these can be signs of meningitis. The list at the foot of the page gives each of these in full.

If you are pregnant, or you had a baby in the last few weeks, a severe headache that simple painkillers do not shift is not something to sort out from the reasoning on this page. Contact your maternity unit straight away, or get urgent medical help if you cannot reach them. The vision changes, the pain just below your ribs, the vomiting, the heartburn that heartburn medicines do not touch and the sudden swelling of your face, hands or feet that can come with it are all in the full line at the foot of the page, and so is what to do about a headache after an epidural or a spinal anesthetic. This page is written for adults, so a child or teenager with a headache and neck pain needs seeing by a doctor rather than sorting out at home.

With none of those present, dizziness, a spinning feeling or feeling sick that comes on when you turn or tip your head means stopping and getting medical advice the same day. Call emergency services if you faint, if it does not settle within a few minutes of sitting still, or if you cannot stand or walk steadily.

Why this sits near the top of the page rather than buried at the bottom: dizziness and lightheadedness are among the first things people type after this question, and the international framework for examining the neck lists headache and neck pain, visual disturbance, dizziness, unsteadiness, nausea and a drooping eyelid among the reported features of blood vessel problems in the neck (IFOMPT 2020, with its 2023 addendum). The same combination is also an ordinary part of a migraine attack. That overlap is the whole reason it cannot be sorted out from a search box, and being examined is what separates them.

Is your neck pain part of the migraine rather than its cause?

A prevalence figure cannot tell you the direction of travel. What these figures can do is change where you start. With neck pain present in roughly three of four people seen for migraine, and in nearly nine of ten people with pure tension-type headache, the neck symptoms in most people who have both read better as part of the headache picture than as its engine.

There is a practical version of that. The international classification asks for a neck disorder known to cause headache plus at least two links between the two: the headache began around the same time as the neck problem, it improves or goes as the neck problem improves, the neck's movement is reduced and provocative movements make the headache significantly worse, or numbing the painful structure in the neck abolishes the headache. Three of those four are about the two things moving together over time. That is something you can notice over a few weeks, and it is worth more to whoever assesses you than any description of how the pain feels.

One exception sits inside that reasoning. A bleed around the brain is itself most often mistaken for a migraine: the international classification records initial misdiagnosis in a quarter to a half of people with a subarachnoid hemorrhage that had no injury behind it, with migraine the commonest wrong answer (ICHD-3 6.2.2). It describes that headache as typically severe and sudden, peaking in seconds or minutes, sometimes only moderate, and sometimes the only symptom there is. So sudden here means the pain was at or close to its worst within minutes of starting, not only in one single instant. A first attack of something that looks like a migraine is the wrong moment to settle on migraine, and if your headache came on that way, call emergency services straight away, whatever your neck is doing alongside it.

One more thing to know before you settle on the neck. The UK guideline on headaches in people over 12 covers tension-type headache, migraine, cluster headache and medication overuse headache, and it does not cover cervicogenic headache at all (NICE CG150). That says something about the guideline's scope, not about you, but it is a fair indication of which headaches a doctor works through first.

Treatment for the neck-caused kind sits on our cervicogenic headache program. This page is for working out whether that is the one you need.

What does a headache from the neck feel like?

Three features come up again and again, and none of them settles it alone. It usually starts in the neck or at the base of the skull and spreads forward over the head, often to the forehead or around one eye. The side tends to stay the same from one bout to the next. And something sets it off: a neck movement, or a long spell holding your head in one position, instead of pain that arrives out of nowhere. The classification itself notes that many cases overlap with tension-type headache and that the diagnosis can be challenging, so a page cannot do this for you.

What is worth doing is collecting the two things you will be asked about. Can you set the headache off on purpose, within the hour, by turning your head or by twenty minutes with your chin down over a phone? And does it ease on the days your neck is easier? Keep a note of both for two or three weeks before the appointment. Those two answers are what the criteria rest on.

That plan is for a headache you have had for a while and that is not changing. A headache that is new, that has started getting worse over days or weeks, or that comes with anything on the warning list below is not something to spend three weeks observing, and the list says how fast each of those needs acting on.

Being able to reproduce it is also the most useful thing you can learn on your own, though it rules nothing out: the international classification says the pain of a torn artery in the neck follows no fixed pattern and can be badly misleading, mimicking migraine, cluster headache or a thunderclap headache, so a new headache you can set off by moving your neck is not safe on that account. If nothing you do with your neck changes the headache at all, the neck is an unlikely source. That narrows where to look, and it is not the same thing as good news. One of the emergency lines on this page turns on exactly that feature: a new headache or neck pain that does not feel like ordinary neck pain, that nothing you do changes much, and that has not begun to settle after the first day or two, means going to an emergency department straight away without driving yourself. An unchanging headache is a reason to be seen, not a reason to cross the neck off and stop.

What can cause a headache at the base of the skull?

People often search this question by location, and the base of the skull is the location that looks most like the neck. A neck-caused headache does typically begin there before spreading forward. The back of the head is also where tension-type headache is often felt, as pressure or tightness with sore neck and shoulder muscles, and our tension-type headache program sets out how that one differs from the other two.

Serious causes can present there as well, which is the reason for the warning list at the foot of this page. A sudden, severe headache that feels new is an emergency, and sudden covers a pain that reached its worst over a few minutes as well as one that arrived in an instant. So is a stiff neck with a fever. A headache that comes on or gets worse when you cough, sneeze, strain or bend down needs medical advice the same day, wherever on your head you feel it. And if you are 50 or over, new frequent headaches with tenderness at your temples or on your scalp, or jaw pain when you eat or talk, need medical advice the same day, because inflamed arteries in the head need treating quickly to protect your sight.

Which page should you read next?

If the pattern above fits the neck, the cervicogenic headache program has the exercises and what is known about how well they work. For a headache that presses on both sides of the head instead of starting in the neck, begin with the tension-type headache program. Where the neck pain is the main problem and the headaches only come now and then, the neck pain program is the better starting point. Pain or tingling running down one arm is covered by the cervical radiculopathy program instead.

One sentence matters more than all of those for anyone who has been taking painkillers for months. Headache medicine taken on many days of the month can itself keep headaches going, which is called medication overuse headache, and the tension-type headache program is where we cover it. Never stop or change a prescribed medicine on your own. Take it to the doctor or pharmacist who prescribed it, and count the days first, since they are easy to underestimate.

If the headache arrives with the morning and your neck is stiff when you wake, pillow and sleeping position for neck pain handles that as a sleep problem rather than a headache problem, as long as the headache is not waking you from sleep and is not worse when you lie down. Those two patterns are on the warning list below at the same day level, and a pillow is not the answer to either. If you are not sure whether what you have needs seeing today, when neck pain is serious sorts every warning sign by how fast to act. And if you woke up with it once, it has never happened before and nothing on the warning list below fits, stiff neck after sleeping is the page for a one-off. Being the first time is not reassuring on its own, which is why the list tells you to judge a new headache or new neck pain by how it behaves rather than by how it compares with anything.

Several lines on the warning list say to stop, or to hold off, on exercises and on hands-on treatment to your neck until somebody has checked you. They mean whichever neck exercises you are already doing, from the neck pain program or anywhere else, and any massage, mobilization or manipulation you have booked.

This page does not tell you what to take. Treatment of the neck-caused kind sits on the cervicogenic headache page, and treatment of the other two belongs with your doctor, who can also check the things on the warning list that a website cannot.

One sign in the list below appears twice, at two different speeds. Pain that is there all the time and does not ease with rest or changing position, or pain at night that keeps getting worse, is a same-day matter if you have had cancer at any time or have lost weight without trying, and otherwise needs your doctor within a few days. If you cannot tell which of those you have, treat it as the more urgent one.

Related exercise programs

Warning signs

Get emergency help now

Emergency: any sign of a stroke, even if it goes away. That means a face that droops on one side, an arm you cannot lift or keep up, slurred or muddled speech, weakness or numbness on one side of your body or face, sudden blurred vision, double vision or loss of sight, trouble swallowing, sudden dizziness with unsteadiness or falling over, a sudden severe headache, or a sudden fall where your legs give way but you do not black out (a drop attack). Call emergency services straight away. With neck pain, these can rarely come from a tear in an artery in the neck.
Emergency: a sudden, severe headache or neck pain that feels new and unlike anything you have had before. Call emergency services straight away.
Emergency: a new headache, or new pain on one side of your face, jaw or neck, with a drooping eyelid or a smaller pupil on the same side, or with a new pulsing or whooshing sound in one ear that keeps time with your heartbeat. Call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself. This can be a tear in an artery in the neck (cervical artery dissection), which can lead to a stroke.
Emergency: a new headache or neck pain, or both, that does not feel like ordinary neck pain. If this is your first bout, judge it by how it behaves rather than by how it compares. Either of the next two is enough on its own. One, it came on suddenly, in a single moment, even if it is not severe and even if it has eased since. Sudden onset counts on its own. Two, nothing you do changes it much: no position or rest makes a real difference, and after the first day or two it has not started to settle. It counts even if you have none of the other emergency signs above, and it matters more if it started after a neck injury or strain, even a minor one, a bout of heavy coughing, or having your neck manipulated. Go to an emergency department straight away, or call emergency services if you cannot get there safely, and do not drive yourself. Do not start these exercises, and do not have any hands-on treatment to your neck, until your neck has been checked. A tear in an artery in the neck can start as pain alone, often on one side, with nothing else to find. If it came on gradually rather than in a single moment, and you can find a position that eases it, follow the same day warning sign for this below instead. Pain that started in one moment stays with this emergency line even if a position now eases it.
Emergency: a stiff neck with a fever, a severe headache that is getting worse, pain when you look at bright lights, confusion, or a rash that does not fade when you press a glass on it. Call emergency services. These can be signs of meningitis.
Emergency: a headache with a fit (seizure), drowsiness, confusion, new memory problems, a change in personality or behavior, or new trouble walking or keeping your balance. Call emergency services straight away.
Emergency: a headache with sudden, intense eye pain, a red eye, blurred vision or rainbow-colored rings around lights, often with feeling or being sick. Call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself. This can be a sudden rise in pressure inside the eye (acute glaucoma).
Emergency: a headache and you have had a head injury in the last 3 months. Go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself.
Emergency: neck pain straight after a high-energy accident, such as a crash at high speed, a car that rolled over, being thrown from a vehicle, being hit by a vehicle while walking or cycling, a motorbike or quad bike accident, a horse riding accident, a diving injury, or a fall from a height or down several stairs. Keep still and call emergency services. If the neck pain only starts later and nobody has checked your neck since, keep your neck as still as you can, do not twist or bend it, and call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away. Do not drive yourself, and tell them what kind of accident it was, because that is one of the things that decides whether you need a scan.
Emergency: severe neck pain after a knock to the head, whatever the fall or the knock was like. Keep still and call emergency services, and do not let anyone move you until someone trained has checked your neck. If the neck pain only starts later and nobody has checked your neck since, go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself.
Emergency: in the first days after the accident, numbness, tingling, pins and needles or weakness in your arms or legs, or a sudden electric shock feeling in your neck and back that runs into your arms or legs. If it starts straight after the accident, keep still and call emergency services. If it starts later, call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself.
Emergency: new neck or back pain after a fall, a knock or a jolt, even a minor one such as a trip or a sudden stop in a car, if you have a condition that stiffens the spine, such as ankylosing spondylitis. Call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away, do not drive yourself, and tell the staff about your spine condition, so they keep your neck and back in their usual position. A stiff spine can break after a small injury, and the break is easy to miss at first. If the pain started straight after the injury, or you also have numbness, tingling or weakness in your arms or legs, keep still and call emergency services.
Emergency: neck, jaw or arm pain that comes with chest pain, shortness of breath, sweating or feeling sick. Call emergency services.
Emergency: your arm, hand or fingers turn cold, pale, blue or gray compared with the other side. Call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself. The blood supply to the arm may be blocked.
Emergency: new problems walking, for example your legs feel stiff, heavy or weak or you have become unsteady on your feet, new trouble controlling your bladder or bowels, or hands that suddenly become clumsy, for example you can no longer do up buttons. Call emergency services straight away. These can be signs of pressure on the spinal cord in the neck.
Emergency: neck pain with a fever, or you feel hot, shivery or very unwell, and you also have new weakness, numbness or tingling in one or both arms or legs, new trouble walking, or new trouble with your bladder or bowels. Call emergency services or go to an emergency department straight away. This can be an infection pressing on the spinal cord or nerves in the neck (spinal epidural abscess), which needs emergency treatment.
Emergency: you have had cancer, now or in the past, and your back or neck pain feels like a tight band around your body, or you have new or worsening pain spreading down an arm or leg, weakness, numbness, pins and needles or a loss of feeling in your arms or legs, trouble walking, or trouble controlling your bladder or bowels. Those symptoms count on their own, with or without back or neck pain. Call your cancer team's emergency number straight away, or go to an emergency department if you do not have one or cannot get through, and do not drive yourself. This can be cancer pressing on the spinal cord (metastatic spinal cord compression), which needs treatment straight away.

Get help now, day or night

You are pregnant or had a baby in the last few weeks and have a severe headache that does not go away with simple painkillers, problems with your vision such as blurring or flashing lights, pain just below your ribs, vomiting, heartburn that does not go away with heartburn medicines, sudden swelling of your face, hands or feet, or you feel very unwell. Contact your maternity unit straight away, or get urgent medical help if you cannot reach them. These can be signs of pre-eclampsia, which can develop in the days or weeks after the birth and needs checking immediately. The same applies to a headache after an epidural or spinal anesthetic that gets worse when you sit or stand up and eases when you lie down. Call emergency services if you have a fit (seizure) or a headache that came on suddenly and is very severe. Call emergency services too if you have a headache with a stiff neck and either a high temperature or bright light hurting your eyes, as this can be meningitis.
Same day: you have rheumatoid arthritis and get new neck pain, or a new headache at the back of your head that keeps coming back. If it comes with tingling or numbness in your hands or arms, get medical advice the same day. If you also feel unsteady on your feet or your legs feel stiff, heavy or weak, call emergency services straight away. Without any of those, tell your doctor or rheumatology team within a few days, and leave out any neck exercises until you have been checked.

Get help today

Same day: a new headache or neck pain, or both, that does not feel like ordinary neck pain, that came on gradually rather than in a single moment, that started after a neck injury or strain, even a minor one, a bout of heavy coughing, or having your neck manipulated, but that does ease when you change position or rest. Get checked the same day before you start these exercises or have any hands-on treatment to your neck. If nothing you do changes it much any more, or it has not started to settle after a day or two, or it did come on in a single moment, follow the emergency warning sign for this above.
Same day: dizziness, a spinning feeling or feeling sick that comes on when you turn or tip your head, without any of the emergency signs above. Stop the exercises and get medical advice the same day. If you faint, it does not settle within a few minutes of sitting still, or you cannot stand or walk steadily, call emergency services.
Same day: new, frequent headaches with pain or tenderness at your temples or on your scalp, or jaw pain when you eat or talk, or, if you are 50 or over, a temple or scalp that has become tender to touch, for example when you brush your hair or rest your head on a pillow. Get medical advice the same day. These can be signs of inflamed arteries in the head (temporal arteritis, also called giant cell arteritis). If your vision changes, call emergency services.
Same day: a new kind of headache that starts after the age of 50, even without the signs in the line above. Get medical advice the same day. Inflamed arteries in the head (temporal arteritis) mainly affect people aged 50 and over, and need treating quickly to protect your sight.
Same day: a headache that keeps getting worse and comes with a fever, or you feel generally unwell, without any of the emergency signs above. Get medical advice the same day. If your temperature is very high, call emergency services.
Same day: a headache that is much worse when you lie down, or much worse when you sit or stand up and eases when you lie flat. Get medical advice the same day.
Same day: headaches that have started to wake you from sleep, or a headache with being sick (vomiting). Get medical advice the same day. The vomiting counts even when it seems explained, unless this is a migraine you already know you get, behaving as it usually does.
Same day: a headache that comes on or gets worse when you cough, sneeze, strain, bend down or exercise. Get medical advice the same day.
Same day: a headache with eye or vision problems, without any of the emergency signs above. Get medical advice the same day.
Same day: a new headache and you have had cancer, now or in the past, or your immune system is weakened, for example by HIV or by medicines that suppress it. Get medical advice the same day and mention it. If you are being treated for cancer now, contact your cancer team the same day.
Same day: new neck pain and you have had cancer, now or in the past, or you have lost weight without trying. Get medical advice the same day and mention it. If you are being treated for cancer now, contact your cancer team the same day.
Same day: hands that have slowly become clumsy, for example trouble doing up buttons or dropping things, or numbness in both hands. Get medical advice the same day. These can be signs of pressure on the spinal cord in the neck (cervical myelopathy). If the clumsiness or numbness gets worse quickly, call emergency services straight away.
Same day: pain or tingling in both arms at the same time, rather than in one. Get medical advice the same day. This can also be a sign of pressure on the spinal cord in the neck.
Same day: an electric shock feeling runs down your back or into your arms or legs as your head bends forward. Stop and get medical advice the same day.
Same day: pins and needles in an arm together with neck or arm pain, or an arm that feels heavy or weak, and nobody has checked it yet. Get medical advice the same day.
Same day: an arm or hand that is getting weaker. Get medical advice the same day.
Same day: severe neck or arm pain that comes on suddenly or is getting worse quickly, without any of the emergency signs above. Get medical advice the same day.
Same day: neck pain with a fever or chills, or you feel generally unwell. Get medical advice the same day, and go to an emergency department if you feel very unwell.
Same day: if you have had neck or spine surgery or an injection into your spine in the last three months, contact your surgical team the same day about a fever, a wound that is red, hot, swollen or leaking, or neck pain or a headache that is new or much worse, even without a fever. Redness can be harder to see on brown or black skin.
Same day: new neck pain that is severe or getting worse, if you inject drugs or take medicine that weakens your immune system. Get medical advice the same day and say which of those applies. An infection in the spine does not always cause a fever, and a normal temperature is not a reason to be reassured.
Same day: neck pain after a car accident or a fall, even a minor one, if you are 65 or older, have low bone density (osteoporosis) or have taken steroid tablets for a long time. Get your neck checked by a doctor the same day, for example at an emergency department, before you start these exercises. At 65 or older, doctors usually want an X-ray or scan of the neck after an accident.
Same day: pain that is there all the time and does not ease with rest or changing position, or pain at night that keeps getting worse. If you have had cancer, now or in the past, or you have lost weight without trying, get medical advice the same day.

Book an appointment

Within a few days: pain that is there all the time and does not ease with rest or changing position, or pain at night that keeps getting worse. See your doctor within a few days.
Your usual headaches change: they come more often, feel different, or keep getting worse over days or weeks. See your doctor within a few days. If they are getting worse quickly, get medical advice the same day.

Common questions

How long do headaches from neck pain last?

There is no single figure, and the honest answer depends on which headache you have. A headache the neck is driving tends to follow the neck: it comes on with a movement or a long spell in one position and eases as the neck eases, which is one of the links the international classification looks for. So it can last an hour or most of a day, and it usually recurs while the neck problem is there rather than running to a fixed length. If your headaches have a length and a pattern of their own, with clear gaps in between, that points away from the neck and toward a primary headache. A headache that keeps getting worse over days or weeks, or that changes from your usual pattern, needs seeing: see your doctor within a few days, and get medical advice the same day if it is getting worse quickly.

Can bad neck pain cause headaches?

How severe the neck pain is does not tell you where the headache is coming from. Severe neck pain with a headache is common in migraine, where neck pain was found in 77.0% of people in pooled clinic studies (Al-Khazali and colleagues, 2022), and it is common in ordinary mechanical neck pain too. What does matter is how the pain behaves. A sudden, severe headache or neck pain that feels new and unlike anything you have had before means calling emergency services straight away. A new headache or neck pain, or both, that does not feel like ordinary neck pain means going to an emergency department straight away, without driving yourself, if it came on suddenly in a single moment, or if nothing you do changes it much and it has not started to settle after the first day or two. If it does ease when you change position or rest, get checked the same day instead.

Can neck pain cause a headache on one side, or on top of the head?

A headache the neck causes does tend to stay on the same side each time, and it usually starts in the neck or at the base of the skull before spreading forward, sometimes to the forehead or around the eye. But side-locked pain is not unique to it: migraine is often one-sided as well, so where you feel it narrows nothing down on its own. Pain on top of the head, or a headache that presses on both sides, fits tension-type headache better than the neck. The feature worth recording is not the spot but whether a neck movement or a long spell in one position reliably brings your usual headache on.

Can neck pain cause headaches and eye pain or ear pain?

Both appear often in what people search next to this question, and both can be referred sensations from the upper neck, which is why a headache from the neck is sometimes felt around the eye. Neither one points to the neck by itself. Two patterns here are not ordinary and need acting on. A headache with sudden, intense eye pain, a red eye, blurred vision or rainbow-colored rings around lights, often with feeling or being sick, means calling emergency services or going to an emergency department straight away without driving yourself, as this can be a sudden rise in pressure inside the eye. A new pulsing or whooshing sound in one ear that keeps time with your heartbeat, alongside a new headache or new pain on one side of your face, jaw or neck, means the same route, because that can be a tear in an artery in the neck.

References

Al-Khazali HM, Younis S, Al-Sayegh Z, Ashina S, et al. Prevalence of neck pain in migraine: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Cephalalgia. 2022;42(7):663-673. doi:10.1177/03331024211068073. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35166137/
Ashina S, Bendtsen L, Lyngberg AC, Lipton RB, et al. Prevalence of neck pain in migraine and tension-type headache: a population study. Cephalalgia. 2015;35(3):211-219. doi:10.1177/0333102414535110. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24853166/
Robinson CL, Christensen RH, Al-Khazali HM, Amin FM, et al. Prevalence and relative frequency of cervicogenic headache in population- and clinic-based studies: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Cephalalgia. 2025;45(3):3331024251322446. doi:10.1177/03331024251322446. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40094720/
Sjaastad O, Bakketeig LS. Prevalence of cervicogenic headache: Vaga study of headache epidemiology. Acta Neurologica Scandinavica. 2008;117(3):173-180. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18031563/
Headache Classification Committee of the International Headache Society (IHS). The International Classification of Headache Disorders, 3rd edition. Cephalalgia. 2018;38(1):1-211. https://doi.org/10.1177/0333102417738202
National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). Headaches in over 12s: diagnosis and management. Clinical guideline CG150. 2012, last updated 2025. https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg150
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Written and checked by the PocketPhysio editorial team. Last updated 2026-11-06.

This page is general education, not a diagnosis or a personal treatment plan. See a physiotherapist or doctor for advice about your own situation.