A headache diary helps preserve those details. Its purpose is not to identify a cause from a few coincidences, but to make observations concrete. Instead of “quite often,” you have dates and circumstances to revisit on your own or with a doctor.
Paper, a phone note, or a tracker can all be a starting point. More important than the tool is a clear way to record what happened, when, and how it affected the day.
First: when not to wait
A diary does not replace medical care. A sudden, extremely painful headache requires emergency help, particularly with weakness or numbness, difficulty speaking, loss of vision, confusion, or seizures. A headache with a high fever and pronounced neck stiffness also needs urgent assessment. Contact your local emergency service; do not wait to collect entries. These are examples of warning signs, not a complete list. NHS: when to seek help for headaches.
If headaches recur, worsen, or change noticeably, discuss them with a doctor. You can start a diary while seeking care, not instead of doing so. Neither a complete table nor a particular length of observation should be a condition for getting help.
What is useful to record
NICE guidance for people aged 12 and over describes a diary as one tool that can help a clinician assess headaches. It includes frequency, duration, severity, accompanying symptoms, medication taken, possible precipitating factors, and the relationship to menstruation where relevant. NICE: headache diary recommendations.
In practice, a small set of fields is a useful starting point:
- Date and time. When you first noticed the pain and when it ended. Say so if the exact time is unknown.
- Description. Where it hurt, what it felt like, and how much it interfered with your day. A consistent scale and a brief explanation can help.
- Other sensations. Anything else you noticed before, during, or after the pain.
- Medication taken. Name, dose, and time, if you took anything. This records an event; it is not treatment advice.
- Context. Anything unusual or important that day. Label possible explanations as assumptions rather than facts.
You do not need a medical term for every sensation. “Pressure across my forehead” or “I couldn't keep reading” is more concrete than a diagnosis chosen from an online description. Even with an established diagnosis, it helps to keep observations specific.
One entry can be short
Here is a fictional note:
12 September, around 3 pm. Pressure started across my forehead. Pain 2 out of 5 on my scale; I can work, but concentrating is difficult. Slept less than usual last night. By 5:30 pm I no longer felt the pain. No medication taken.
This does not claim that lack of sleep caused the pain. It preserves timing, a personal intensity rating, effects on ordinary activities, and one piece of context. A doctor can ask follow-up questions without relying only on a general recollection.
If you cannot write much while in pain, record the fact and approximate starting time first. Add the ending and what you remember later. An incomplete entry is better than inventing an exact time or abandoning the note because some fields are empty.
Using the same scale helps, but it is not a test of precision. Your subjective five need not match someone else's. An explanation such as “I had to stop working” helps the number make sense in your context.
Days with pain are not the number of entries
This distinction matters when counting. You might record the start in the morning, a change at midday, and the ending in the evening. That produces three messages, but does not necessarily represent three separate episodes.
Conversely, pain might start late at night and continue the next morning. One continuous event has then affected two calendar days. Simply counting notes would lose that detail.
Look separately at the dates when pain was present, and connect successive notes using their times and descriptions. If you are unsure whether returning pain counts as a new episode, preserve the sequence and discuss the counting method with your doctor. You do not need to invent medical rules yourself.
“Pain was recorded on four dates, with several changes on one of them” may be clearer in a consultation than a total with no explanation of how you calculated it.
No entry does not mean no headache
If you record only the start of pain, an empty date is ambiguous: no headache, or a missed entry? A short “no headache today” check-in can distinguish the two, provided that is what happened.
You do not have to fill every gap retrospectively. An honest “I don't remember” is better than a confident zero. When summarizing, indicate the observation period and its completeness: “Eleven days recorded over two weeks; no information for the other three.”
The number of entries alone also does not establish whether things are improving or worsening. You may have kept more detailed records one month than another. Before comparing, check whether the observation method stayed the same.
Context suggests questions, not proven causes
After several similar days, a possible connection can stand out: pain alongside long meetings, a late bedtime, or a particular food. It is useful to preserve that thought. It is too early to treat it as an established explanation.
A diary rarely contains every circumstance. Noticeable events are also more likely to be remembered and recorded. If you drank coffee on days with and without pain, one “coffee, then headache” entry cannot settle the relationship.
A careful formulation is: “I recorded these circumstances together several times. I'd like to discuss whether they are worth observing further.” This preserves the observation without making it a reason to change treatment or impose restrictions on your own.
A diary's value does not depend on finding a suspected trigger. Describing frequency, duration, and effects on everyday life more clearly is already useful.
Preparing for a conversation with your doctor
Before an appointment, identify a few reference points: the observation period, dates with pain, duration, effects on ordinary activities, medication taken, and changes that concern you. Keep the original entries available in case you need to clarify details.
You do not need a polished report. A short summary simply makes the conversation easier to begin. Put any uncertainty or missing days alongside the total, rather than leaving them out.
NICE recommends at least eight weeks when a diary is used to help assess headaches. This is guidance about observation as part of medical assessment, not advice to delay a visit for two months. If your appointment is sooner, bring what you have. NICE: information for patients.
You can prepare your own question too: “I'm worried that pain is increasingly getting in the way of work,” or “I'm unsure how to record pain that returns.” The diary should support that conversation, not replace it with numbers.
Create a headache tracker in Narratives
Narratives lets you create trackers for your own questions, not just use a preset collection. For headaches, first choose what you want to see: intensity at recorded moments, dates with pain, or detailed written observations. That determines the format.
To start with a template, open Schedule, go to Trackers, tap “+”, and choose the headache diary template in the gallery. Its main value is intensity on a scale of 1 to 5, with a comment alongside it. Add it directly or customize it first. The scale helps compare your ratings; it does not itself count separate attacks or establish a diagnosis.
If your main question is which days included pain, create a custom tracker called “Day with a headache” and choose Yes / No. In its description, specify one final check-in per calendar day. Several separate positive entries on one day must not automatically be counted as several days with pain. Check dates and duplicates in the history.
In the manual editor, enter a name, describe the observations, choose the value type and summary method, then tap Save. Choose text instead of a scale for a free-form description. Reminders are optional; a tracker works without them.
You can also begin in conversation: “Create a headache tracker. I want to record intensity from 1 to 5 and keep the circumstances.” Check the settings of the created tracker or proposed setup. A request to create it does not mean you had a headache today.
When there is an actual observation, address the existing tracker: “Record in my headache diary: at 3 pm, intensity 2 out of 5, pressure across my forehead.” Keep the end time, medication, and other details in a comment or alongside it in the conversation. If your doctor recommends another scale, do not silently convert it to 1–5: preserve the original rating as text and the agreed recording method.
The purpose of a custom tracker is to collect related observations into one history. That helps you return to particular dates while retaining explanations that do not fit into one value.
This use does not make Narratives a medical device or a diagnostic tool. The app should not replace a diary format recommended by your clinician. If specific fields are requested, preserve those fields in whichever tool lets you do so reliably.
You can ask AI to help word a summary of specified entries: separate dates from comments, list questions, or identify missing information. Check every result against the originals, especially dates, numbers of days, and medication names. Do not treat AI's suggestions about a diagnosis or cause as a medical conclusion.
Our general approach is described in our article on trackers. Sensitive records also raise questions about storage; see privacy in Narratives.
A headache diary does not have to provide an explanation immediately. Its first job is smaller and more concrete: preserve what happened so you do not have to reconstruct it from memory. You can choose the next step with that information, and with your doctor where needed.