Headaches, neck pain, and chronic discomfort that follow a head injury, fall, or car accident are often treated as separate problems — a headache here, a neck strain there — when in many cases they share a single underlying cause: a traumatic brain injury (TBI) that was never fully evaluated.
Why TBI Often Goes Unaddressed
Not every brain injury looks dramatic. Many patients who sustain a concussion or mild TBI are cleared at the emergency room within hours and told to rest. Weeks or months later, they return to their primary doctor with headaches, neck pain, brain fog, or sleep problems — symptoms that get treated individually, often without anyone connecting them back to the original injury.
This is especially common after car accidents and workplace injuries, where the visible injury (a strained neck, a sprained back) draws the initial attention while the neurological injury underneath goes unevaluated.
Signs Your Pain May Be Connected to a Brain Injury
- Headaches that began after a fall, car accident, sports injury, or blow to the head
- Neck pain accompanied by light sensitivity, fatigue, or difficulty concentrating
- Pain that hasn't responded to standard physical therapy or pain management
- Cognitive symptoms — memory issues, slowed thinking, irritability — alongside physical pain
- A head injury in your medical history that was never followed up on once acute symptoms faded
Why a Combined Neurology and Pain Management Approach Matters
Treating the pain without evaluating the underlying brain injury tends to produce partial, temporary relief. A neurologist trained specifically in brain injury medicine can assess whether a patient's chronic headaches or neck pain are being driven — fully or partly — by unresolved TBI, and build a treatment plan that addresses both the neurological injury and the resulting pain together.
At Mind & Body Pain Clinic in San Jose, Dr. Harpreet Singh is board-certified in both Neurology and Brain Injury Medicine, in addition to Internal Medicine and Interventional Pain Management. This combination is uncommon — most pain clinics treat the pain; few are equipped to also diagnose and manage the brain injury behind it.
What an Evaluation Typically Involves
A thorough TBI-related pain evaluation generally includes a detailed history of the original injury (even if it happened years earlier), a neurological exam, a review of prior imaging, and an assessment of how symptoms have evolved over time. From there, treatment may combine medication management, targeted interventional procedures for the musculoskeletal component of the pain, and referral to complementary therapies such as physical therapy.
If you've had a head injury — recent or years in the past — and you're still dealing with headaches, neck pain, or symptoms that haven't fully resolved with standard treatment, it may be worth a neurological evaluation rather than continuing to treat the pain in isolation.