7 Unexpected Signs You Could Have a Brain Tumor

Persistent headaches

It can be very difficult for even doctors to tell the difference between headaches (or full-on migraines) caused by brain tumors and those resulting from other reasons. ‘The best indicator is a new daily headache that won’t seem to go away,’ says Mike Chen, MD, PhD, associate professor, division of neurosurgery, department of surgery at City of Hope.

‘These headaches tend to get worse over time and are often present when you wake up in the morning, when intracranial pressure is high from lying in bed for hour-long periods of time.’ A small, fast-growing tumor can cause as severe of a headache as a large, slow-growing tumor,’ says Santosh Kesari, MD, PhD, neuro-oncologist and chair of the department of translational neuro-oncology and neurotherapeutics at John Wayne Cancer Institute in Santa Monica, California.

A subtle loss of vision

Patients experiencing this particular symptom may not be aware of it at all—let alone associate it with a brain tumor. They may not even notice an alteration in their vision quality until they continually bump into things on one side of the body related to the vision loss or have repeated car accidents on the side of the loss. ‘This particular symptom or impaired peripheral vision is known as bitemporal hemianopsia,’ says Christopher Carrubba, MD, co-director for Medical Education at Med School Tutors.