Headache Pain Relief – Caffeine? Yes Or No?
If you’re like me you’ve tried all sorts of things for migraine and headache pain relief. In my personal experience, once a migraine has taken hold there’s not much that can be done except to wait for it to pass, so my priority is either catching it early, or preventing it from happening in the first place.
I’ve cut all sorts of things out of my diet, over the years, with varying degrees of success, but the one thing that I keep coming back to and puzzling over is caffeine.
I had been a tea drinker all my life and for some reason, several years ago, had started drinking coffee. After a few months I was drinking more and more, stronger coffee and I noticed that my migraines had become more frequent and intense, so I decided to cut caffeine out of my diet completely.
If you’ve ever tried this yourself, you’ll appreciate what a powerful, addictive drug caffeine is! Intense headaches and overall misery followed for three or four days! Once I was eventually back to normality and settling into my new life of peppermint and camomile tea I found that although it hadn’t been a complete success, the migraines were happening much less frequently and when I did get them they were much more controllable.
There was however one problem. The medication I use for headache pain relief (Migril) has a large dose of caffeine in it, so how could I stay “caffeine free”? Despite this little niggle I stayed clear of caffeine (apart from the medication) for about ten years, so I guess I must have approved of the overall result.
Over those ten years I found I was able to control almost all my migraine attacks with my medication, if, and it’s a big IF, I was able to take it at the very first signs. I even managed to reduce my dose from two pills, down to just one quarter of a pill.
Recently I began to notice an increase in the frequency of my pill popping. Sometimes, although I was still only on one quarter of a pill, I was taking Migril almost every day, as I rebounded back and forth. Eventually I decided that maybe it was the caffeine in the medication that was causing the rebound effect, so I decided I’d try coming off the wagon and joining the legions of coffee drinkers once more!
I really don’t like taking medication if I can avoid it, so I figured that if caffeine could give me the headache pain relief I needed, it had to be a better option. Since I made the change, about three months ago, I’ve only had a couple of migraine attacks. To be fair, they have been more intense than those I’ve been used to, but I guess it’s a trade off between intensity and frequency!
The attacks I have had, I feel sure were caused by NOT having one of the coffees that my body has now become accustomed to, so I guess I’m hooked again but I prefer being hooked on coffee to being hooked on Migril and hey! I have to say that coffee is much tastier than camomile!