If you’re anything like me, you’ve tried many things to relieve your headaches and migraine pain. My experience is that once a migraine has set in, there isn’t much you can do except wait for it to go away. So my priority is to either catch it early or prevent it from ever happening. I have tried many things to reduce the amount of caffeine in my diet over the years with mixed results. I was a tea drinker my whole life, but had recently started drinking coffee.
Caffeine
I noticed that my migraines were getting worse and more intense after a few months of drinking stronger coffee. I cut out caffeine completely. You’ll be amazed at how addictive and powerful caffeine can be if you’ve ever tried it! For three to four days, I experienced intense headaches and general misery. After I was able to return to normal and settled into my new lifestyle of peppermint and camomile, I noticed that the migraines had decreased in frequency and were easier to manage.
One problem was there. Migril, the medication I take for headache pain relief, contains a lot of caffeine. How can I avoid it? Despite this minor niggle, I avoided caffeine for about ten year. I think I must have been happy with the overall results. Over the ten years, I found that I was able almost all my migraine attacks with my medication.
Signs
If, and that’s a big IDEA, I was able take it at the first sign of a headache. I was able to reduce my dosage from two pills to one quarter of a tablet. Recently, I noticed an increase in the frequency with which my pills were popping. I noticed that sometimes, even though I was still taking one quarter of a tablet, I was taking Migril almost every single day. I rebounded back-and-forth.
I eventually realized that perhaps it was the caffeine in my medication that was causing the rebound effect. I decided to try getting off the wagon and join the legions of coffee-loving people once again! I don’t like taking medication, so I decided that caffeine might be an alternative to me getting the headache pain relief I needed. I have only had two migraine attacks since I made the switch, three months ago.
Finally
Although they were more intense than the ones I was used to, I think it’s a trade-off between intensity and frequency. I believe the attacks I have experienced were due to not having one of my coffees. I guess I’m back on the hook again, but I prefer coffee to Migril. Coffee is far better than camomile, I must say!