Woke up with a migraine this morning. Although I’ve taken my medicine it may take a while to kick in, so I’ll use another one of my “Quick Tips”.
If you are not a regular coffee drinker, then drinking a cup of tea or coffee can sometimes help stop a migraine! (No Decaf-caffine is the active ingredient)
Migraines happen when the blood vessels in your brain are expanded, so too much blood is flowing through. Caffine is a vascular constrictor-so it can help. Here is an article that talks about it briefly.
On the other hand, too much and too frequent consumption of coffee has been linked to causing migraines, so as always use your best judgement.
****Side note: The reason folks get such awful headaches when they quit regular coffee use (as I did for Lent) is because your body becomes so used to having the coffee constrict your blood vessels that when it isn’t there to do it, you get a headache from the larger amount of blood flowing through. It takes several days for your body to start regulating itself again. And if you care, although Lent is over, I have only gone back to drinking a cup of coffee every few days.
Mom2fur says
Oh, sweetie, I hope it goes away quickly. I haven’t had on in years and I hope I never get another one. You just want to crawl into the back of a dark closet and forget the world.
Is there any chance that cutting out coffee, and then going back to just a little of it, is causing the migraine? Or is it just your cold?
Feel better!
Blaine Moore says
When I was growing up I suffered from cluster headaches, which is about the worst type of migraine you can get.
I had a 3 step process to get my migraines under control. I now only get 2 or 3 migraines per year, and they are nothing painwise compared to what I used to get. The worst part now is the blindess and hallucination instead of the pain.
First and the biggest impact, is that I reduced the unmanaged stress in my life. I do not obsess on things that I can not immiediately act on and try to plan ahead as much as possible.
Second, and almost as big impact wise, was a change in my diet. I tried everything from giving up caffeine to giving up cheese. The only part of that diet that I maintained for the past dozen years or so is giving up caffeine. I might have a bit of chocolate on occasion, but otherwise I avoid caffeine like the plague.
Third, I used verapamil daily for a few years (a generic form of kalan), which is a drug that acts as a calcium channel blocker in your brain. One of the side effects is that it lowers your blood pressure, however, so I took myself off of it once I was on my own. My blood pressure is very low to begin with and I try to avoid drugs as much as possible.
When you are having a migraine, caffeine is a great way to speed up the process and recover from it. Just don’t have any ahead of time. Combined with ibuprofen, caffeine can give you a really unpleasant high sensation, but it will speed up the migraine and turn 4 hours of misery into 45 minutes of unpleasantness.
Jenn says
M2F-I’ve had migraines for years, it’s one of the big reasons I had to get out of the military. (plus neck issues) The medicine works pretty well for me, so it was gone in about an hour. The weird thing for me is that I seem to have atypical symptoms. I have headaches with light sensitivity and nausea-but before they get to that point I start having muscle spasms in my neck and base of my skull (that caused me to be mis diagnosed for years, as I was complaining mainly about the spasms and not so much about the headache part) I don’t think that the caffine has too much to do with it-I tend to have a string of 2 to 4 days a month where they hit me, but most of the time if I take the meds they go away for the rest of the day. That stayed the same even when I went off the caffine. I’m just trying to keep it infrequent just in case 🙂
Blaine-thank you for checking in and giving me so much personal experience, advice and information. You know, I naturally have low blood pressure too, I’ve sort of wondered if I had regular to high blood pressure if the migraines would have been even worse-after all, there would be that much more blood pounding through there.
collegesaver says
They are absolutely evil! However, I’d rather have my coffee everyday and risk a migraine than being in a woozy state. Yes, I’m addicted. ^_^
I hope it goes away soon. Get lots of sleep!
Rebecca says
Have you considered a hormone connection? I was getting monthly migraines and, after being put on progesterone by my doc, they have almost completely gone away. Now, I no longer am on the progesterone, I just take flax oil. I find that I must be diligent to take it or the headaches start to come back. (I also have a large fibroid, I don’t know if that makes a difference.)
Mom2fur says
I’m so glad the medicine worked for you!
Anonymous says
Just happened on your blog on a google search…. you are correct on coffee being good for some migraines… I had an “aura” migraine about once every 6 months for 40 years (!!) before I chanced on taking a stiff coffee immediately… shuts it down withing half an hour where I used to be incapacitated for the rest of the day… a miracle!
Jenn says
Yup, coffee can be a wonderful thing! Glad you found the blog, hope you enjoy reading.
Lisa says
I was diagnosed 4 years ago with a-typical cluster migraines. Get them from both my dad (clusters) and my grandmother on my mom’s side (a-typical)
I found a website that actually HELPS me alot.
http://www.widomaker.com/~jnavia/tannins/tannexpl.htm
Long story short- I was getting over half my migraines from FOOD sensitivities. and more people are sensitive to the same thing than you would think. They’re called Tannins – naturally occuring compounds in the foods we eat. Not JUST teas. About 1/2 my favorite foods were on the list, and the other 1/2 were foods I didn’t usually eat, or already knew to be triggers.
Bottom line, I stay away from tannins – especially when my clusters are BAD- I get 50-75% FEWER headaches.
Caffiene has been my friend for a LONG time. Sometimes i can releave with nothing more than a cup of strong coffee (i mean STRONG – at least 6-8 scoops per 12 cup pot)