• Wednesday, December 10th, 2008
I was never a big coffee drinker. Even during my 4 year stint in the Navy where many sailors walked around with a coffee cup hooked to their belt, I didn’t pickup the habit. Then about 20 years ago, I read an article about the many health benefits of tea. I decided to give tea a try and I was hooked.
I never gave caffeine a second thought. I never noticed the pick-me-up many people describe from drinking coffee. I drank tea because I enjoyed the taste and it was a good way to increase the amount of water I drank each day.
I started out drinking only one or two cups of tea a day but after reading more about the health benefits I figured, why not drink more? In recent years, I was consuming five or six cups a day. Surprisingly, I could even drink a cup of tea before going to bed and I had no trouble falling asleep.
But then gradually, something changed. I started getting occasional mild headaches. These seemed to occur mostly on the weekends when I typically drank less tea. After some self analysis, my wife and I came to the conclusion it was due to the reduction in caffeine intake that was causing the headaches. Simple solution — drink more tea on the weekends. Eventually the headaches increased in severity. I started getting skull splitting headaches. The pounding in my head was so intense, that even light hurt my eyes and I would feel sick to my stomach. I read that a little caffeine could help reduce headaches so I would drink a tea or a caffeinated soft drink to take the edge off.
A few years ago during an annual physical, I mentioned to my doctor that I was getting these sever headaches. He diagnosed them as low grade migraines and perscribed a migraine drug and Excedrine Migraine. The mgraine drug had to be taken before the start of the pain. Unlike many migraine suffers, I experienced little or no pre-migraine tells so the migrain drug was not effective. I only used it once and experienced little to no relief. The Excedrine Migraine pills worked great however. Come to find out, one of the principle ingrediants of Excedrine is caffeine.
Then about a year ago, I started waking up in the middle of the night with splitting headaches. Eventually, I was waking up three or four times a week in the middle of the night with sever neck and head pain. I thought it was the pillow I was using. A new pillow fixed the problem (or so I thought) for about two weeks then the headaches returned. My wife new someone who swore her nighttime headaches went away after she started using a wedge pillow. This pillow, which sells for $100.00, is made of some space-age foam and is ergonomically shaped to reduce sholder, neck and head strain. My wife bought one and the first few nights I slept without interuption. We both thought, the problem was solved. A hundred dollar pillow is worth every penny if it works. Then a week later, the headaches came back.
Then, last year at my annual physical, I talked to my doctor about the headaches. I told him that they were mostly happening in the middle of the night. He asked me how much caffeine I was consuming and when. I told him I was drinking five to six large cups a day. Without hesitating, he said he thought the headaches were brought on by caffeine withdrawal. He recommended that I cut back on caffeine.
I immediately started to reduce the caffeine by replacing half of the tea I drank with de-caf. A week later, I eliminated it all together.
This was nine months ago and I haven’t had a single headache since the first week without caffeine. Not one headache at night, during the day or on the weekends. I can’t believe that I have spent years suffering with headaches weekly or even daily all because of caffeine. I thank my doctor for changing my life every time I see him. Caffeine is very, very bad.
