About three months ago I started getting debilitating headaches daily. They would almost always hit in the afternoon, and they'd last a few hours at a time. Some days they made working (or any other activity) pretty unbearable. A few times they would last longer than a few hours and I'd just go straight to bed after work because I couldn't handle them. In the beginning I would take two Excedrin migraine, and that would help. As one month of this turned into two, however, the Excedrin stopped being effective. Some days I had to resort to Hydrocodone to bear the pain. It was a miserable feeling knowing that every single afternoon I was probably going to get a headache. A couple times I actually had to miss an important event or activity because of my horrible headaches.
I first thought it might have to do with staring at a computer screen for hours every day at work, but I was getting the headaches on the weekends too. I had heard before that some people would get headaches if they went a couple hours without caffeine because they had built up an "addiction" to it. I didn't think this applied to me, because I was drinking sodas constantly and doubted it was withdrawal. But, this did raise another possibilty - maybe my constant caffeine intake was causing the headaches. I had increased my Sonic visits over the past few months, either stopping for a drink before work or during lunch most every day. I decided it was worth a shot to give up caffeinated drinks to see what would happen. The first few days were typical - still headaches in the afternoon. I was taking Excedrin to alleviate them, before realizing that Excedrin has a pretty high level of caffeine also. I stopped doing that and switched to a pain reliever without caffeine. A couple more days went by and the headaches were still pretty bad. I think those days might've been me experiencing withdrawal. After about 9 days of this, I had a day without a headache. It was amazing! I had forgotten what those days felt like. And then, another day and another day. After 5 days in a row of no headaches, I almost cried from joy. I can't believe I suffered through months of unnecessary pain, but I'm so thankful it was an "easy" fix. Now I strictly drink decaffeinated sodas, or water if none are available. It's kinda crazy to think about the harmful effects I was experiencing from something as "tame" as a diet soda. I'm just glad I figured this out and cured myself!
1 comment:
Hey that's great that your headaches are gone. You were taking some heavy duty drugs! I think my headaches are sometimes due to caffeine, but I've found out that are also very coordinated with my monthly cycles. My headaches are really awful up until I'm done. So I typically overload on caffeine and drugs until its over! Probably not the right thing at all, but it is the "easy fix"! LOL Thanks for the advice, I'll probably have to take it in a year! LOL
RC
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