Caffeine withdrawal can cause one heck of a headache

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February 13, 2012

Would your sweetheart rather have a fresh romantic cup of coffee than a bouquet of flowers?

Half of all people say they would. And about a third of females say they would sacrifice their sweetheart for a week rather than give up coffee for those seven days.

A recent survey by Dunkin’ Donuts shows that coffee is an everyday stop for many Americans and romantic enough to be the setting for that first date.

But don’t talk to me of springtime or just about anything. I haven’t the patience.

I have had such a headache. And it’s too late for a latte.

I woke up last week with a major headache, and it seemed to be located somewhere behind my eyes. It just wouldn’t go away and several sets of aspirin-like painkillers lessened the pain but only for a short time. I was actually too ill to keep an appointment for a monthly checkup.

I couldn’t figure it out, but my good wife suggested that it might be caused by caffeine withdrawal. I hadn’t had a cup of coffee in a couple of days, and even though I have a stock of decaf and a coffeemaker in the office, I realized that each time I went to Publix I got a free cup of coffee, and every day on the way to class, I was stopping at the school bookstore to to fill up. All of this was caffeinated. And diet cokes also contain caffeine.

I was fooling myself along these lines. I felt good when I drank coffee. And you’re talking to someone with high blood pressure to begin with.

And, so, finding it had backfired on me, the current talk about the perils of caffeine ring true.

Probably not just in coffee, but in the widely advertised, powerful new caffeine drinks and potions which promise to renovate your life with extra energy.

All of this can ricochet.

CNN reports that 80 to 90 percent of North Americans will take in caffeine every day and half will suffer from what is called “caffeine withdrawal symptom.” At Emory University, caffeine “dependency” was studied by Dr. Michael Kuhar, a neuroscientist at the Yerkes Primate Research Center, who concluded that a person who skips a cup of coffee or a soda can complain of “headache, fatigue, sleepiness, inability to focus and concentrate.”

Irritability, anxiety, depression and flu-like symptoms were also reported.

Am I irritable? Hah. Just don’t ask me any questions that require any kind of thought on my part. Don’t give me anything to think about. Take the remote control away, because I keep switching through programs.

Fortunately, things have gotten a bit better and I actually began to realize this morning how far I had departed from my normal behaviors, which, to some people, are probably questionable anyway.

Frank Sinatra notwithstanding, and he sang “there’s an awful lot of coffee in Brazil,” I think its time to reconsider my coffee habit. Coffee “addiction” can cause, according to one website, adrenal exhaustion where people feel overworked even while drinking coffee; high blood sugar because people reach for something sweet like a donut or flavored syrups; insomnia, depression, dehydration (caffeine is a diuretic); malnutrition because of sugary foods; and other maladies.

Today, caffeine supplements are actually being merchandised in vitamin stores. Students are urged to take caffeine to improve study skills. Recognizing the dangers, the International Olympic Committee has dubbed a high concentration of caffeine in urine as a disqualification.

That’s about five cups of coffee, which has about 90-150 mg. of caffeine per cup. Soft drinks range from 20 to more than 60 mg. The drink Monster Energy has 160 mg. Tea ranges from 30-70 mg a cup. http://www.talkaboutcoffee.com/how_much_is_too_much2.html

The “winner” here is the “alertness” pill Vivarin with 200 mg. http://www.drugs.com/sfx/vivarin-side-effects.html

There is an old saying that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I’m not ready to dig a hole and bury all the coffee in the house, but right now it doesn’t seem like a bad idea.