| "So I went and got a can of Coke and drank it during work. As this was essentially my first caffeine experience, I was highly sensitive and became instantly wired. " Well, that shows how large the difference in response to caffeine can be between individuals. Unfortunately, caffeine has very little effect on me, I can drink several cups of espresso coffee last thing at night and it has no apparent effect on my sleep. I remember when studying using five or more heaped teaspoons of Moccona instant coffee per cup to help stay awake and it was pretty useless even though the coffee was so strong it was just about undrinkable. I also had the same lack of response with super strong brewed coffee. The writer makes the point that caffeine can trigger migraines and I've also heard this often over the years. This seems somewhat paradoxical because many migraine medications contain caffeine and have done so for a better part of a century. For example ergotamine—the principal migraine medication before sumatriptan became popular—was usually compounded with caffeine and occasionally diphenhydramine in the ratio of 1/100/20mg respectively. So a migraine tablet had the equivalent amount caffeine of a treasonably strong cup of coffee. Same goes for other headache medications, caffeine is often mixed with paracetamol/acetaminophen in the ratio of 100/500mg or about 100/325mg for aspirin. I've often wondered why if caffeine promotes migraine then why is it used in migraine medications? The only reason I can think of is that for most people caffeine actually helps relieve their migraine. Presumably, caffeine works synergistically with the main ingredient. |