For those who find caffeine is a rescue drug, how much caffeine would be needed?
I have put this to the test on three occasions recently and I needed half a can of diet coke with cherry to remedy the headache, I tried it on a migraine but it just made me feel nauseous and didn’t clear the migraine. I found it works best on just a headache. Angela
i thought caffeine was a big no no!! causes rebounds etc!!
Yes you would get rebound if you drank it all the time. If you abstain for the majority of the time, consuming some when you have a headache does actually work although it does sound weird.
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Yes you would get rebound if you drank it all the time. If you abstain for the majority of the time, consuming some when you have a headache does actually work although it does sound weird.
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Hi Ang. I once had a lumbar puncture and they said that if I got a bad headache from it . I came across the idea of caffeine as a headache cure in this paper and wondered what dose of caffeine would be needed for migraine.
bja.oxfordjournals.org/content/9 … l.pdf+html
— Begin quote from “Lumbar Puncture Paper”
Caffeine is a central nervous system stimulant that amongst
other properties produces cerebral vasoconstriction. I.V.
caffeine 0.5 g was recommended as a treatment of postdural
puncture headache in 1944.62 It is available in an oral
and i.v. form. The oral form is well absorbed with peak
levels reached in 30 min. Caffeine crosses the blood±brain
barrier and the long half-life of 3±7.5 h allows for infrequent
dosing schedules.
The most frequently quoted work on the treatment of
post-dural puncture headache with caffeine is that of
Sechzer. He evaluated the effects of one or two 0.5 g
doses of i.v. caffeine on subjects with established post-dural
puncture headache. There are some statistical and methodological
flaws in this study, but it was concluded that i.v.
caffeine is an effective therapy for post-dural puncture
headache.
Dose
The dose now recommended for the treatment of post-dural
puncture headache is 300±500 mg of oral or i.v. caffeine
once or twice daily.12 66 One cup of coffee contains about
50±100 mg of caffeine and soft drinks contain 35±50 mg.
The LD50 for caffeine is of the order of 150 mg kg±1.
However, therapeutic doses have been associated with
central nervous system toxicity, and atrial ®brillation.
Mode of action
It is assumed that caffeine acts through vasoconstriction of
dilated cerebral vessels. If cerebral vasodilatation were the
source of the pain, cerebral vasoconstriction might limit the
pain experienced. Indeed, it has been demonstrated that
caffeine causes a reduction in cerebral blood flow,116 but
this effect is not sustained. Caffeine therapy is simple to
administer compared with the technical skills required to
perform an epidural blood patch. Were caffeine as successful
as suggested by previous reports, it would no doubt be
widely advocated. However, a North American hospital
survey of the treatment of post-dural puncture headache
identi®ed that most hospital practitioners had abandoned the
use of caffeine as they had found it ineffective.8 The effects
of caffeine on post-dural puncture headache seem, at
best, temporary. In addition, caffeine is not a therapy
without complications, and does not restore normal CSF
dynamics, thus leaving the patient at risk from the serious
complications associated with low CSF pressure.*
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