Migraine

I watched an interesting podcast yesterday, of Dr. Richard Lipton talking about the difference between migraine and other headaches - the info was mainly quite basic, but he discussed one thing I'd never thought of before. You can watch the podcast here on Help my Hurt. He suggested that one of the reasons for more migraines on the weekend for some of us may be caffeine withdrawal - that if you're used to having caffeine at 7 a.m., say, on weekdays, and you get up at 9 on the weekend, you may already be in caffeine withdrawal when you wake up, and trigger a migraine that way!

I just did a blog post on this topic Here if you're interested. I know Teri has also come up with some great trigger-detective work on weekend migraines recently and wrote a great piece on Weekends, Sleep and Migraines, which was very helpful to me. I think in addition to the changing sleep hours and different foods, changes in my caffeine comsumption are probably a culprit.

Does this ring a bell for anyone else?

- Megs

I have to be careful about sleeping in on the weekends. I don't know whether it's caffeine withdrawal, or just the change in sleep patterns, but sleeping more than an hour or so late is a sure prescription for a nasty.

There are days when DH goes to the office early, and I don't make a pot of coffee for our customary coffee-in-bed ritual. I try to make sure I get a Diet Coke to ward off a caffeine-withdrawal headache.

Gretchen in Mississippi

I know I would definately get a migriane if I didn't have my coffee on the weekends... I know even before I started getting them all the time, if I slept more than 2 hours past my normal coffee time I would wake up with an awful headache.

It makes sense though. Caffiene is a vasco-constrictor, so if your used to it, and you don't have it, you end up over vasco-dialited.
(Oh, yeah, I spend way too much time on webMD!!! lol!!)