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Coffee and Headaches
January 18, 2010: 0 comment(s)
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Ever miss your morning coffee and get a pounding headache? Researchers from the University of Vermont College of Medicine wanted to understand what most coffee drinkers already know: when they stop drinking their coffee they feel tired, less alert, less energetic, can’t concentrate as well and they get a headache.
In order to understand why these symptoms take place Dr. Stacey Sigmon and others looked at brain electrical activity and blood flow to the brain in order to explain the biological mechanisms of acute caffeine withdrawal.
The investigators examined two different study groups. One group took a caffeine capsule and the other group took a placebo that contained no caffeine. Neither group knew if they were taking a placebo or the real caffeine capsule. After taking the capsules for several days the participants then stopped taking their capsules, a condition that mimics the acute caffeine withdrawal of coffee drinkers. Next the blood flow to the brain, the brain electrical activity via an EEG and a self-reported questionnaire was used to evaluate the findings of each group.
What the scientist found provided a glimpse into the biological activity that accompanies acute caffeine withdrawal. The group that was taking the caffeine capsules and then stopped, had increased blood flow to the brain. The increased brain blood flow is believed to be responsible for the pounding headache, drowsiness and decreased mental alertness from acute caffeine withdrawal.
In addition, acute caffeine abstinence produced changes in the electrical activity of the brain noted by the EEG with increased theta rhythm that had been previously associated with the fatigue of coffee drinkers who missed their morning cup. The study group taking the caffeine capsules with these abnormal EEG findings also reported symptoms of feeling “tired” “fatigued” or “weary”.
What surprised researchers is that they could discover no real benefits to the long term use of caffeine.
According to investigator Stacey Sigmon PhD, “In contrast to what most of us coffee lovers would think, our study showed no difference between when the participant was maintained on chronic placebo and when the participant was stabilized on chronic caffeine administration. What this means is that consuming caffeine regularly does not appear to produce any net beneficial effects, based on the measures we examined.”
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