Here ’s How Much Caffeine May Trigger a Migraine, According to a New Study

Caffeine can be both a treatment and a trigger for migraine headaches, which makes it difficult for sufferers to know how much to sip. Experts believe caffeine helps block adenosine, a molecule involved in migraine attacks, from binding to receptors in the brain, so many people use it as an at-home remedy; it’s also an ingredient in many over-the-counter migraine drugs. But, counterintuitively, some migraine sufferers also say consuming caffeine can bring on their debilitating headaches. “The complex thing with caffeine is sometimes it’s harmful and sometime it’s beneficial,” says Elizabeth Mostofsky, a cardiovascular epidemiology researcher at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. “It really amounts to the dose and the frequency of having it.” Mostofsky is a co-author on a new study published in the American Journal of Medicine that helps define that risk-benefit balance. The findings suggest that having three servings of caffeinated beverages such as coffee, tea and soda in a day seems to be the tipping point at which caffeine becomes a possible migraine trigger. (A serving is typically defined as eight ounces of coffee, six ounces of tea, 12 ounces of soda or two ounces of an energy drink. While caffeine content can vary from drink to drink, the study did not distinguish between types of caffeinated beverages.) For the study, researchers asked 98 adults who suffered two to 15 migraines per month to log their caffeine con...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized embargoed study Migraine Research Source Type: news