Lately I've been drinking way too much soda pop. By Saturday evening, it seemed that I had reached the point where it was even beginning to irritate my esophagus and cause a minor bit of acid reflux. So, starting that night, I've been pop-free.
The main drawback to going cold-turkey when it comes to caffeine is the lack-of-caffeine-headache that ensues. Aspirin does little to help for this particular headache (as I can attest), and it wasn't until today (i.e. 2 days later) that my headache *finally* went away.
My goal is to see if I can keep it up the rest of the week.
Aspirin always does a good job on my caffeine withdrawl headaches, but I never really stopped cold turkey like you have. I can't take caffeine past 3 PM or I have trouble getting to sleep, so I may not be as extreme as you. I do get the headaches if I don't have my coffee or other caffeinated beverage in the morning, though.
Interesting thing about those headaches is that they are caused by the blood vessels in your brain swelling when you stop the caffeine from sending the tiny nerve impulses that keep them constricted. With all this vasal constrictive power of caffeine, you'd think that it would be bad for your heart or high-blood pressure, but they haven't found much of a problem there, from what I understand.
They have highly correlated caffeine intake with miscarages, so it's clear that it has some pretty powerful systemic effects.
No doubt in my mind at all, if caffeine were discovered today, it'd be prescription only.
Re:Caffeine withdrawl headache
gizmo_mathboy on 2002-09-03T03:20:27
I am very glad I've basically removed caffeine from diet. I only have it when I eat out and drink iced tea. I see it as a balance between having something relatively low in calories (I mix in some sugar), not as much caffeine (depends upon how it is brewed), and some taste. I could drink water but I guess I just like tea too much.
I do remember the awful headaches I would get in college when I stopped cold turkey on caffeine. I don't think average more than a 2 liter of Mountain Dew a day wasn't doing me any good. I can't recall if pain killers (over the counter) helped. I just toughed it out the best I could.
I think most of my caffeine headaches start behind my right eye (just to drift on this topic). Very odd.
So I stopped that immediately. I was dead tired and headachey and cranky for about a week.
But then the cool thing happened. I started waking up entirely on my own. No more caf cravings in the morning! And I started sleeping five hours instead of eight hours, and feeling refreshed!
And the best news was that my blood pressure went down to 110/70. Totally cool.
