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I used to be a regular drinker of Diet Coke. I've quit now several times for up to a year. But then something will happen in which I really need to stay awake, say, while driving. Or once it was that I had an important test coming up in an hour and my mind was just dull and unresponsive. Other times I have had a bad headache and taken Excedrin (that has caffeine in it). Or it could be that I'd get very nauseated (which I've been lately) and nothing settles my tummy like Coke.
So anyway, the problem arises that after I take caffeine in any form for a day or so, I can't stop without having excruciating migraines, at times up to two weeks long. So now I'm in the situation that I want to stop. What do I do?
About 48 hours after my last caffeine fix I can feel a bad headache starting behind my eyes, in the back of my neck, and all over the inside of my head.
Every time I get through one of these, I vow that I will never, ever, under any circumstances, use caffeine again in any form. The months go by and I guess I forget how unpleasant it is to get off it.
I could stay on it all the time, I guess, but it disturbs my sleep and in the long run causes my fibro-myalgia and immune deficiency to get worse. In the short run, though, it helps me have energy to do things when otherwise I'd be completely exhausted. So I get tempted to use it and worry about the side effects later.
Anybody have any ideas of how to ease or eliminate the suffering from caffeine withdrawal? Would gradually tapering down help or would that just draw out the pain over a longer time?
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quote:Originally posted by scifibum: You could try for a placebo effect from caffeine free diet coke.
I doubt it would help. I learned that one the hard way a few years ago when the 7-11 was out of Diet Pepsi, so I got the Caffeine Free version instead... and after a thoroughly miserable day, I belatedly put two and two together and realized I had more of a caffeine dependency than I'd thought.
Tapering is probably worth a shot.
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Tapering off helps for me. If I go cold turkey I end up taking ibuprofin for the first three days and it's manageable after that.
I do the same thing -- get completely off and then either have a big project due, or am driving late at night, or "need" it for some other reason. I end up doing a caffeine de-tox three or four times a year.
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I quit drinking carbonated beverages 2 years, 3 months, and 6 days ago. I used to drink something with caffeine to fend off potential migraines, and my drink of choice was just plain old Pepsi. I didn't quit consuming caffeine altogether, as that would have eliminated of my favorite food groups -- chocolate. I just eliminated carbonated beverages. Part of my goal was to reduce the quantity of corn syrup and sugar I was consuming on a daily basis.
I've had two drinks since then: one was a rootbeer float, which I was halfway done consuming before I even noticed. The second was a fountain drink, because I just felt like it. (It tasted terrible after all that time...)
When I stopped, I gradually cut down to drinking something once every day or two. I substituted other drinks, so I wouldn't get sick of drinking plain old water. At the magic date, I just decided to stop. It was simple, psychologically...I just told myself I wouldn't drink pop anymore.
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I'm in the same boat. Went off soda for two years, got hooked on green tea, switched to black tea, and now I drink a coffee a week.
I want to quit but working 60 hrs a week is killing me. I say wean with water and pick a day to quit. I love water (result of 8 years doing choir) but I got sick after a few months. But a lemonade or glass of apple juice usually works to stem my sweet tooth.
Just drink lots of water and get some extra sleep when the withdrawl headaches kick. Just suck it up and let yourself detox. Good luck!
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I give up carbonated drinks for Lent every year, and I suffer through awful headaches for about a week until I'm fine, and I generally sleep better during Lent until I go back to drinking pop, which utterly wrecks my sleep cycle. Every year I tell myself I'm going to stay off the stuff, but then I drive by a a 7-11, and I just have to have a slurpee, and just like that it starts all over again.
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Something like this might help. (Not an endorsement of this specific brand.) Green tea has less caffeine ( both per ounce and per serving) than Diet Coke, and ginger can be useful in treating nausea. Might be helpful as a ween-off beverage.
posted
All soda is pretty much bad soda and kicking the soda habit is a great thing to do for your health. The caffeine withdrawal is really awful, but weaning yourself down and kicking the habit is worth it.
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Tatiana, it is not normal for headaches to persist two weeks after going off caffeine. At least for most people, the headaches only last three or four days, and they are not of the severity of migraines. And also for most people, it takes more than one or two days intake of caffeine to reach the point where you suffer withdrawal headaches when you quit. You must have something else going on. If you are subject to migraines, that may be a part of it. Perhaps you should regard caffeine as poison for you.
If you need something to help you stay awake in an emergency, you might try the asthma medication, Bronchaid (or Primatene), which is ephedrine sulfate. That is a stimulant. Be warned that it also may increase your heart rate slightly, and the packaging bears a warning not to use it if you have high blood pressure. But maybe it would not trigger the negative reactions that caffeine appears to do for you. In most states, you can buy Bronchaid or Primatene without a prescription, but you do have to request it from the pharmacist (they keep it in back), and you have to sign for it. The feds keep track of how much of it you buy in any given week, because street chemists can use the stuff as a step toward making methamphetamine. Ephedrine sulphate is indispensible for many asthma sufferers, however. I have had asthma all my life (mainly in my childhood), and Bronchaid is the one thing I knew would always work.
[ October 14, 2009, 09:19 AM: Message edited by: Ron Lambert ]
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As others have said, tapering off would probably be the best option. There are a couple ways you might go about doing that. One would be to space out your current fixes more and more. You could try drinking less Diet Coke for each one OR you could start substituting other less-caffeinated beverages (the scale for tea, at least, from higher to lower concentrations goes: black tea, oolong, green , white, teas labeled as decaf, and then red and herbal teas have NO caffeine). Here's a neat chart for the amount of caffeine in various beverages.
Similarly, if you find yourself giving in and taking an Excedrin, try cutting the dose and only taking more if you absolutely have to. As someone who also only seems to get headache (sometimes migraine) relief from Excedrin as opposed to other OTC drugs, it's better to start with a lower dose in this case and only take more if doesn't do anything to make it bearable.
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Trying eating some good dark chocolate. The caffeine content of chocolate is actually very low, but theobromine is a close analog so it might help moderate some of the withdrawal symptoms. I've looked through the literature and haven't found any studies which have found evidence for a physiological addiction to theobromine.
I don't know if it will work or not but it seems worth trying. I mean what's the worst thing that could happen? You eat chocolate and your head ache doesn't go away?
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Sterling, at least you didn't accidentally link to your work's home page. I did that a couple weeks back.
Rabbit, I suspect that addiction to chocolate is one of those things that is so assumed no one could get research money for it. Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Originally posted by rivka: Sterling, at least you didn't accidentally link to your work's home page. I did that a couple weeks back.
Rabbit, I suspect that addiction to chocolate is one of those things that is so assumed no one could get research money for it.
Not true. I'm doing research on chocolate chemistry currently and there have been several studies done on addictive properties of chocolate and a very large number on psychopharmacological effects of chocolate. Chocolate is psychologically addictive but there is no evidence to support physiological addiction or withdrawal.
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: Chocolate is psychologically addictive but there is no evidence to support physiological addiction or withdrawal.
This could explain why I never thought of myself as a chocoholic until someone gave me a day-by-day calendar with pictures of and facts about chocolate.
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Tatiana, Ron is right. Your reaction to caffeine does sound like a normal withdrawal response. While withdrawal can last as long as 2 weeks, withdrawal doesn't normally occur in people who only consume caffeine sporadically. Normally, you have to consume it regularly over an extended period to induce the physiological changes associated with addiction. If for some reason you become addicted very quickly, I would anticipate you would recover from addiction very quickly as well.
But then, your body seems to be unusual in very many ways.
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It's probably my inflammation that's causing the headaches to last so long for me. I have a C-reactive protein level of 20 where most people have less than 1, for instance. I also have a very high level of anti-nuclear antibodies. This means that any little thing tends to hit me like an F-5 tornado. I decided to quit caffeine to begin with because it seemed to be doing me harm, making me sicker by interfering with my sleep. I had originally started as a young child drinking coffee. My mother gave it to us. I think it must have been an early form of Ritalin.
Anyway, I've decided to taper off by using Excedrin, so I can know exactly what my daily dose is and easily steadily decrease it. So no more sodas at all for me. Coffee and tea aren't a problem now since I never drink them anymore, having stopped about a year before I joined the LDS church.
Thanks for the ideas, the strategies, and the background info. Somehow this helps tremendously more than just reading factual stuff on websites.
"But then, your body seems to be unusual in very many ways." That's definitely what I've found in general to be true for me. My situation never seems to follow the books. I didn't know if it was like that for everyone or if it was just me. Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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quote:"But then, your body seems to be unusual in very many ways." That's definitely what I've found in general to be true for me. My situation never seems to follow the books. I didn't know if it was like that for everyone or if it was just me.
I've kind of gathered that from the various health related things you've posted here. I hope you are finding somethings that are working for you.
If it were like that for everyone, there wouldn't be any books to follow but I think everyones body is unusual in some way or another. I wish doctors were better at listening to patients. We may not be experts in medicine, but we are often experts in our own bodies.
BTW, Have you ever been checked for gluten intolerance? It tends to be more common in people with other auto-immune disorders and some of the stuff you've said seems like it could be the result of abnormal adsorption and gut permeability issues.
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I got the test for celiac disease and it was negative. Is that definitive? My doctor seemed to think so but my son doesn't and avoids gluten anyway. He also had negative on his. So far I've not worried about gluten because I'm wary of trying to go with too restrictive a diet and setting myself up for failure (since I already have a lot of dietary restrictions). But your input could change that.
How do we know for sure what proteins to avoid and which to eat? Almost any protein could be an allergen, right? Lately I've been eating a lot of soy protein isolate, but there are those who say it's also a bad idea because of hexane used in the process of extracting it.
My son is in danger of becoming a breathetarian. I continue to eat things that don't seem to cause me personally any problems. I wish I were sure what was best.
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I'm afraid that all of the tests for Celiac have a lot of false negatives. The "gold standard" for diagnosis is still a positive response to the diet.
I was definitely diagnosed by duodenal biopsy about 12 years ago. The disease is genetic and my younger brother had classic symptoms for the disease. He had several different tests that all came up negative, finally he decided to try the diet. He was almost immediately better, then he decided it was a coincidence and binged on pancakes and went right back to being very ill. That convinced him so he's been on the gluten free diet for about 10 years. Its kind of odd in a way. I never had the classic digestive symptoms, my symptoms were a weird collection of things resulting from chronic malnutrition. After a month on the diet, the malnutrition stuff disappeared and I felt better than I ever had in my life, but I've never had a reaction to eating gluten that i could clearly identify. My brother, on the other hand, has never had a "definitive" diagnosis, and yet if he eats even a tiny bit of gluten, he has a severe strong reaction.
The gluten free diet is a very hard diet to follow and there is a lot of misinformation out there that can make it even harder than necessary. I don't think it would possible for me to follow it if I didn't have either a definitive diagnosis or a very clear and obvious reaction to gluten.
If you or your son have some specific systems you think might be due to gluten, its probably worth trying the diet but unless you are very strict about it, it may be hard to tell if its making a difference or not. The easiest way to make sure you are really gluten free is to avoid eating any processed foods. If you eat only fresh fruits, vegetables, meats and rice for a week or two and you see clear improvement -- then gluten intolerance is a good possibility. If you follow that diet strictly for a couple of weeks and don't see any clear change, then its almost certainly not gluten intolerance.
As a side note, if you do this test you will probably need to cut out dairy at first as well because the intestinal damage caused by gluten often results in lactose intolerance. The symptoms of lactose intolerance are often very similar to the symptoms of celiac disease even though the mechanism behind them is very different. So lactose intolerance could mask any improvement you are getting from cutting out gluten. The good news is that for most people with celiac, the lactose intolerance will go away once they've been on the gluten free diet long enough for the intestines to heal properly.
Food allergies and intolerances are often very hard to correctly identify so I understand your frustration.
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Rabbit, how do you find out if a food is gluten-free or not? My son read that even some rice has gluten, that they add it for some reason. He did look up that Mahatma, the brand we use, doesn't. Most things in the store, though, don't mention whether or not they have gluten, and my son says that it's often used as an additive in things you wouldn't expect.
So I get that eating only whole unprocessed foods would do the trick, but most vegan recipes have some things in them that are processed. Do you have any way of knowing for sure?
I think it's probably a good idea for us to try it for a month or two at least. Right now I have bread baking, lol. But I can plan to begin some time soon.
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As someone who suffers from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome which is a close cousin of Fibromyalgia, I would like to remind people of the obvious - coffee, or caffine, doesn't give you anything.
It doesn't give you energy, it only stimulates you to consume energy much much faster. I guess we could sum it up by saying that the candle that burns twice as hot, burn half as long.
For most normal people, they have sufficient vitality to overcome the energy loss created by caffeine. But for someone with an energy or vitality deficiency, excess consumption of caffeine can be down right dangerous.
Since I have this lack of vitality, I'm much more sensitive to the effects of caffeine. For me, my standard cup of coffee is 25% caffeinated, and 75% decaffeinated. One of those a day for two or three days, and I wake up absolutely craving coffee. Which indicates just how quickly the addiction kicks in.
If I wasn't so hyper aware of this, like most addicts, I would say I don't need a cup of coffee, I just want one. I can quite anytime I want. But, of course, we all know that isn't true.
I can get by with an occasional ice tea because they tend to be diluted. They don't bother me much, but even the 1/4 cup of coffee I typically drink is enough to start the cravings.
For me, more than a rare occassional cup of weak coffee, has many side effects, sleeplessness, headaches, even tiredness. If my energy is low, a cup of weak coffee will put me right to sleep, usually at a time when I shouldn't sleep, which means that when I need to sleep, I can't.
As to your headaches, I agree with others, it doesn't quite seem right; it seems more than caffeine withdrawals. It is possible, especially since you have fibromyalgia, that you have some type of inflammation that is relieved by the caffeine. But the caffeine is merely masking the symptom. I think you need to look at the underlying cause of the inflammation.
I know an asthma attack can be relieved by caffeine, so again, likely you are suffering some kind of underlying inflammation, that you are self-medicating with caffeine.
Not trying to scare you, just trying to put the events into perspective.
quote:Rabbit, how do you find out if a food is gluten-free or not? My son read that even some rice has gluten, that they add it for some reason. He did look up that Mahatma, the brand we use, doesn't. Most things in the store, though, don't mention whether or not they have gluten, and my son says that it's often used as an additive in things you wouldn't expect.
There is a great deal of misinformation out there on gluten. Don't believe most of what you read on the internet. One of the problems is that gluten is not a technical scientific term -- originally it meant any sticky substance. For example, there is a variety of rice that is called "glutenous rice". Its called that because its sticky. It does not contain the proteins related to gluten intolerance. You can buy "glutenous rice flour" -- oddly it is "gluten free".
To be technical accurate "gluten intolerance" is an autoimmune disorder triggered by a 33 amino acid peptide sequence found in the gliadin proteins of wheat, rye, barley and some closely related grains like spelt and kamut. It is not found in rice, corn or oats. To the best of my knowledge, no rice contains this particular peptide sequence and it is not added to any rice.
Gluten isn't listed generally listed as an ingredient in foods because it is rarely something that is added, its a natural part of the grains used to make the food. So anything that contains regular flour or is made from wheat will contain gluten. Labeling regulations have improved over the past decade so there are no longer as "hidden glutens" in processed foods. There are also a lot more products labeled "gluten free" although many of them tend to be overpriced.
You have to be quite strict with the diet to tell if it works because even small amounts of gluten can cause a reaction. That's why I recommend that if you are just testing it out you stick to fresh unprocessed foods. Then if it makes a clear difference you can put in the effort to figure out which processed foods you can eat.
I gave up being a vegetarian when I was diagnosed. Its not impossible to do and I still eat a lot of vegetarian meals but it is very hard to get complete protein from plant sources if you cut out wheat and all its close relatives.
Scientific American published and article on celiac disease in August. I browsed through it in an airport bookstore and it looks quite reliable but I have checked through all the details. My library doesn't subscribe to the online version and I haven't bothered to walk across campus to read the hard copy. I've become so spoiled by online resources.
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One other possibility that you might want to look into is Histamine intolerance. It can cause migraines and a wide variety of other systems that can be easily mistaken as food allergies. link
There is both a blood test and a stool test for this.
A german friend of mine who has suffered from what she thought were multiple food allergies for years was recently diagnosed with this. She had chronic migraines and numerous other mysterious symptoms which were correlated with eating dairy, fish, pork, tomatoes and a bunch of other things. They found that she had an intestinal bacteria that was producing large amounts of histamine. She was treated with an acidophilus cocktail for a month. Not only her are migraines and other symptoms completely gone but she is now able to eat small amounts of dairy and other foods that she had previously been "allergic" to without any difficulties.
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I find it surprising how increasingly more people are being diagnosed with celiac disease (gluten intolerance). I was in the hospital recently for surgery to correct a hiatal hernia that had just become strangulated (at first I thought I was having heart attack), and when I was out in ICU recovering, I stated that I had celiac disease, and (when I could eat) I was given a diet that was gluten free. So the hospital dieticians were already well-informed about celiac disease. The menu list they gave me to choose from had a legend at the top that said "Non-Glut." I thought that was rather funny, hospital food that was non-glut. As if anyone would want to glut themselves on it. One of my nurses said that she had celiac disease, too.
Rabbit, like you, I had preferred a vegetarian diet, but after realizing I had celiac disease and should avoid anything with wheat, rye, barley, etc., it seemed too restrictive to remain strictly vegetarian. The meat I eat is mainly poultry and fish. I still will not use any pork products or shellfish. But so many common foods have wheat in them, it is hard to find enjoyment in food when avoiding them and also being vegetarian. The meat analogs, like Linketts and Fri-Chik (produced by companies like La Loma and Worthington) have concentrated wheat gluten along with the soy protein, so they are out. Even the Morningstar Farms meatless sausage and mock bacon and mock chicken patties and burgers have pure gluten as an ingredient. I used to love that stuff! *Sigh*
About oats--there is some dispute about whether oats are OK for celiacs. The only grains I know for sure are safe are rice and corn. They contain a protein called gluten too, but it is sufficiently different from the gluten in wheat, etc., that it is no problem.
Principal symptoms of celiac disease are diarrhea (my sister had it so bad she had to be hospitalized for dehydration), and for me, frequent skin itching. Immodium helps with the diarrhea.
Getting back to Tatiana's topic, after spending a week in the hospital where I was completely off caffeine (the headaches were pretty much smoothered by the Vicodin I was given for pain), I decided to stay off. I even cut down on cola.
[ October 15, 2009, 10:52 AM: Message edited by: Ron Lambert ]
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Hey, I finally found something Ron and I can mostly agree on.
quote:About oats--there is some dispute about whether oats are OK for celiacs. The only grains I know for sure are safe are rice and corn. They contain a protein called gluten too, but it is sufficiently different from the gluten in wheat, etc., that it is no problem.
Yes, there has been a lot of controversy but all the recent (last 10 years) scientific studies are very convincing that oats themselves do not contain the peptide sequence that causes celiac disease and that most celiacs can eat them without adverse reactions.
There is still concern about oats being contaminated with wheat since they are frequently harvested and processed using the same equipment used for wheat, rye and barley. My brother and I have both been eating oats for several years now without ill effect.
Teff, montana rye grass, sorghum and millet have also been confirmed as gluten free grains.
Amaranth, Quinoa and buckwheat are also gluten free (though you may find some controversy about that as well). These seeds aren't even in the grass family and there is no evidence they contain proteins with any similarity to those that cause celiac disease. I've been eating all of these since I was diagnosed and do very well on them.
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quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: The menu list they gave me to choose from had a legend at the top that said "Non-Glut." I thought that was rather funny, hospital food that was non-glut. As if anyone would want to glut themselves on it.
:: laugh ::
quote:The meat analogs, like Linketts and Fri-Chik (produced by companies like La Loma and Worthington) have concentrated wheat gluten along with the soy protein, so they are out. Even the Morningstar Farms meatless sausage and mock bacon and mock chicken patties and burgers have pure gluten as an ingredient. I used to love that stuff! *Sigh*
You might look into Quorn, a mycoprotein-based meat substitute. I'm not positive that it's gluten free, but I'd guess that it is.
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For what its worth, here is what it says about gluten on the quorn website
quote:Both our Quorn Chicken-Style Tenders and Turkey-Style Roast are free from added gluten, but it is important to note that both of these items are produced in a facility that also processes gluten products.
I'm pretty lax about eating things that might contain traces of wheat, but it sounds like these are made in a facility that also make seitan (pure wheat gluten) and that stuff gives me the willies.
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Ah, that's too bad. And if that's all they're saying, the implication is that the rest of their products (and they are legion) do contain gluten.
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Not too bad for me. Even in my pre gluten free vegetarian days I very rarely ate fake meat products.
I can get gluten free soya chunks that are great in curries. That's how I discovered them in the first place.
The real problem is that its really hard to get complete protein from vegetable sources if you can't eat grains in the wheat family. Its not impossible, but its more work than I'm willing do.
I enjoy variety and I get a lot of pleasure from eating good food. There are only so many things you can cut out of your diet and still do that. I could do it cutting meat out of my diet. I can do it cutting gluten out of my diet, but cutting out both is really very difficult.
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Rabbit, have you come across any gluten-free bread that is acceptable? Bread made from rice flour is pretty heavy, and not really satisfying. It does help if they add tapioca flour and a little flax seed. But I pine for a fresh-baked loaf of Italian bread.
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Any gluten-free bread will be heavy -- it's gluten that allows bread to rise. It forms the network of bubbles.
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I read the article in SciAm. It was saying the leaky gut is possibly the source of all these auto-immune problems. Based on that I think I will be more diligent about taking my probiotics, which it said do help.
Thanks for the information. Based on The China Study and other books I've read, I'm trying to stick to a Plant Based Whole Foods (PBWF) diet. I think that will be fairly easy to omit gluten from, actually. I've been branching out, since I got tired of eating the few things I have learned how to make on that diet. That's what got me started baking bread. Also I've had recurrent bouts of random nausea lately, and the PBWF diet doesn't seem to help that much. So I've gotten some crackers and sweet drinks, yogurt, cheese, things that tend to settle my tummy.
I guess I need to get off all that and go back to the pure PBWF diet that was making me feel better. That one doesn't include any dairy, and it's fairly easy just to eat oats and rice and skip wheat or rye.
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All too true, rivka. What we need is a good gluten substitute, something else that will produce a "network of bubbles." Flax seed extract is gooey and sticky. Marsh mallow extract is puffy. Amaranth can be popped like popcorn. If I were a food chemist, that is where I would start.
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And two food chemists at the USDA Western Regional Research Laboratory have done it -- methylcellulose. It's a gum extracted from cellulose fiber and can be added to rice flour to mimic the effects of gluten.
Available at some health-food stores or by mail-order.
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Hmm. It's a binder and thickener, but I'm not convinced it would act very similarly to gluten.
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I'll have to check it out sometime. I know several health food places that would be extremely likely to carry something like that.
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But not very well. I've been doing gluten free baking for 12 years now and I've worked with a variety of "gluten substitutes" including methyl cellulose, xanthan gum, guar gum, locus bean gum, and none of them work all that well.
You can get bread and cakes and things that are light an fluffy enough, but you don't get the elasticity you get with gluten so you can't get flaky textures like you would with good croissant or the light but chewy texture you'd get in a good brotchen.
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Well, yeah. The last time I was cooking for someone with gluten issues I was in my whole-grain baking phase. So light and flakey croissants were not on the menu anyway.
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For the record, tapering is working well so far. I'm down to 1/2 an Excedrin tablet per day (33 mg caffeine) and that's keeping the headaches at bay. I've had low-grade headaches but nothing even approaching the normal ice-picks-jammed-into-the-eye-sockets caffeine withdrawal agonies.
I'll just stretch that out to 2 days, 3 days, 4 days, and see if that works. It's not so convenient to break the tablets into quarters, but if this doesn't work, I guess I'll use a pill splitter to take it down to 16mg or 1/4 tablet. Surely that will be low enough to let me simply drop it after a bit.
Did I say that once I get off this I'm never, ever, ever going to use caffeine again for any reason? (laughs)
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