I normally drink a single cup of home-brewed coffee each morning with breakfast, and then I’m good for the day. It’s usually Starbucks, but back in 2006 I had a cup of really tasty stuff at a local restaurant, so I asked what it was (Douwe Egberts), and then ordered a couple of bags of grounds over the internet so I could brew my own at home.
Shortly after starting to drink this stuff at home I began experiencing severe headaches that ibuprofen wouldn’t help. It was a very specific headache with severe throbbing in the right/rear/lower part of my skull, always the same. I didn’t connect it with the coffee at first, and a doctor’s visit (including an MRI) came up with nothing. I ended up with a prescription for Midrin which helped me out, and after a couple of weeks I finally made the mental connection with the change in coffee brand; I stopped drinking the DE coffee, and a day or two later the headaches went away for good.
Fast forward to this week. Trying to combat some severe jet lag, Tuesday and Wednesday morning I drank a cup of coffee from McDonald’s (in addition to my usual cup of Starbucks coffee from home). Both mornings I developed a headache, although ibuprofen helped. It’s the same sort of headache (throbbing in right/rear/lower part of my skull) that I experienced six years ago, although not quite as severe.
This morning (Thursday), I skipped the McD’s coffee and instead brought a thermos of Starbucks home-brew in to work. So same amount of coffee as the previous two mornings - but no headache.
So what’s going on? What’s in DE and McDonald’s coffee that’s giving me these headaches?
When speaking in generalities, the usual culprit in coffee that can cause headaches is caffeine.
Ironically, many migraine remedies contain a combination of drugs, including caffeine.
In your case, it’s probably a sensitivity to one of the volatile compounds in the particular coffees themselves. The origin of the beans, the roast, and any flavoring additives all combine together to give you the cup of magic.
Consider yourself EXTREMELY fortunate. By a bit of trial and error, you seem to have found what triggers your headaches. Lay in a doomsday supply of your favored brand, and only test drive other coffees with appropriate analgesics on hand!
~VOW
Hate to say this, my friend, but this sounds like you may be a victim of occipital neuralgia. I’ve suffered from it for many years (and doctors never got a clue about it) until finally my girlfriend & I got on the internet and figured it out for ourselves. It’s a nasty, nasty condition. It feels to me like a railroad spike being hammered into my skull and it can be incapatitating. For me, the specific triggers can be stress, cold, or poor cervical spine posture. If your problem does turn out to be occipital neuralgia, I have no idea why coffee would trigger yours, unless it had a higher level of caffeine and was stressing you out or maybe there are other triggering compounds present that I don’t know about.
That’s why I figured the caffeine itself probably wasn’t the problem: the same amount of coffee, but from a different brand, didn’t induce the headaches. Moreover, back in grad school, I could literally drink an entire pot of coffee by myself and not have any headaches (although this was 15 years ago, so age may have changed things).
Johanna, thanks for the info on occipital neuralgia; that site and your description of your symptoms match pretty closely what I experienced.