I often take painkillers (acetaminophen aka paracetamol), but I’ve noticed that it’s much more effective if I take them TOGETHER with my ADHD medication (ritalin aka methylphenidate) + my morning coffee. If I don’t take them AT the same time, the painkiller is far less effective.
I do not exceed the maximum dosage of painkiller (1gram per intake, mornings), but alone this would barely suffice to kill my morning headache.
My hypothesis is that since the LIVER has to convert all three, I am effectively overdosing on either substance (painkiller or ADHD meds), and damaging my liver in the process.
Talk to your doctor, do not get medical advice from the internet, it is too risky.
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Long time headache adventurer here.
You are basically making a homemade Excedrin (acetaminophen + aspirin + caffeine). Stimulants cause your body to metabolize the pain reliever more quickly.
As for if you’re ruining your liver, I can’t say, other than you should probably go see you doctor and ask for a blood panel/ liver function test. Even if your liver values are normal, you’ll know for sure, and have a baseline to compare future tests against. Plus your doctor may have some thoughts on why you’re having a headache everyday.
For me it turned out that while i had acceptable blood pressure, it was high “for me”, and a beta blocker took care of the most frequent headaches. But we didn’t figure that out until we had ruled out a whole bunch of other things.
It was a frustrating journey to be sure. I wish you luck in yours.
Perhaps you’re hitting the nail on the head. My blood pressure is apparently normal (at least during the day). But perhaps it is indeed too high for me. It feels plausible but idk what that is worth. I’m going to ask my doctor to test this idea. Not sure yet which med for lowering blood pressure is good. I thought that Beta blockers were specifically for headache patients. Perhaps this is why… Also, apparently ACE inhibitors and ARBs are also blood pressure lowering agents. Any experience with those…?
Two things:
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Generally when you take medicine with high acidity food, like coffee, it will break down your medicine prematurely - you won’t get as strong as an effect. I had to stop taking my Vyvanse with orange juice because it basically nullified the medicine.
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Talk to your doctor. I had chronic headaches that I found out were related to low blood pressure and dehydration. Drinking water instead of diuretics, like coffee, immensely helped me.
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Wrong question, I would argue. If you have a morning headache, you should really find the root of that and try to resolve it making the medication unnecessary.
I know, but I’ve headaches since I was about 10 (now almost ~30), and the only causes for this that I can seriously come up with is: being sensitive af in general, which then leads to being (subconsciously) easily stressed, which then, results in headache. This happens during the day, but I also (more) frequently wake up with a headache for no reason. This even happens in the summer, when I’m not doing ANYthing (no school, university, work). I am generally perfectly healthy. I am hydrated, eat healthy, etc. I don’t exercise an awful lot, but when I do (for months), I barely notice any difference.
Being “sensitive” (whatever that means exactly) is the only weird but plausible explanation. Reading the other comments, though, like sleep apnea, I’m curious if that’s anything…
But did you talk about it with a medical trained person ? In the end its just a damaged nerve in your neck or sonething that can be easily fixed with proper care.
I did many times but most of the time I was just advised to “try eating and sleeping better” which I kind of already did, but improving those did not make a difference whatsoever. I also went to many physiotherapists and one manual orthopedic doctor. Nothing was ever improved.
Except one time when I went to a acupuncturist who also added some spiritual woo, and that actually remedied a part of it.
That combined with what you mentioned about cannabis triggering your headache sounds like the issue might be your trigeminal nerve (my guess mylohyoid) or similar nerve branch in the neck area. Sleeping likely causes it because there’s constant pressure on it at night as you sleep.
An orthopedic pillow might help, something such as this for example: https://www.amazon.com/Osteo-Cervical-Odorless-Adjustable-Orthopedic/dp/B09964WTF5?th=1&psc=1
Alternative hypothesis would be it’s blood pressure related, perhaps orthostatic hypotension or fluctuating hypertension - you can test this by getting a good blood pressure machine and checking in the morning before you get up from bed without moving much, immediately after sitting up, immediately after standing, and then stay standing still for 1 minute and take again.
Probably don’t need the coffee by the way considering the medicine you take (Ritalin)
Wow interesting! I’ll be saving for a pillow like this. I thought about measuring blood pressure in the morning, as well. But I doubt these things come cheap. I’m curious though how you linked cannabis is causing headache to, nerves in my neck area might be causing headaches. I’ve been cooking up a lot of potential (intermediate) causes, but nothing like this.
Trigeminal nerve pain can be triggered/worsened by an enlarged vein pushing against the nerve at just the right spot. Cannabis causes hypotension via vasodilation, hence the potential trigger.
The thing is, veins don’t grow perfectly parallel, which means hypertension can also cause pain via vasoconstriction, if the vein slightly spirals around the nerve and also constricts; think like a snake wrapped around an arm and squeezing. So it’s possible both localized vasodilation and vasoconstriction are causing these headaches, considering the times the headache is worst ("cannabis use or after waking up) and mild but constant (after stimulants like caffeine).
If your pressure is a bit high during the day, a very small dose of a vasodilator drug taken after your medication would normalize it and that would, hopefully, stop the pain overall. You could still have orthostatic blood pressure issues too, but certain mild exercises can help with those too (assuming there’s no other underlying blood flow issues).
But there’s not enough data to say conclusively, hence taking your blood pressure as directed, as well as throughout the day sitting (after sitting at least 3 minutes without moving much) to see if there’s any abnormalities with it, as well as the orthopedic pillow. If the pillow helps it also narrows down the cause.
That said, if it’s the trigeminal nerve and you can’t control the veins there well through medication… Good luck I suppose. Most surgeons won’t want to cauterize because of mild (yet constant) pain. Acupuncture could achieve the same result, but that would be a scary gamble, because there’s also potential they hit the nerve wrong with the micro needle and instead worsen the pain. That would be a last result solution, assuming it’s the trigeminal nerve causing you issues.
Forgot to mention, don’t know where you live, but Omron makes good enough yet affordable blood pressure machines. Just don’t ever get anything for the wrist.
Many countries have lowered the max dosage of Paracetamol from 1000mg since there’s indeed a worry that it will cause liver damage. I’m in one of the countries that still go with 1000 (Sweden) and my suggestion would be to use 500mg Paracetamol and 400mg Ibuprofen taken together instead. That’s what the medical professionals themselves do.
That said, something in your life is causing you to have morning headaches and it’s a better idea to fix that. Regular painkiller usage is one of the things that causes it (!). Other possibilities can be waking up during the wrong sleep cycle (deep vs light), sleep apnea causing bad sleep in general, overdosing on caffeine causing withdrawal symptoms in the morning etc.
/Not a medical professional
It’s shockingly easy to OD on acetaminophen. I don’t think you are; i just think it’s interesting how a few Tylenol plus a couple doses of cold medicine can be serious.
