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.
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.
But caffeine is not causing any headaches. Did I accidentally imply that somewhere? It’s rather enhancing the painkiller’s effect. In fact, a few times I drank around 14 espressos just for fun and curiosity, and I never got any headaches. Although, normally, if I don’t also drink a glass of water immediately afterwards, I have a reasonable chance of developing a headache, which is not due to dehydration, oddly enough, because drinking other hydrating substances (like milk in the coffee) does not help; It has to be water. Another reason to think this is that the headache can already start a few minutes in, which is way too fast for dehydration to happen.
I know this doesn’t add any value (and probably only confusion), but taking coffee at certain times, as well as sugar and other kind of (especially processed) foods, does indeed lead to headaches, but these moments are just random moments during the day (or week) which I can only just intuitively feel; so I can feel when they are ‘at play’, it’s like I’m just more ‘vulnerable’ to certain substances at these moments. That’s the only difference. Took me years to realize. I know this sounds wacky as hell. Way too weird and vague. Especially considering I have no allergies or any other medical condition whatsoever (same for family members). (Yes perhaps ADHD but even I doubt that to some extend.) So perhaps best to ignore this last paragraph, because I don’t know what to make of it, except being just sensitive.
I’m living in west europe. These blood pressure machines are actually not that expensive. God, I feel stupid to not have searched for this sooner. I even see the Omron devices for ~70 euros. I’m in great student loan debt but I’ll gladly make room for this device