Pain relievers may offer quick relief for occasional headaches. But there's a limit. If you find yourself taking pain medication more than two or three days a week, you may actually be contributing to your headaches rather than easing them. It's a cycle known as rebound headaches.
The cycle starts when you take too much headache medication — more than the label instructs or your doctor prescribes. Soon, your body adapts to the medication. You may not even realize that you've been dosing yourself too often until you miss a day and your head starts to hurt again — sometimes more intensely than before.
So please be careful when taking common medications such as aspirin, acetaminophen (Tylenol, others) and ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin, others). And especially Excedrin.
Hello,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your story.
I also have a similar story.
I have been suffering from almost daily low-grade headaches for most of my adult life. I don't know why, but I just assumed that headaches were a part of life and I would pop a couple of Excedrin or Tylenol or whatever I could get my hands on and soldier on. Needless to say, I wasn't very pleasant to be around and I had a lot of trouble focusing on anything.
In the winter, the headaches would get worse and like you I would assume it was related to my sinuses. So I would head to the pharmacy and self-medicate with cold-medications.
About six weeks ago, I got a cold. The coughing was uncontrollable and started causing an extremely sharp pain on the left side of my head. After coughing for several minutes, I would faint. So for the first time in my life, I figured I had better get this checked out. The fainting led me to a neurologist, who dianosed me with transformed migraines.
I rejected his diagnosis at first. I had always thought of migraines as the blinding, debilitating type of headaches that leave people writhing on the floor in agony. However, a very high resolution MRI of my head revealed that, in fact, I do have migraines. According to my doctor, I suffer from Chronic Daily Headaches or Transfromed Migraines which were made worse by overuse of pain medication which led to rebound headaches.
I am totally of the pain medication now and I am now taking Topomax which my doctor tells me will cure me of my migraines and totally transform my life. I am not holding my breath, but it sure would be nice to go through life without daily headaches. To tell you the truth, I can't even imagine what it would be like to live without headaches.
As I mentioned before, I have been living with these headaches since I was a teenager; I am now 36 years old. I thought it was normal. I was shocked to find out after talking with my doctor and then talking with family and friend to find out that most people don't have regular headaches. I really did think that most people had headaches on most days. So to anybody out there who is suffering from headaches like I am: it isn't normal! Go get yourself checked out!
I understand completely. I am a 45 year old female that took Excedrin every day for over 20 years. It took me two entire weeks off (used sick time) to detox my body, and it was no fun. Think of an intense migraine that lasts 10 days. I still get migraines frequently. But I do not wake up with a daily headache, and I don't have stomach issues from too many Excedrin. I am able to take Zomig when I get a migraine, and try to stay away from trigger foods, alcohol and especially caffeine.
ReplyDeleteHere's another reason to get yourself off the aspirin if you are hooked. In 2008, I broke my ankle. I was put in a cast for 6 weeks. When the 6 weeks was over, and my cast came off, not only had my bones not completely healed, but my leg was still swollen and black and blue. When the nurse found out about my Excedrin use, she really gave me a lecture and said that was the problem. Your bones don't heal properly and the swelling and bruising would not go away because of all the asprin I had saturated my system with. That was the scare that led me to buy a great book about headaches (Heal Your Headache The 1-2-3 Program-by David Buchholz MD). Reading that book finally gave me the courage to go Cold Turkey and get off Excedrin for good.
P.S. I haven't taken an Excedrin for a year and 1/2 now.
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