Hunting Headaches – 2 Years Later

Two years ago I began tracking headache data. Fresh off of other health victories such as getting lean, curing my rosacea and ending back pain, I was confident that with enough data and experimentation I could eliminate or greatly reduce my night headaches.

I never thought this experiment would go on for two years.

The good news is I’ve eliminated so many suspects. The bad news is I haven’t won this battle and it appears that the one variable that I’ve found is most correlated with the headaches is my good friend coffee.

When I dropped my caffeine levels super low in October, my headache levels dropped to an all-time low. Since then I’ve been gradually increasing my coffee levels with a plan to cut back again once the sun arrived to Seattle. The reintroduction of higher coffee levels would also provide more points of data. I’m not a statistical guru, but this pattern seems clear.

Month	Daily Coffee Average	Daily Headache Average
Oct 2012	0.00	0.58
Nov 2012	1.13	0.70
Dec 2012	1.77	1.10
Jan 2013	1.71	1.03
Feb 2013	2.71	1.07
Mar 2013	3.25	1.46

As the average coffee level increases, so does the average daily headache intensity.

This chart shows 2 years worth of data. On three cases when my average coffee intake spiked, my average headache intensity increased. And the two cases where I drastically cut back on coffee, average headaches intensity noticeably dropped. Now before someone says correlation does not imply causation, this is all I have to work with. Weather patterns, food restriction or taking a battery of nutritional supplements showed zero correlation.

Espresso Endgame

Why did I increase my coffee levels so much recently? The primary reason is that I pulled my espresso machine out of storage and placed it back on the kitchen counter. Espresso has less caffeine than brewed coffee, but is far more addicting. When you nail a perfect espresso shot, it provides a flavor stimulus that brewed coffee can’t even come close to hitting. As my flavor stimulus increased, so did my consumption level. When I did the detox, I intentionally used a flavor deconditioning strategy which I described in the article A Month Without Coffee.

This sucks, but I’m now convinced I need to sell my espresso machine. I’ll save my espresso drinking for the cafes. Let us hope that is enough. If not, I may have to move away from Seattle. My guess is having an espresso addiction in Seattle is like having a gambling addiction in Vegas.