

Three coffees a day a migraine risk: study

Three cups of coffee a day are enough to brew up a migraine, new research suggests.
For those who experience episodic migraine, one to two servings of caffeinated drinks were not associated with headaches on that day.
But three or more were associated with higher odds of migraine headache on the same day, or the following day, the study suggests.
Migraine is a disabling primary headache disorder affecting approximately 1.04 billion adults worldwide.
In the prospective cohort study, 98 adults with frequent episodic migraine completed electronic diaries every morning and every evening for at least six weeks.
Every day, they reported the total servings of caffeinated coffee, tea, soft and energy drinks they consumed.
They also filled out twice daily headache reports detailing the onset, duration, intensity and medications used for migraines since the previous diary entry.
Scientists used a self-matched analysis, comparing an individual's incidence of migraines on days with caffeinated beverage intake to their incidence of migraines on days when they had no caffeinated drinks.
This eliminated the potential for factors such as sex, age, and other individual demographic, behavioural and environmental factors to confound the data.
The researchers also looked at incidence by day of the week, eliminating weekend versus weekday habits that may also affect migraine occurrence.
One serving of caffeine is typically defined as eight ounces or one cup of caffeinated coffee, six ounces of tea, a 12-ounce can of soft drink and a two-ounce can of an energy drink.
Researchers said those servings contain anything from 25 to 150 milligrams of caffeine, so they cannot quantify the amount that is associated with heightened risk of migraine.
Among people who rarely consumed caffeinated drinks, even one to two servings increased the odds of having a headache that day.
Baseline data indicated that participants typically experienced an average of five headaches per month - and 66 per cent of them usually consumed one to two servings of caffeinated drinks daily.
Some 12 per cent consumed three or more cups.
During the six-week study in 2016-17, participants experienced an average of 8.4 headaches.
© AAP 2020

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