Caffeine surprised me!

Yesterday I ate out, despite having some painful sciatica nerve issues. It wasn't constant, so I didn't take any medication.

The restaurant had a choice of sodas, so since they had Cherry Pepsi and I hadn't had any in a long while (usually try to avoid caffeine), I had 3/4 Cherry Pepsi and 1/4 Sierra Mist, mixed

An hour or so later, I suddenly noticed most of the pain was gone! I had been dealing with it a few days and while it wasn't horrible, it had been annoying and pretty constant, sort of like loud but background noise.

This made me wonder: Was it the caffeine? I did a search and did find something about caffeine being a (sort of) pain killer. Who knew?? It is often found in certain pain-killing tablets, so that rang a bell.

No, I'm not planning on going on a caffeine kick any time soon, but I sure thought this was interesting!

The first thing in the morning that I have is a mug of hot tea. I look forward to that every morning. I will drink tea hroughout the morning if it’s cold out but then I stop drinking it so it doesn’t keep me from falling asleep at night. I’ve never had caffeine affect me negatively except for the sleeping issue.

I haven’t related it to less pain because, before I have my tea, I take my ibuprofen, muscle relaxer, etc. but after hearing what Luvs said, my tea could be playing into my loosening up quickly in the morning!

Sherrine

Luvs, I drink Bigelow’s Cinnamon Stick tea every morning. Cinnamon is supposed to help with pain too. But I was drinking that before I knew about cinnamon and pain. It’s really good!

Sherrine

I’m not a fan of herbal or decaffeinated tea. I like regular tea. The only time I don’t drink cinnamon stick tea is when my British friend is over. We drink the Bigelow English Breakfast tea then. Both are very good. Bigelow tea bags are individually wrapped so they last a really long time without losing flavor. If you have problems getting the cinnamon stick tea, they sell it on Amazon.

Sherrine

I have had the same experience. I think that's why some meds have added caffeine (like certain Tylenol varieties).
My only problem is that if I have it too often, it begins to work less....than I have to back off it for awhile and deal with the fatigue and pain of the "detox". Another problem I'm running into is that my GI track is so fragile and I can get gastritis if I'm not careful. Another weird thing is I get hypoglycemic symptoms a few hours after having it.
But dang........there's nothing like the high I get from caffeine, and it definitely feels good to have less pain too! And I can get so much accomplished. So I like to consider it a drug, when used judiciously.

Also....a number of years back I would get a migraine about 15 times a month (perimenopause). When I had to stop a potentially addictive drug that helped with the migraine, I gave the Tylenol with caffeine a try and it worked! But I could only use it for headaches and not take it in coffee or chocolate. I was so thankful to be one of those people with migraines that was helped by caffeine.