Turns out that an extra cup of coffee can act as a migraine trigger, especially among people prone to getting them. That’s what the new study published in The American Journal of Medicine found.
“In patients with episodic migraine, one to two caffeinated drinks were not associated with getting a migraine on the same day,” explains the lead author of the study, Elizabeth Mostofsky, a postdoctoral fellow at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and an instructor of epidemiology at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, as NBC writes. “These findings would suggest that you limit yourself to no more than two servings a day of caffeinated beverages,” Mostofsky said.
She and her colleagues gathered 98 volunteers with a history of headaches – they regularly experienced from 2-15 headaches every month. The volunteers kept track of their habits for six weeks and measured physical activity, stress levels, caffeine and alcohol intake, etc.
What they found was that, while one or two caffeinated drinks per day didn’t cause migraines, the third drink dramatically increased the odds. Similarly, for those who rarely consumed caffeine, the risk was increased with only one or two drinks.