I haven’t tried anything but excedrine migraine. If I still got a couple a year and they still gave me like 6 hours of killer headaches, I’d probably look into something like that, but the frequency’s been closer to every other year than twice a year and I don’t get much pain with them now, so I’ve not bothered.
Maybe I should, though, given the other comments in this thread about them causing brain lesions…
Have you tried cold brew? It has about 10x the caffeine of an espresso shot. Espresso has the least amount of a caffeine of coffee drinks. Cold water and long exposure extracts more caffeine than hot water and short exposure. Source: I’m a coffee nerd.
The difference isn't typically that vast. At usual dilution levels, drinking a 16oz cold brew would be slight caffeine gain on the double-shot. Heat does extract caffeine better that cold, which is why the shot is prepared in ≈25 seconds and the cold brew concentrate takes 12-20 hours.
Also, I don't keep cold brew on hand during the winter, but I can whip up a double espresso in under a minute and get ~150mg of caffeine, which is basically equal to my daily intake. And I can _consume_ it faster than trying to chug a 16oz cup of cold brew. Gulp, done. :) And yummy.
I could take the excedrin-style things but coffee is pretty easy. And the goal isn't "max caffeine", the goal is 150-250mg.
The funny thing is that I really have no idea if this caffeine+ibuprofen routine is actually effective. One of my doctors in grad school suggested it, as someone who also suffered aura-only migraines. He said it worked for him, and I figured that either it was sometimes effective, or I'd have some placebo action working for me, so I just adopted it. :) I'm OK with placebo if it's working. The caffeine is based on an older theory of vasoconstriction that seems to not be aligned with the modern thinking on migraines, but, eh, mine are pretty tame compared to what some people get so I haven't felt the need to work too hard to optimize this.
I run or cycle daily and do small triathlons / half marathons in the summer. I’m mostly vegetarian. I weigh 155 lbs and I’m 5’11”. I sleep fine.
I get random severe migraines 2-3 times a year.
I discovered sumatriptan. It stops the migraine almost instantly when i sense one coming on (my vision starts to “fuzz out”).
Before this I would lose a day recovering in a dark room lying down. I was scared whenever I backpacked or went on long trips that I would have a migraine at the wrong time. Sumatriptan freed me from this.
I’m glad OP found a cure that works for them but everyone is different.
