On Coffee And Headaches

Coffee enthusiasts vary in their preferences when it comes to how they want their coffee done. Different coffee mixes have been perfected through the years because of humanity’s natural love for coffee. Coffee concoctions are so in style and there seems to be no end to mixers inventing new mixes to stay on top of the business.

I and my wife have different tastes for coffee. My wife’s coffee doesn’t have anything in it - no sugar nor creamer - just plain hot water and coffee. Mine is perfect with brown sugar and non-dairy creamer. My wife takes coffee daily for a reason – to relieve headache. Life’s many challenges include having to deal with headache.

For some, this is just a simple problem but to many, this is one illness that can torture for life. Headaches are actually one of the most common health problems that affect millions of people.

My wife has cluster headache which is a type of headache characterized by a piercing pain. This type frequently crops up on one side of the head in exactly the same place whenever there’s an attack. Cluster headache can stay on a regular basis for several days or weeks at one time and just swiftly fade away.

Headaches, especially when at its severity can hinder a person from performing regular tasks. When this happens, what is the best way to do?

Here are some solutions that could help:

Rest – if it’s not really necessary for you to go out, then stay in bed and make even your chores wait until you feel better.

Take a paracetamol or acetamenophen – in my wife’s case, this is not enough. Excedrin and
Panadol are the medicines that worded well during her bouts of migraine headaches but since these are not available in our country, she would instead drink biogesic and coffee.

Panadol has caffeine and acetaminophen as its ingredients. Excedrin has caffeine, acetaminophen and aspirin as its main ingredients.

Drink a bottle of Gatorade.


There are many ways you could relieve yourself of headache. In all the solutions that I’ve tried, one thing remains..coffee is the best for most of my headache issues.

It Pays to be Early

It pays to be early in everything. All the people around you may have been so used to coming late and doing things later in the day, but it always pays to be on the dot. However, there will always be times when the crazy attitude and behavior of the people you come in contact with everyday for various reasons will affect you in any way, either you get completely annoyed or worse, you emulate them.

I am a city dweller who has been trained all my life to be on time and be a hater of “Filipino time” attitude. Well, yes..I fail sometimes and I am fully aware that there will always be instances when I will be late, but it doesn’t need to be a way of life. There are many missed opportunities when people come late and I have experienced some obvious ones like missed freebies, missed income, missed trips, etc.

I believe that if there are no credible and acceptable reasons for being late, I should do everything to come on time..or it becomes my habit. I know, because there were successive times in the past when I seemed to have “enjoyed” coming late too. It’s good that I came to my senses in no time and resolved that I would make all efforts to avoid being late except when a situation arises that being late becomes unavoidable.

At a time, when I noticed that I wasn’t already trying my best to avoid being late, I became conscientious. Being habitually late is a negative attitude that will not benefit me. I adjusted my watch way earlier that the actual time. I also exercised a lot and it helped overcome my sluggishness. I made a record of things that I categorized as urgent, important and less important. Since then, I regained my record as being the most punctual in every gathering.

Deal with Stress

Many people die young these days. A relative of mind died in his early 30’s. A friend passed
away in his late twenties. Another from my batch in high school died in his mid 40’s. I think that the main culprit in their acquiring diseases that led to their early death is STRESS!

Stress makes people seriously ill. The orientation of your DNA which is the building blocks of life gets distorted when you are consistently exposed to extremely stressful life situations. DNA malfunction results to different forms of cancer, all kinds of diseases and abnormalities and eventually, death.

Stress is a serious thing. It can definitely kill you. My blood pressure rises when I am stressed out. I’m taking medicines to maintain my blood pressure. Aside from maintenance medicines, I made up my mind to change my lifestyle, choice of food and do a lot of things to de-stress.

Anti-stress tablets are now actually available even without a doctor’s prescription. Another thing you can do is to avoid watching horror and extremely suspenseful movies. I watch comedy or love stories. Overall, how do I deal with stress successfully?

First, I look for a place where I can be alone and shout the loudest so I could get rid of those heavy loads off my chest. Next, I cry if I need to because despite being a man, I believe that crying is a healthy activity.

Another way, I found out, that is good in beating stress is to talk to somebody close to me. I talk to God in prayer. In addition to all these, I also think about wonderful things that make me happy. I also recommend acquiring a pet. Through the years, I also found out that bible reading coupled with praying is one of the best ways to fight stress.

Huge Dogs, Huge Happiness

Dog is man’s best friend – a very familiar expression which to me is very true. I have always been a dog lover. I had a beautiful German Shepherd when I was a young boy. I have known from experience that dogs are like humans – they have emotions.

I remember full well how my bullmastiff became very agitated when I became overly emotional over a particular situation. They show different emotions for their various needs. Their body language too, speaks for themselves. My dog’s tail sways vigorously when he becomes overly happy whenever I arrive at home. That means “dog food”.

I go for huge dogs because they give me huge happiness. Life becomes a lot more challenging when your wife doesn’t want succeeding dogs to be as huge as our present pets. She wants smaller, or to be exact very small dogs! I never had small dogs. We need to resolve this because I am now dreaming of getting another huge dog in addition to my two right now.

When disagreements like this occur between husband and wife, we cannot say, “We will cross the bridge when we get there.” Planning is needed because dogs are like humans being born in the family. Right now, my wife loves our two huge dogs very much, but she made up her mind not to have another like them in the future because of the emotional attachment she develops with these nice creatures. She could hardly tolerate sadness at the thought of losing them someday.

The best solution we found for this life’s little challenge is to take a break and not really think about acquiring any pets yet. We decided at the moment that we will just give our best to reciprocate the loyalty of our dogs by giving them love and care.

I Hate Vinegar

I grew up hating the smell as well as the taste of vinegar. I know this is unusual because a lot of people love vinegar. They use it as a spice to enhance the taste of food, as main or minor ingredient for sauces and salads and as home remedy for some house troubles. Vinegar is used in many recipes and I love to eat, hence, my admission that I could not really avoid eating food with vinegar. Nonetheless, I would certainly say no to a particular food that smells of vinegar which is shouting that this acidic flavouring is present. If it is to be taken alone or if something is obviously vinegar-enhanced, I refuse to eat.

When my wife learned of this “vinegar” thing during the early stages of our marriage, she
couldn’t understand. We fought a lot because there were foods that need to be cooked with
vinegar and for a working wife it was hard for her to cook additional food because it takes a lot of valuable time for a working wife just to prepare the ingredients needed before finally firing up the stove.

How did we resolve this situation? At first it was hard because she found it bizarre that her vinegar-containing sauce should be placed far away from me when we were the only two persons around the table. Yet, as time went by, she became accustomed to the arrangement.

She also learned to substitute other ingredients for vinegar in certain recipes but if this is not possible at all, she makes sure that the amount of vinegar she adds in is very minimal and totally unnoticed. The best substitute for vinegar is apple cider vinegar. Still, I won’t eat this so other non-vinegar substitution my wife uses is lemon or calamansi.