In Western societies, we all suffer from headaches. Among grandmother's existing remedies, tea would be excellent to calm migraines. But is this really the case? To what extent and in whom?
When the head plays tricks on us
Headaches are all pains localized in the neck and brain. They can occur because of many pathologies (toothache, inflammation, etc.) or spontaneously (localized intracranial pressure, cerebral vascularization problems, etc.). The intensity of headache episodes, their frequency and treatment are defined in a nomenclature that will separate the diseases into different categories such as migraines, tension headaches and cluster headaches.
Caffeine : ouch ouch ouch ouch!
Caffeine, which is a molecule very present in coffee but also tea, continues to generate a lot of debate in the scientific community. Indeed, caffeine is able to bind to adenosine receptors which are responsible, among other things, for reducing neuronal excitation. However, caffeine binding will have an antagonistic effect on these receptors, which means that caffeine will stimulate brain capacity (movement coordination, reflection, less sleep, etc).
Problems with caffeine will arise from repeated and intense exposure to the molecule. Hyperstimulation of the central nervous system and changes in cerebral blood flow would seem to generate headaches. In addition, numerous clinical studies on people who use too much caffeine have shown that these people will develop a physical dependence similar to that of amphetamines and cocaine: they will become addicted to caffeine. Decreasing or even stopping caffeine abruptly could lead to headaches through the unblocking of adenosine receptors and physical dependence. It is therefore important to know whether tea generates these negative effects or not.
In the case of tea, it is unclear
To date, very few studies have been done on tea and headaches. In 2004, an initial study involving 5758 people with headaches, migraines and other forms of headache found that people with headaches regularly consumed caffeine-rich foods, including tea. While this is not direct evidence that tea triggers headaches, it cannot be ruled out that tea may facilitate the onset of headaches since the study did not look at the specific diet of the individuals. It is therefore necessary to study each caffeine-rich food on a case-by-case basis. This was done by Tai et al. in 2018 on 684 volunteers with migraine and tension headaches. The authors found that migraine patients consumed more chocolate (7.5%) and coffee (19.9%) daily than tea (3.7%). Once again, this study does not rule out the hypothesis that tea can trigger migraine headaches, but it would be less likely to do so compared to chocolate or coffee, which are consumed on a massive scale in France.
The effects of tea on headaches are extremely unclear. While it is known that high doses of caffeine could cause headaches, and that stopping or reducing caffeine would also cause headaches, tea would be less likely to do so than, for example, coffee or chocolate. Too few studies have been done to come to any conclusions, the watchwords are: prevention and caution in relation to information found on the internet.