ive had a horrid bug for the last few days almost miggraine like...fever etc...anyway... bought some anadin tablest that are super strong but (bizzarely) contain caffein......well i took them last night and was awake all night without a minutes sleep, wide awake which is completely unheard of for me....plus I had heart burn and some palpatations.....only occured to me tonight that this could have been the effect of the caffeine....what does anyone think? is it possible?

sounds like it, are you normally sensitive to caffine? just the palpatations seem like you might have had a it of a reaction :(

a lot of pain killers contain caffine, most paracetamol does.

hope your feeling better soon

Caffeine can certainly give you palpitations and keep you awake but then so can indigestion. Did you take the tablets on an empty stomach?

no i drink black coffee all the time and took pills after evening meal. it was so weird i felt like i was supercharged!!!

May be the coffee and the pills pushed you into over dose. Do you feel ok now?

My doctor in the US thought those pills should be prescription! LOL She told me the combination of the paracetemol and caffeine gave them an addicitive effect. That's perhaps too strong a word but you feel worse when the stuff wears off and that makes you want more. Your brain gets 'addicted' to the caffeine and you'll end up with more frequent headaches. (her story anyway) I make my own caffeine free by taking one aspirin with one paracetemol as I hate the after-effects of taking pain killers with caffeine.

I believe the caffeine is there to dilate the blood vessels and thus speed up the delivery of the working ingredients.  That's what my doctor said when I asked him why it was in my migraine medicine so perhaps applies to other meds as well?   I noticed another, non-caffeinated migraine treatment I was on sure worked faster if I took it with a cup of coffee.

no still feeling terrible and off to see emergency doctor as can barely move for blinding headache :(

Caffeine is actually a vasoconstrictor. Coffee can actually stop some people from getting migraines so it's not surprising that it works for you. It is in a lot of pain killers/headache meds so I think it's probably pretty effective for most people. It just affects me adversely because my brain seems to become quite addicted to caffeine quickly so I suffer from analgesic-overuse headaches easily.

I hope you feel better sam.

Too much coffee gives me a headache so i would never touch those painkillers with caffeine .
Have you tried paracetamol and brufen instead ?

Hope you're feeling better !

http://www.caffeineandmigraine.com/caffeine.html

Since Lori used such good language I checked this out.  Dilation is indeed what my doctor said but perhaps my doctor was just using the easy explanation on me.  If you can get through the article linked above it's an interesting discourse on why and how the caffeine works in different applications but deals mostly with migraine.  Long story short, and back to the beginning post, it isn't really bizarre to find caffeine in some of our prescriptions. 

As a side note, when I found it to be so effective for me was a time in my life when I consumed practically no caffeine at all.  I think that is why a cup of coffee worked so well at making my primary medicine work faster.  Friends who regularly drank coffee and also had migraines said they didn't notice the effect.

Hope you are starting to feel better now Sam.
There is nothing more miserable than a bad head.

Karen

Sam if you have felt like this for over 48 hours for no reason you can think of, you should be getting some medical attention.

seems odd for a migrain med to have caffine as that can be a trigger for lots of people. sorry, wee tangent...

my sympathies! i suffer from migraine quite badly (i'm so sensitive to chocolate i;ve not eaten it in 5 years now!). hope they can help.

hows your neck? my flatmate started getting really awful headaches out of the blue, turns out it;s cause she has a neck problem that creates major tension. she gets physio on it now and is much better. just an idea if they can't figure out the prob

thanks jackie.....i trundled off to emergency doctor clinic in the village.....he says its viral and gave me a very painful infection in ...the...um....behind :(  Think thats hurting more than my head now!

Good grief Sam, a case of not knowing if you are on you head or your um---Behind.

Hope you will be feeling better tonight.

Viral is nasty. I hope the injection works and you feel better soon.