It is quite typical, when an occasional headache hits, to head for your medicine cabinet or local pharmacy, and take an over-the-counter analgesic.

Over-use of medications — exceeding labeling instructions or physician's advice — can precipitate a "rebound" into another headache. This is particularly true if your medication contains caffeine, which is included in many drugs because it speeds the efficacy of the other ingredients. However, as beneficial as caffeine is in this context, if you are also drinking caffeine (coffee, tea or soft drinks), then you become more vulnerable to a rebound headache.

In addition to the rebound headache, over-use can result in addiction to medications, more severe pain when they wear off, and possible serious side-effects.

Are You Over-Medicating?
It usually begins like this: When you get a headache, you take an analgesic, such as ibuprofen, acetaminophen, aspirin, or even a prescription medication that contains ergotamine. You may also find that caffeine, tea, coffee, colas, or soft drinks relieve your headache.

You may be experiencing at least a dozen headaches each month. If analgesics help, you start to use them more frequently and usually more often than package instructions call for. Soon your headache requires a higher dosage of medication to achieve the same relief. Or, you begin taking medications to ward off a potential headache.

Over-the-counter analgesics and prescription pharmaceuticals are meant to be taken as instructed; everyone's body and responses are unique and headache medication should be part of an overall treatment program. If you are over-using medication, seek medical attention because you may be innocently sabotaging your health and treatment.

Guidelines
You can assume that if you use acute treatment more than two days a week that you may be over-using and may have developed a dependency upon your OTC or prescription medications.

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