Thank you for that last bit, Mark (I am a little surprised to see, today, people readily proposing acetaminophen in connection with alcohol, despite all of the publicity of risks that have shown up in various contexts).
Histamines have been more usual suspects than tannins, in my own experience of popular theories about wine and headaches. One more specific cause was discussed on this newsgroup (or its predecessor) in the 1980s, the addition of soluble preservatives to some very cheap wines. Soluble sorbates are sometimes used for this in foods, and I have heard of headaches being associated with them, and am pretty sure I have experienced it myself.
in article eoEfd.428450$mD.12641@attbi_s02, Mark Lipton at snipped-for-privacy@eudrup.ude wrote on 10/26/04 8:14 PM:
For something like 20 years, I've had doctors tell me that red wine can aggravate my proclivity for headaches by causing blood vessels near the brain to dilate. True, the literature related to the tannin/serotonin connection is typically in reference to migraines. Two other headache causal relationships have been suggested to me: sulfite allergy (which I don't appear to have), and histamine reaction, which may be a possibility- though when I feel a wine headache coming on it does not respond to anti-histamines (one might think it would).
No, I'm not......... but I think I should be. What's that all about?
in article eoEfd.428450$mD.12641@attbi_s02, Mark Lipton at snipped-for-privacy@eudrup.ude wrote on 10/26/04 8:14 PM:
I must apologize for my lack of awareness on this. I just did a quick Google search and had enough material in 5 seconds to read for a week. No more acetominophen 'therapy' for this wine drinker. Ibuprofen does not usually help me, but I will definitely be trying it again. I presume that Aleve is another possibility.
My doctor-prescribed medication for a serious headache is Fiorinal, which is Butalbital/Aspirin/Caffeine. I had been taking the acetominophen as a prophyactic, to avoid waking up with a headache (feeling it was a milder med). I'm calling my doctor to find out what he would recommend instead.
I occasionally suffer from "wine headaches" also, but in my case I'm very certain that they are not caused by sulfites in the wine.
I regularly work with much higher concentrations of sulfites than would ever be found in wine and do not get a headache. I may suffer symptoms more like a histamine reaction (nasal congestion, sneezing, watery eyes, heaviness in chest) that are short lived, but not the headache. I have also ingested other foods with much higher levels of sulfites than wine with no adverse effects. The headaches appear to correlate with red wine consumption even though whites typically contain more sulfite.
This leads me to believe that it isn't the sulfites in the wine. I have also had the same wine on multiple occasions with headaches occurring sometimes and not occurring others. This (at least in my mind) indicates that it's not just the wine, but that there may be some other factor involved. I don't know if the other factor is from other foods consumed, something environmental, or some type of physiological or psychological condition. I'm trying to correlate the headaches with possible culprits by noting these things when the headaches occur.
I think sulfites get the blame because of all the marketing hype in the US about bad, bad sulfites.
Andy, IMO, you've hit the nail on the head. If sulfites were as bad as many people think, then bananas and dried fruit would be giving people far worse headaches than wine. The fact is that, despite extensive research, medical science has yet to identify the cause(s) of wine headaches. Given the fact that only in the past decade have people begun to explain why alcohol has a neurochemical effect, this may not be altogether surprising! ;-)
Sulfites cause headaches in some people and adverse reactions in others.
Yes, high sulfites can contribute to adverse reactions when drinking wine.
It depends on the person.
The persons who react to sulfites are extremely rare.
But it also depends on how much you drink.
If you drink 2 bottles of a high sulfite wine in one evening, you will be drunk mostly, and ALSO suffering from the presumed sulfites. Poor baby.
Which in wines are in parts per million, compared to many common foods, like sausage, which have ten thousand more parts per million of sulfites than wine.
Did you perchance, have a slice of salame when you drank?
You would be a most unusual person, because sulfites in some form or another are found in many of the foods we eat at wine fests--mostly preserved meats.
Do you get similarly sick over salame? Sulfites, by the way, only affect in a life-threatening way a miniscule portion of the population. In all of the complaints about wine-drinking I've ever ever heard, the main culprit is alcohol, plain and stupid.
You drink too much, and then you complain about your allergies to sulfites. Or histamines. Or tannins.
Sorry, this is bullshit.
Except for the .0001 per cent of us (and I'm not sure of the exact percentage, but it's extremely small), who are deathly allergic to sulfites and some of the the other ingredients in wine--the painful truth is that it's the ALCCHOL, dammit.
Let's be REAL here. You drink a bottle of wine in less than an hour, and you will have aftereffects the next morning.
TWO bottles in less than 2 hours, and I guarantee hangover melancholia.
You can rationalize this all you want: say what you want about tannins, histamines, fusel oils (in the case of distilled spirits), sulfites, etc.
Unless you are one of the miniscule portions of the population which is genuinely allergic to these compounds, it's all alcohol, brother.
We need to get real about this: alcohol abuse is not limited to nine Corona beers at a Mexican restaurant, or a fifth of Glenfiddich at a golf tournament; or burning Havanas and Cuban rum at a polo match; or Martinis at yer local watering hole.
Hangovers = alcohol abuse, NOT some disaffected notion about, pooh! "sulfites".
Please, y'all, get real.
I am an apologetic drinker of wine, and sometimes I have abused my privelege. I have been in this business all my professional life. I've been a winemaker of some of Napa's "cult" wines.
Please don't spoil our mutual dream. Don't let bogus health claims influence your choice of wine, because it's a pure product, and it's always been, even at the supermarket level.
Chemical additives to wine, except SO2 which is a natural product rated in parts per million, simply don't happen. That's all.
in article snipped-for-privacy@mb-m22.aol.com, RobertsonChai at snipped-for-privacy@aol.com wrote on 11/2/04 1:29 AM:
My interest in this topic came from a desire to avoid the headache "prophylactically". I had been taking Acetominophen before going to bed (then was alerted to the liver connection here), but that seemed to be working. I have to believe, in your line of work, you've come across some techniques to help avoid the onset of headache (other than knowing when to stop, of course).
It may just be, for me, that I have a set of physiological factors that could amplify the effects of alcohol (no personal reason to think it's anything else). As stated, I am prone to vascular headaches, in which the blood vessels around the brain swell from certain stimuli. What makes it difficult is that the cause/effect thing is not consistent. One thing for sure...... I'm not eliminating wine from my life.
No, not the case at all. At 46 years old, I'm well aquainted with hangovers. These are not hangover headaches I am refering to. But one glass of a cheap California white can produce a near-migraine the following morning. Two glasses, full-blast. Same wine, one month later, with another type food... same results. Other wines in-between, no problems!! Why?
I can split a 1/2 bottle of Sauternes with my wife, followed by 3/4 of a full bottle of Bordeuax (wife drinks the other 1/4) without the slightest headache (for either of us), ever. Now I'm not trying to single out California, or say that France doesn't make cheap headache producing wines as well, only that the "problem" ones that make it to my supermarket shelf are the cheap whites from California. Most any white will taste "okay" to me, which is why I continue to experiment with them (and do find many that I enjoy that do not cause headaches). But enjoyable reds in the $4.99 - $6.99 price range are harder to come by, so I don't purchase many, thus cannot comment on them.
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