It’s a bit confusing because chocolate can cause headaches in some people (don’t know why), but eating chocolate also causes you to release ‘endorphins’, those happy chemicals which reduce our sensitivity to pain.
So if you eat chocolate when you have a headache, the release of endorphins might help to reduce the pain. Unless chocolate gives you a headache, then it might make it worse.
I suggest you do an experiment yourself; any time you feel pain, eat chocolate! See if it helps and write down your results. Now that’s science 🙂
Definitely agree with Aimee – try it out, because there’s a good chance you’re different from other people.
But if you do it, you’ll need to do it properly and scientifically. That means noting down in a book when the headache was, how long it lasted, what chocolate you ate, how much and stuff like that. You should also write down anything unusual about the day – like if you took part in a heavyweight boxing match earlier on, since that might have something to do with it. You should also note down things like how cold the day was, and how stressed you were. If the chocolate always helps, then you need to do your “negative control” and occasionally not eat chocolate, and see if the headache goes away at the same speed as when you eat chocolate, on average. It’s important to do lots of measurements and take averages.
Lots of experiments, but all very easy. Just need to keep a written record of all your data, so there’s no way your memory can distort what you found over time.
…you may be on to something pretty important if this works! If it does, then you’d need to convince other people to take part. Shouldn’t be too hard.
It’s a bit confusing because chocolate can cause headaches in some people (don’t know why), but eating chocolate also causes you to release ‘endorphins’, those happy chemicals which reduce our sensitivity to pain.
So if you eat chocolate when you have a headache, the release of endorphins might help to reduce the pain. Unless chocolate gives you a headache, then it might make it worse.
I suggest you do an experiment yourself; any time you feel pain, eat chocolate! See if it helps and write down your results. Now that’s science 🙂
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Definitely agree with Aimee – try it out, because there’s a good chance you’re different from other people.
But if you do it, you’ll need to do it properly and scientifically. That means noting down in a book when the headache was, how long it lasted, what chocolate you ate, how much and stuff like that. You should also write down anything unusual about the day – like if you took part in a heavyweight boxing match earlier on, since that might have something to do with it. You should also note down things like how cold the day was, and how stressed you were. If the chocolate always helps, then you need to do your “negative control” and occasionally not eat chocolate, and see if the headache goes away at the same speed as when you eat chocolate, on average. It’s important to do lots of measurements and take averages.
Lots of experiments, but all very easy. Just need to keep a written record of all your data, so there’s no way your memory can distort what you found over time.
…you may be on to something pretty important if this works! If it does, then you’d need to convince other people to take part. Shouldn’t be too hard.
1
Again Aimee and Matt have great answers, to which there is nothing useful that I can add.
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