The Wand Wine Filter

[Jim_Stewart]

Not sure if this will help, but it might be worth a try. My wife also has allergies and is on medication for it. Wine drinking does not give her a headache, but causes a flare up in other allergy symptoms like sneezing, itchy nose, etc. If she knows we are having wine, her preventative is to take one Advil, a half hour or so before. Works most of the time. We call this her “prep”. Good luck.

Advil (ibuprofen) is an anti-inflammatory and pain reliever.

It might stop a headache but has no anti-histamine properties.

Perhaps it’s the placebo effect.

Next time give her a vitamin C tablet and tell her it’s ibuprofen and see what happens.

Mike, no matter what way it works for her, I do not want to mess with success. Perhaps she has discovered an “off-label” use ?

[John_Kight]

Relatively new for me, but I too now get wine headaches. Mine are more like “migraines” than normal headaches…The “pain” is different (i.e. I can’t describe where it resides in my head, but it feels like it’s behind one eye), it throbs, and ultimately leads to nausea. Fortunately, mine are generally triggered by drinking more than a threshold amount of about 3 glasses, and even then only occur occasionally (i.e. I can typically drink 3 glasses without any headache…yet on certain instances the headache occurs). One odd aspect of the headaches is that they come later. While hangovers also “come later”, I can drink 3 glasses of wine early in the evening, feel completely fine by bedtime (no alcohol “buzz”), and even eat food and drink non-alcoholic beverages between my wine and bedtime…and the headache may only appear (in its mildest form) around 6am the next day…but then will grow and grow in intensity through the day.

The other odd thing is that I seem to have a premonition as I’m drinking the wine (even before I feel any pain), which I can’t even explain beyond the fact that the idea pops in my head that I might get a headache the next day. I almost feel like there’s a certain taste profile of the wine that gives me this “premonition”. Apparently, having a premonition of is common with migraines, although it is usually characterized as either an odd feeling, a flash of light, or a unique smell. I don’t get those…I just get the idea that this specific wine may give me a headache, and it always appeared to then happen…

I have found that whenever I have this “feeling”, if I take both an antihistimine and an Alleve before bedtime, it seems to either completely head-off, or at least minimize, the headache that would typically appear the next day…My last few have just been minor headaches that only lasted 2-3 hours (as opposed to a headache causing me to have to leave work and go to sleep).

[K_John_Joseph]

OP, take Claritin D and drink the wine. It is almost never sulfites as very, very few folks have any allergy to them at levels found in wine from what I’ve read. I understand the headache issue to be a histamine issue, and was advised a decade ago to take an antihistamine before a big night of wine drinking.

I will say that I’ve found some humor in this thread. Wine is still booze, and 2 large glasses of wine can be the same as 3-4 beers. 3 good sized glasses of a big Napa Cab is akin to 5 beers or so. I know there can be differences in hangovers, but there is a slight undercurrent in this thread along the lines of “I think I’m allergic to gin because I had three martinis at lunch and had a headache before bed! Is it the sulfites in my vermouth?”

That said, my late father-in-law stopped drinking red wine altogether in his early 50s. He got to the point where 1 glass of wine would give him a pounding headache and congestion within an hour or two. He switched to Ciroc martini’s with a twist, and was again a very happy camper.

[DougS]

Perhaps it’s the placebo effect.

Exactly what the creators of this wand are counting on!

[DougS]

Maybe wine headache sufferers could try green light?

Researchers Explore A Drug-Free Idea To Relieve Chronic Pain: Green Light

[Anton_D]

Maybe wine headache sufferers could try green light?

Could Migraine Pain Relief Be Found In The Color Green? : Shots - Health News : NPR

More whole cluster fermentation?

[Nick_Ryan]

Relatively new for me, but I too now get wine headaches. Mine are more like “migraines” than normal headaches…The “pain” is different (i.e. I can’t describe where it resides in my head, but it feels like it’s behind one eye), it throbs, and ultimately leads to nausea. Fortunately, mine are generally triggered by drinking more than a threshold amount of about 3 glasses, and even then only occur occasionally (i.e. I can typically drink 3 glasses without any headache…yet on certain instances the headache occurs). One odd aspect of the headaches is that they come later. While hangovers also “come later”, I can drink 3 glasses of wine early in the evening, feel completely fine by bedtime (no alcohol “buzz”), and even eat food and drink non-alcoholic beverages between my wine and bedtime…and the headache may only appear (in its mildest form) around 6am the next day…but then will grow and grow in intensity through the day.

This sounds suspiciously similar to what I’m experiencing. I had a pounding headache this morning just from drinking 1/3rd of a bottle of Schrader last night. It certainly didn’t seem like enough to trigger a traditional hangover. In fact I’d put a hard limit of 1/3rd of a bottle on any New World wine specifically because anything more would trigger a hangover. But now I suspect it might be something else. I’ll have to start taking notes to see if it correlates to a specific type of wine.

[John_Kight]

Relatively new for me, but I too now get wine headaches. Mine are more like “migraines” than normal headaches…The “pain” is different (i.e. I can’t describe where it resides in my head, but it feels like it’s behind one eye), it throbs, and ultimately leads to nausea. Fortunately, mine are generally triggered by drinking more than a threshold amount of about 3 glasses, and even then only occur occasionally (i.e. I can typically drink 3 glasses without any headache…yet on certain instances the headache occurs). One odd aspect of the headaches is that they come later. While hangovers also “come later”, I can drink 3 glasses of wine early in the evening, feel completely fine by bedtime (no alcohol “buzz”), and even eat food and drink non-alcoholic beverages between my wine and bedtime…and the headache may only appear (in its mildest form) around 6am the next day…but then will grow and grow in intensity through the day.

This sounds suspiciously similar to what I’m experiencing. I had a pounding headache this morning just from drinking 1/3rd of a bottle of Schrader last night. It certainly didn’t seem like enough to trigger a traditional hangover. In fact I’d put a hard limit of 1/3rd of a bottle on any New World wine specifically because anything more would trigger a hangover. But now I suspect it might be something else. I’ll have to start taking notes to see if it correlates to a specific type of wine.

There was a time when I was wondering if I would need to quit drinking wine. However, I think I’ve mostly figured it out (but have to accept the now-just-occasional bad headache). I can no longer drink the quantity of wine I once could, and I have to be especially careful at big wine tasting events (where I used to be able to easily taste through 70+ different wines). I try to limit my maximum intake to about 2/3 of a bottle (about 3). When I occasionally want to go over that (which is typically what happens when a wine is just so good that I’m willing to take the risk), I take my antihistamine and Alleve before bed and, while I might still get a headache (probably 20-25% of the time), when I do that it’s usually mild or at least manageable.

The silver lining is that I am no longer afford the luxury of occasionally over-drinking to the point of a TRUE hangover. In my pre-headache days that would have simply meant a normal headache and being very tired the next day. But now if I do that, I will have a traditional hangover, plus a headache that slowly grows in intensity to the point that I would get sick. So I now generally stick with about 1/2 - 2/3 bottle, with the very occasional splurge on a full bottle (mitigated by drinking it over a full evening and adding the Benadryl + Alleve)…