Why do I have headaches on weekends?

I had a boss who had the same problem and figured out that he dranks coffee at work but not on the weekends. Caffeine withdrawl!

I am not buying the caffiene as a cause. If it was caffiene why would you wake up with it only on weekends and not every day befere you get that first cup?

Are you drinkng enough water?

Also please let us know:
what are you doing Friday night? (reading? Watching tv, working on a classic car?)
Are you sleeping in later?

I tend to spend Fridays in my sofa watching telly. I don’t drink more or less water than I do during the week. I might sleep an hour or two longer.

Could be a combo between the lack of coffee and perhaps headache due to tension

Definitely the coffee would be my guess. (I had the same problem) Dog brings up a great point about environmental factors but try an extra cup tomorrow morning and see if that fixes it.

If so, it’s up to you whether the solution is more caffeine on weekends or less during the week. (less is probably the healthy alternative, but try cutting back over time if you go that route)

it’s strange though, if it’s coffee shouldn’t I have headache every morning? But it’s only Saturdays and Sundays

Describe the location of your home. Rural? Busy street? House or apartment?
Do you normally wake before it is bright out when working?

Quiet area, apartment. It’s always dark in Sweden in the Winter and especially 5.30 in the morning. Maybe it’s just a mix of everything: a couple of hours more sleep, less coffee, tensions…

I almost always wake up with headaches. In my case, I think it may be due to allergies, I get very stuffed up during the night particularly on my left side. Do you have them at all? Maybe the extra time in your bed or bedroom is causing the same problem?

Otherwise, I would assume as you do that it might be a combination of tension and caffeine…

Are you depressed?

Then bright sunlight is out of running.

Is there any way small amounts of co2 could be seeping into your bedroom? ( it would not affect you if you are already at work when cars or trains are most active in the morning)

@jazzjeppe – let’s say you normally get up at 7:30 to start your day, the coffee pot is already set to run, you throw back that first cup at 8 and go on your way. Maybe you have another cup at work?

On weekends you sleep until 9, don’t have the coffee ready, so your body knows it’s caffeine time + an hour or so. You get the headache and then start looking for a cause.

Does the headache go away later in the day? Do you usually have some coffee (or soda, headache powder, excedrin, tea, or another source of caffeine) at some point on the weekend?

Simple experiment, no coffee tomorrow morning, if you get a headache, have a cup and see if it’s gone in 30 minutes. If that’s not it, start looking for more complicated causes, but until that’s ruled out I’d say everything else is much more unlikely.

What @funkdaddy said.
That is what happens to me every weekend, except when I get up at my regular weekday time and have that coffee right away.

The caffine can definitely do this. Try not to sleep in, and have coffee when you get up.
Good luck, and let us know what happens.

For years i suffered with severe migraine headaches. i finally met a doctor that helped with at least part of my headaches. he described them as anticipation or anxiety headaches. i was to the point i was having the headaches every three days. i knew that when one headache ended, it would be two days of freedom and then another one was on its way. it was a cycle that i had implanted in my brain and not in reality. i was taking some fairly strong pain medicene at the time. he asked me to try this over the counter medication and to take one before bedtime the night before my next predicted headache. it worked. this also may work for you. on a friday night, before you go to bed, take one aspirin(if you can take aspirin). it worked for me and i hope it will work for you.

Same thing happens to me on weekends. I’m pretty sure it’s because I’m sleeping a little too late. I require my coffee by 6 am every day, and on weekends I don’t get it until 10 or so. I don’t know if this is a caffeine withdrawal, or what, but it’s good incentive for me to wake up earlier.

Do you do anything else differently on weekends?

I’m chiming in with caffiend as the culprit because I’ve had similar effects when off my daily work routine which starts with a coffee mug of espresso in the morning and one at night. One my days off then I rarely have espresso at all and I will feel it!

You’re not falling asleep on the sofa weekends are you? When I do that, I get bad neck-aches.

If you sleep in later on the weekends then caffine could be causing it because you don’t get it early enough.
Any other habits that are different on Friday and Saturday nights? Drinking?
edit: I have now read the other posts and realize that most of what I sad has already been said. Oh well…....

I agree. It could be some form of caffeine withdrawal. When my daughter was a pre-teen, she loved mountain Dew, which has ALOT of caffeine in it. I stopped buying it for her once I realized how much caffieine she was consuming, (We as southerners drank alot of sweet tea as well.) I decided to take her off all forms of caffiene, and her first withdrwal symptom was, you guessed it… headache.

It’s probably the caffeine, but it could also be from sleeping too much or too little, and being around a person or people you don’t really like. (My Mom used to get horrible headaches on the weekends for years. She broke up with her boyfriend that she mostly saw on weekends, and no more weekend headaches – true story.)

It is easy enough to test out the hypothesis that lack of caffeine is associated with your headaches.

I have the same problem. I tend to get a headache at least one of the weekend days, if not both, upon awakening. The only thing I have been able to attribute it to is the fact that I get up around 6:00 am. for work, but sleep much later on the weekend. The lack of caffiene early may be the culprit.