#methylxanthines

i had a bar of 70% cacao dark chocolate earlier this evening. there’s lots of theobromine in dark chocolate. (there was probably more theobromine in that chocolate bar than there would be caffeine in 1-3 cups of coffee, so i think i had ingested enough to see an effect.) theobromine is a vasodilator and diuretic. because of those effects, it can be used to treat high blood pressure/hypertension since wider blood vessels and less water in those blood vessels means lower blood pressure.

now, the headache i have is either the result of the theobromine (vasodilation of blood vessels in the brain pressing on things) or the wine (which has been giving me headaches lately) or just eye strain. since both my big pharmacology reference book and wikipedia say that theobromine doesn’t have a strong effect on the central nervous system, we can probably rule the chocolate out. (if you remember those commercials about “...taking nitrates for chest pain...”, that class of drugs is used because they dilate blood vessels, but they are known to cause severe headaches.)

oddly enough, while theobromine and caffeine both have some stimulant effect on the body, caffeine is actually a vasoconstrictor (and has a much stronger effect on the CNS). that’s why it used to be bundled in old APC pills (aspirin, phenacetin, caffeine) for headaches and inflammation/pain until we learned that phenacetin was not a good thing to ingest. a cancer-causing not good thing.

also: theobromine and wine together make for a lot of trips to the bathroom.

so, when i’m not feeling hopeless or apathetic (yes i’ve recognized some of the signs of depression but there’s a lot of non-permanent factors that go into that), this shit really excites me. i like knowing why. but i don’t think that background matters to anyone in science unless i have a master’s degree or a ph.d. and i don’t know if i want to go through that process.