I always get awful headaches after drinking Huel. I’ve tried for months and nothing changes. There have been many threads in the past on the subject. The stock explanations are dehydration and/or artificial sweeteners. If addressing those things eases the problem for others, that’s good. But I don’t have problems with artificial sweeteners elsewhere, and I can drink water constantly, and even take hydration salts and it does nothing except make me sit on the toilet all day. The headaches remain.
At least in my personal case, though…I’ve finally figured it out: Zinc. If I take a zinc supplement, or two, the headache just completely disappears, and quickly. I feel a whole lot better.
It could be, that I just have an absorption problem when it comes to zinc, and this is an individual problem. But if there are quite a few people who zinc supplements work for, it may suggest otherwise, and give cause for Huel to look into the matter. Absorption can be affected by other ingredients.
If you’re suffering from headaches after drinking Huel, constantly and persistently, please try a Zinc supplement and let me know how it goes for you. I have 25mg tablets. I take two, about an hour apart. This is much more than the RDA, yes. But bioavailability is a factor. Try it, both as a preventative, and a remedial, and see how it goes. I’m very curious to see if I’m the only one here…
If you had an absorption problem the supplementation would also have no effect. If you want to know whether it truly was a zinc deficiency I would recommend a lab test.
How did you come to the conclusion that you had to try zinc supplements? Have you tried every supplement on the market and this was the only one that helped? Or how else did you decide that you had to try this supplement and not something else?
Pretty much tried lots of different things, separately, a day apart and only drank Huel to make sure nothing else confused matters. As for individual absorption issues, are they really always so total and absolute?
Thank you for the suggestion, but I’m not going to spend good money on a lab test when I know the supplement works now. I may be wrong, but the subtext of your reply seems to speak to a desire to pick holes until I say something that casts doubt on my credibility, so that you can dismiss it (hints of lack of proof and the subtle build up to the suggestion of a placebo affect). There does seem to be a tendency on this forum to get defensive if someone has a negative experience, I’ve noticed. But I made no bold claims about others or Huel itself, and am simply asking for others with headaches to try it. I know my body well, and feel no need to prove it to myself or others scientifically.
This thread is just a suggestion, and a request for anecdotes. If others find they have the same experience, then I would suggest Huel take another look at zinc in spite of their already very thorough research. But so far, there’s not much traffic through here so it may be a dead end anyway.
I would never doubt that Huel puts a huge amount of thought into everything. It’s obvious you do. But as there have been multiple versions, it seems there is always room for improvement
This was answered in the first sentence of my my reply to you. You even explicitly asked if I’d done that as a possible explanation. I just went through trying a bunch of stuff in no particular order. Whatever the pharmacist had on the shelf. Sorry to disappoint. I didn’t have a reason for trying zinc more than anything else. I looked online for some obvious culprits that are known to ease headaches like magnesium and vitamin D, and the vitamin D did help a little actually, but not enough. So after that I pretty much went random.
