Hi. I'm Rowe Jones, a former chronic pain sufferer. This site is all about supplying you with the latest information on chronic pain (headache, back pain, arthritis and fibromyalgia). I also want to help motivate you to help make your life a little brighter.
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The risks of taking pain medicine
Nausea, stomach bleeding, heart disease and more: The list of potential dangers from taking over-the-counter pain medications is lengthy. One of the most recent findings, published in January in the journal BMJ, formerly the British Medical Journal, looked at results from 31 trials that included more than 116,000 people. It found that ibuprofen use tripled the risk of stroke, even though overall risks were still small.
For ibuprofin and other so-called nonsteroidal anti-imflammatories (NSAIDs), body chemicals called prostaglandins — which painkillers act against — are at the root of the problem. That’s because, in addition to versions that cause pain and inflammation, there are also “good” prostaglandins that, for example, protect the lining of the stomach and regulate blood flow through the kidneys.
Over-the-counter NSAIDs are indiscriminate in their battle against prostaglandins. As a result, taking them at doses that are too high or for periods that are too long can knock out the protective ones, leading to ulcers, holes in the gastrointestinal tract and kidney damage, among other problems.
