I rarely feel like it ever helps, and it’s taxing on the kidneys/liver. So, I tend to not bother until it’s bad enough.
My friend works out and takes pain meds frequently.
He also complains about yearly kidney stones.
I have never had a kidney stone. Where he’s on his 8th one.
Yeah, they’re partly genetic but you can risk it. I have a couple of friends who have had their third or fourth stone and I’ve never felt so much as a slight discomfort on my kidneys. It makes me wonder wtf they’re doing to themselves but I’m not one to judge.
That was definitely the cause of my kidney stone, because I don’t take OTC pain meds frequently, but if you do have ways to avoid kidney stones, avoid kidney stones. They are no fun.
Was he on narcotics? I’m finding no link between Acetaminophen or Ibuprofen to kidney stones. Just drink more water.
https://www.utsouthwestern.edu/newsroom/articles/year-2023/june-prevent-kidney-stones.html
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30829133/
Ibuprofen is mostly processed by your liver as well. Acetaminophen uses a bit of both.
This appears to occur predominantly systemically in the liver [1,10], but may occur pre-systemically in the gut as well [11]. Ibuprofen is almost completely metabolized, with little to no unchanged drug found in the urine [1,9,12].
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4355401/
Acetaminophen (APAP) is normally metabolized in the liver and kidney by P450 enzymes. No toxicity is observed with therapeutic doses of APAP.
https://www.goodrx.com/acetaminophen/is-tylenol-acetaminophen-bad-for-your-liver-or-kidneys
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8669426/
Tylenol (acetaminophen) is almost completely broken down by the liver. During this process, a toxic chemical forms. Normally, the liver makes it non-toxic. But if you take too much Tylenol, the liver can’t properly process it all. The toxic chemical can then build up and poison liver cells.
https://www.goodrx.com/acetaminophen/is-tylenol-acetaminophen-bad-for-your-liver-or-kidneys
i’m the polar opposite, if i have a headache/migraine or cold symptoms i pop an ibuprofen and suddenly it’s completely gone half an hour later.
Weird, because I can feel the Aspirin when I take it. It makes me feel ever so slightly numb all over and gummy at my core in a strange way. Kind of similar to when I eat a lot of sugar and it feels like I have syrup for blood and it leaves me lethargic.
Aspirin is a weird drug. Stick to ibuprofen or even just acetaminophen if you have stomach issues. Naproxen Sodium, Ibuprofen and Aspirin all irritate the stomach lining, and aspirin adds a risk of bleeding since it’s also a blood thinner.
And acetaminophen is brutal on your liver if you take it often.
And do not mix it with alcohol, that’ll toast your liver in real short order.
So yall are just talking about baby meds for minor headaches. I’m up on that prescription grade headache medication for my debilitating migraines, and I can not take it more than a few times a month without doing irreparable damage to my kidneys and liver. Sometimes, dealing with headache pain is the healthier option.
You must be on a preventative, right? Rather than just managing pain when they come on?
I’ve tried Nurtec, Aimovig, and about to start Ajovy.
Nurtec and Aimovig worked pretty well, though not perfect. If you haven’t tried a preventative, I highly suggest seeing a neurologist, if you can.
My medication is just for managing the pain/alleviating symptoms. I have seen neurologists and have been thoroughly examined.
My migraines are caused by having received multiple traumatic brain injuries due to blunt force trauma and concussive shock waves from being blown up while deployed overseas in active combat. Unfortunately, nothing much can be done about this accept for trying to manage the pain.
The good news is that I seem to be getting them much less frequently than I used to, so maybe my brain is attempting to heal itself. I used to get a migraine just about once a week. Now it’s only about once every other month.
Pain is healthy in so far that it indicates injury or sickness. It helps to tell you to give your body more rest. But if pain is chronic or gives you stress even during rest you do need medication
Pain is not always an indicator of injury or sickness, such as OP’s migraines or people with nerve disorders. There are many causes of pain, including unknown causes.
Yes, that’s what “in so far” means
Boo hoo, someone couldn’t go 10 minutes without making something all about them. Of fucking course this is talking about normal headaches and not chronic migraines you fucking imbecile. Do you think someone’s gonna be recommending hard medication as a daily snack or something? Yeah, we all know sometimes you can’t pop drugs like it’s fucking candy. But you’re not really here to inform, you’re here to say, “look at me, everybody, I’m the 1 in 1000 people this advice doesn’t apply to, aren’t I so fucking special??”
Opiates are not medically indicated for migraines.
Triptans are.
So are injections of Ajovy.
This person is not talking about taking opiates. They are talking about medications that suck to take, but reduce the electrical storm of a migraine in the brain.
So my specifics are off. The point is still there. Choosing to suffer when you can easily stop it with near 0 downsides is kinda dumb. This guy clearly doesn’t have an easy fix with near 0 downsides. So this quite obviously doesn’t apply to that situation, does it?
deleted by creator
Dude, I didn’t day there aren’t downsides. Maybe you can’t read. I also didn’t say anything about addiction.
Make sure you understand what I’m saying before dismissing it. Your complaints are irrelevant. Even with your amendments, their statement is still:
“This advice for minor problems doesn’t apply to my major problem, boo hoo.”
I follow that anime logic where I just need sleep and a massive buffet to get back to 100%.
does it work
Normally? Yes. Acetaminophen and a glass of water doesn’t hurt either.
Are you Naruto
Most headaches are caused by blood sugar imbalance, which in turn are often caused by changes in diet or sleep habits, and/or dehydration. If the meals help then yours may tend to be from low blood sugar.
It’s almost guaranteed that it’s mainly because of dehydration. SO MANY people these days are constantly dehydrated (myself included, though I’m trying) because they’re drinking nothing but sodas, coffees and teas.
If everyone could drink at least 2 liters of water a day, they’d feel much better.
… but not too often.
If you have regular headaches, see a doctor. Could be hay fever or other allergies for example and there’s stuff that works much better for that than painkillers.
Yeah even OTC drugs aren’t necessarily safe to take daily and indefinitely. Depending on the medication, you can end up with things like stomach ulcers or even liver damage. Once in a while is fine, but if you’re needing to take something daily, you might want to get checked out and/or try some sort of other methods.
the thing is, medicine specifically comes with instructions for this reason. Stay within the written limits and you should be fine.
Usually it’s tension headaches. The solution to that isn’t meds, either, but chilling the fuck out and better posture. Yoga, callisthenics, actually pretty much any kind of sport should help. In acute cases, try a hot bath. Or some good Indica wait no that’d be meds. Valerian is probably as far as you should go, it’s not a downer as such but makes it harder to forget that chilling out is an option, needs a regular schedule though if you’re wired up. Eat healthy. Avoid hangovers by not getting drunk. Make sure your sleep quality is good. You know, basic shit.
Excuse me I would rather not build up resistance to painkillers and then be screwed once I REALLY need painkillers.
The headache sucks, but it’s not wisdom tooth level pain.
Edit: I’m not taking about opioids or stuff. I’m talking about simple over the counter meds that aren’t addictive but you can still build up resistance to. I already managed to have that happen and have one type become useless
There’s a VERY big difference between “pain relievers”, NSAIDs, and “pain killers” which are opioids. NSAIDs are effective and safe if used properly.
Not all pain killers fit into those two categories.
The normal headache pill, paracetamol (most notably sold as “Panadol”), is neither NSAID nor opioid.
That’s Tylenol (acetaminophen) for the US folks.
Oh yeah, that’s right. That’s a weird one. Not sure why they have two such different names.
It’s para-acetyl-amino-phenol vs para-acetyl-amino-phenol.
So basically, scientists suck at coming up with shortened names everyone can agree on.
Oh neat. Thanks!
Very cool way of getting across the information, too!
Absolutely, the risks of addiction are monumentally different and should not be conflated. That said, my sister definitely did get addicted to Advil in her teens and had to go through withdrawal. On the other hand, I haven’t had an Advil in over ten years and in that time have only experienced a handful of headaches, each only lasting a few minutes. Chances are, I’m just very lucky. But there’s also a good chance that if I resorted to Advil before meditation and hydration, my luck would run out more frequently. YMMV.
So much medical misinformation in this thread but it looks like there’s some merit to acetaminophen tolerance.
Less so NSAIDs. They definitely need more studies that take human populations into account because there aren’t any I could find that weren’t in rats.
Acetaminophen resistance:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18468992/
NSAID:
Holy shit people. Don’t take medical advice from some Internet forum filled with memes.
just make sure to read the information slip, and at least here in sweden the recommendation is to not treat headaches with pain relievers more than 9 days per month or it can just cause more headaches.
what i go with is just doing what i can to handle the headache/migraine without medicine, but feel 0 guilt about popping a pill if needed. Especially if i’m going somewhere or have something at home i want to actually enjoy i’ll not hesitate to medicate.
I just saw a doctor about this, turns out chronic headaches are not normal. It turned out I have an allergy giving me congestion even though I’m breathing normally but enough to induce pressure on my head. Go see a doctor if you’re having daily headaches.
If you have chronic trouble breathing through your nose, go see an ENT. That surgery changed my life.
I just sent this to my wife lol. She needs to hear it.
I’m bad about this myself.
deleted by creator
I don’t take the headache medicine because it never actually helps with my headaches. 🤷🏻♂️
have you tried different kinds? apparently it really varies what the standard pain reliever is depending on where you go, i believe what i’ve always taken is ibuprofen here in sweden and that is basically a miracle pill that dissolves any sort of pain and cold symptoms within half an hour for me.
however do remember to not mix different pills.
(applies to all medications)
What fun is taking a drug now for a condition it could treat, when you could put it off and justify getting real fucked later.
Besides, the docs said I’m not allowed to take antiinflammatories anymore.
But I’m out of ibuprofen and taking acetaminophen just feels like knowingly taking a placebo sugar pill. Ibuprofen tho.
ibuprofen is just actually magic
Yes to pain relief, but what about cold/flu medication? All they do is restrain the symptoms (like a running nose, coughing up phlegm, fever) which are your body’s attempts at fighting the virus. Shouldn’t that make you sick for longer because your body can’t fight as well? I’m sure my understanding of the biological processes is severely lacking.
Normally you’d want to take those to get a decent nights sleep, which will help recovery a lot.
Yep. I usually take NyQuil before bed if I have a bad cold just to get me through the night. The only other thing that sometimes, but often doesn’t, work for a cold is Mucinex.
Shouldn’t that make you sick for longer because your body can’t fight as well?
Short answer: It’s not necessarily true for most over the counter medication, with some exceptions.
Your body should have no trouble creating antibodies to fight off the infection because those drugs don’t act on white blood cells. And at around the three-to-four-day mark, the infection is almost guaranteed to go away on its own when the adaptive immune response kicks in.
Interestingly enough, most of the cold symptoms (except for fever) are part of the viral strategy to help it spread. In a weird way, the infectious agent kicks up your primary immune response to do its bidding.
What’s not recommended are fever-reducing medications. This is because elevating body temperature is your body’s way of reducing growth rates of most microorganisms and also speed up its own attack and alerts its own defenses. Reducing that temperature has a chance of increasing viral shedding. Ironically enough, this list of antipyrietic drugs includes Aspirin and paracetamol which are also used for pain relief. lol
My personal take is that it doesn’t matter much unless you’re overly concerned about being sick for–I’m guessing–half a day to a day longer with subsiding symptoms, and are overly worried about increasing the average rates of infections by a marginal amount.
(Full disclosure: I’m not a medical doctor but a former pharmacologist.)
I’ve read there is a lot of contention among doctors of whether you should fight a fever or not, with a lot of literature for and against it. My intuition is that, like most symptoms, it is probably best to live with it as best you can without taking meds to reducing it. But if it is causing you to have issues doing activities that will help you recover like sleeping, eating, etc, then to treat it.
Your body’s responses are overkill/unnecessary in a lot of cases. Like inflammation, a lot of that is so your skin will swell up near a cut so not as much dirt gets in it, but if you’re keeping it clean/bandaged that’s probably counterproductive. A runny nose, isn’t that just the virus tricking you into becoming more contagious? A fever, could be useful if it’s a virus that can do serious damage before your immune system can ramp up enough to handle it, but if it’s a less dangerous one that’s probably just self damage.
