The Picard ManeuverSeek relief
SadSadSatellite (applies to all medications)
VeedemI just sent this to my wife lol. She needs to hear it.
I’m bad about this myself.
ivanafterallBut I'm out of ibuprofen and taking acetaminophen just feels like knowingly taking a placebo sugar pill. Ibuprofen tho.
Swedneckibuprofen is just actually magic
uphillbothwaysWhat fun is taking a drug now for a condition it could treat, when you could put it off and justify getting real fucked later.
ToRAI 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.
Flying SquidThat 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.
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].
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.
Kidney Stones and Risk of Narcotic Use - PubMed
The association between a history of kidney stones and current narcotic use suggests that nephrolithiasis may be a risk factor for long-term opioid use. While this study is limited by the cross-sectional design and the absence of detailed stone histories, it adds to the evidence that altering pain m …
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.
kratoz29and it’s taxing on the kidneys/liver
I hear you, I can only pretty much take acetaminophen… And yeah, it won’t pay off well.
I did once and you all went away.
possibly a catThe pain is stressing your cardiovascular system and will shorten your life. You’re also taking your suffering out on us and it’s not really fair tbh.
What if it’s only an issue for short stints and then it’s really not bad enough to bother because it’s easily ignored?
I feel exposed…
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.
Yes, most of the time, not recommended for internal bleeding or alike though.
camr_onAre 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.
I was going to say 2 liters is a lot… But then I converted into funny units and it’s pretty close to what I drink on the average day (sometimes twice that, sometimes half).
Maybe also contributing to my lack of kidney stones?
🐑🇸 🇭 🇪 🇪 🇵 🇱 🇪🐑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
There’s a VERY big difference between “pain relievers”, NSAIDs, and “pain killers” which are opioids. NSAIDs are effective and safe if used properly.
Absolutely, the risks of addiction are monumentally different and should not be conflate. That said, my sister definitely did get addicted to Advil in her teens. 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.
Just like anything, they should be used according to directions and in moderation. I rarely take them as well, but they are safe and effective when used as directed or prescribed by your doctor.
ZagorathNot 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-~a~cet~yl-~am~ino-phen~ol vs ~para-~acet~yl-~amino-phen~ol.~
Oh neat. Thanks!
Very cool way of getting across the information, too!
So basically, scientists suck at coming up with shortened names everyone can agree on.
Your distinction is correct, but I simply listed NSAIDs as an example, not an exhaustive list of pain relievers. You also make assumptions on “the normal headache pill” based on your locale. In the US paracetamol/acetaminophen/Tylenol is very common, but so is ibuprofen/Advil, naproxen sodium/Aleve, and aspirin/Bayer. In fact, I’d argue ibuprofen is far more popular here based on how much larger the ibuprofen section is compared to acetaminophen in pharmacies. Granted acetaminophen is a bit more common in compound OTC meds like cold and flu medicines.
That being said, paracetamol functions extremely similarly to NSAIDs, but it’s not anti-inflammatory, and works on the nervous system only, whereas NSAIDs affect the brain and body as well.
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.
Regarding acetaminophen resistance: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18468992/
Less so NSAIDs.
Acquired resistance to acetaminophen hepatotoxicity is associated with induction of multidrug resistance-associated protein 4 (Mrp4) in proliferating hepatocytes - PubMed
Treatment with hepatotoxicants such as acetaminophen (APAP) causes resistance to a second, higher dose of the same toxicant (autoprotection). APAP induces hepatic mRNA and protein levels of the multidrug resistance-associated proteins (Mrp) transporters in mice and humans. Basolateral efflux transpo …
Not sure why you were downvoted, this a quality comment with academic sources.
Because the people using Lemmy are no better than the people using Reddit lol.
AKA my personal experience always beats science. Even if it’s placebo or nocebo. Also unless you’ve already beat that vote threshold when initially posting, it’s hard to turn it back. And if you’re posting something contrarian to what’s already upvoted despite it being misleading or false, then chances are whoever’s agreeing are going to be reading it more than the people disagreeing.
In circumstances like there, there are some very rare cases that don’t apply to 99.999% of the population, but it DOES apply to them. Biology be fucked like that. However you could never have a conversation on the internet if all you did was cite exceptions or anticipate personal anecdotes lol.
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.
Matty_rNormally 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.
chickenYour 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.
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 deal with it as best you can without 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.
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.
AtHeartEngineerIf you have chronic trouble breathing through your nose, go see an ENT. That surgery changed my life.
🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 🏆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.
I’ve tried everything you can get OTC, including Midol. None of it works.
however do remember to not mix different pills.
What? Whenever I’ve needed pain relief enough where I’ve been to the doctor, they tell me to use both ibuprofen and paracetamil, as they have different active ingredients, and thus perfectly fine. They stress very much to not take too much of one at a time though.
my pack of ibuprofen very very explicitly says to not mix pain relievers without a prescription from a doctor
Yes, but any time I’ve mentioned that to a doctor they’ve said that that’s just a legal disclainer, and it’s not an issue as long as you don’t take more than the normal dose.
… 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 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.
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.