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.
I'm really happy it's getting better for you! Hopefully it keeps improving.
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?
Water, apple, handful of nuts, Walk around for at least 15 minutes. If a headache isn't on the way out then maybe try to shift the problem to your liver with some ibuprofen or Tylenol but it shouldn't be the first thing people try.
and eat some salt
And just eat in general. My goodness sometimes I'm so surprised, I'll be feeling terrible (usual for me) and I'll realize I haven't eaten in a long time and take like one bite of something and instantly my headache and possibly fatigue are significantly better.
Video games should have taught us this. Food is a healing item.
I keep drinking blue liquids and my mana's still at zero.
Plus now I don't have any coolant for the car.
No, no, no, you got it all wrong. What you do is you get somebody else to drink the blue liquid and then steal their mana once they're dead.
Cue the "Chicken Dinner" sound on Wolfenstein 3D...
Holy shit people. Don’t take medical advice from some Internet forum filled with memes.
Is this advice? Discarded.
Why is everybody taking a meme so seriously? Lol
Kids these days.
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.
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.
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?
.... 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.
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.
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-~a~cet~yl-~am~ino-phen~ol vs ~para-~acet~yl-~amino-phen~ol.~
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 this, 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.
Pain is usually a message, often that message is "This body part is damaged, try to modify how you are moving to not aggravate the wound" In those instances I dont actually WANT to remove the pain because its helping me heal faster and correctly. When its bedtime and its stopping me from sleeping? THEN I'll take some pain meds, as lack of sleep is also bad for my health
It would be nice if it was that simple for everyone, but it isn't. Migraines especially are debilitating for me and I will 100% take my pills over trying to ride the pain.
Sometimes, I know why I have a headache, but most of the time, it pops up for no apparent reason. Always had been since I was 10 years old. So fuck that noise, after a certain threshold, I take ibuprofen and acetaminophen instead of suffering for hours.
Oh yeah, I'm definitely not arguing against pain meds for when its extreme or not helpful, the human body isnt perfect, and our body systems dont work with computer like precision. I'm also pretty sure I have a dulled sense of pain.
Hey this is what I think too!
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.
medicine on other side of room tho
I just sent this to my wife lol. She needs to hear it.
I'm bad about this myself.
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.
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 paracetamol, as they have different active ingredients, and that precisely because of that it's 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.
I've tried everything you can get OTC, including Midol. None of it works.
As someone has had a headache since 1986... take the medicine.
And if you don't have any to take, keep talking to doctors until one of them listens.
Pain medication IS medicine!
There is no point in suffering.
Just because you are dependent on a medicine, does not mean you are an addict.
Just because you are dependent on a medicine, does not mean you are an addict.
No, it does... that's pretty much the definition of it.
You're VERY wrong.
There is difference between the two as they are two completely seperate things.
I am a disability advocate, and I took many courses in college on this subject while getting my doctorate.
Drug dependence is typically defined as what causes tolerance and withdrawal. The physical effects of the need of medicine. Everything from diabetes meds, like insulin, to blood pressure medicine, to even cold medicine could be in that category.
It's why a person shouldn't use nose spray but for 2–3 days as you become dependent on it, causing you to need to consume it to be able to breathe out of your nose. (FYI: It's a VERY bad idea to become dependent on nose spray as it SUCKS for a few days getting off of it.)
Addiction is a mental component. It is a neurological state of being. Some things are more addictive than others, with things that change the neurological state being more addictive than those that don't.
For example, sex, roller coasters, and YouTube shorts can affect your brain chemistry in the same way that METH can!
TL;DR - Addiction is a neurological condition, while dependence is when a body depends on a substance medicinally.
The number of people who suffer horrifically because of the misconceptions of addiction VS dependence is sickening.
We NEED to remove this stigma of taking proper medication to increase the quality of life of the disabled.
Addiction is a mental component
I.E. a chemical process.
Addiction is a neurological condition
I.E. a chemical process.
dependence is when a body depends on a substance medicinally
I.E. a chemical process.
Seeing is a chemical process as well! Ergo seeing is the same as addiction!
Thank you for your insight! Seems like there aren't many chemical processes in your thinking.
Wow, "seeing is a chemical process"... that takes the cake for stupidest thing I've ever read.
A friend actually needed this lol, just take your meds.
Glory can only be found through dying in battle,
To Valhalla!
Spoken like a true someone who doesn't have secondary side-effects to headache medication.
Things a MF who will never ride in to Valhalla at the head of a winged horde would say...
Idk, man... I'm all for serving under Thor and shit, but headaches suck.
There's no glory in suffering, but there's stubbornness in my heart.
The headache medicine doesn’t do shit anyway. I need a cold, silent room and sleep to make the headache stop.
I'll be fine...
(applies to all medications)
Is that a personal attack or something?
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.
I want to, but my brain says "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAÀAAAAAAA..."
I feel exposed...
Tylenol doesn't do anything tho.
RIP liver
If im having a headache that means I have fucked up in some way, its motivation to correct the issue or sleep it away.
A headache has many causes one of them I found is the food you eat for example my mom eat only meat because if she eats anything else she feels like dying
I did once and you all went away.
I know people who now take many medications and aren't affected. Overdoing is also wrong. It's always better to understand the cause.
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?
Unless what you were prescribed is an opiate or other addictive substance not proven to be effective pain relief.
Or don't since most of them aren't good for your stomach, liver and such.
Well do not do nsaid, is what i learned after about 30 years of taking them
I heard some doctor say during a podcast that these medicines are really bad for your microbiome. Apparently this is still not common knowledge in the medical science and the effects may be much more devistating than once thought.
My microbiome is filled with microplastics... So I'm guessing a couple ibuprofen won't kill me.
No expert, but my take on this is that medicines work because they resemble the chemicals your body already makes itself. Better not interfere with a finely balanced immune system in which pain is an essential signal for the body to cope with infections and injuries. It might be more comforting to take a pill against something but I'm afraid it messes up the immune system too much, better to avoid that as much as possible. Works fine for me.
Where did you get your medical degree?
And this is why you are not an expert. Maybe you should talk to an expert and clear your doubts
Yes and no: address the cause of the pain and the pain itself. For example if you're hung over then drink a load of water and eat some food, but have some ibuprofen too. Medical professionals tell you to do this.
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.
I'm really happy it's getting better for you! Hopefully it keeps improving.
For the curious: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/migraine-headache/diagnosis-treatment/drc-20360207
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?
First try drinking a glass of water though
Water, apple, handful of nuts, Walk around for at least 15 minutes. If a headache isn't on the way out then maybe try to shift the problem to your liver with some ibuprofen or Tylenol but it shouldn't be the first thing people try.
and eat some salt
And just eat in general. My goodness sometimes I'm so surprised, I'll be feeling terrible (usual for me) and I'll realize I haven't eaten in a long time and take like one bite of something and instantly my headache and possibly fatigue are significantly better.
Video games should have taught us this. Food is a healing item.
I keep drinking blue liquids and my mana's still at zero.
Plus now I don't have any coolant for the car.
No, no, no, you got it all wrong. What you do is you get somebody else to drink the blue liquid and then steal their mana once they're dead.
Cue the "Chicken Dinner" sound on Wolfenstein 3D...
Holy shit people. Don’t take medical advice from some Internet forum filled with memes.
Is this advice? Discarded.
Why is everybody taking a meme so seriously? Lol
Kids these days.
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.
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.
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?
.... 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.
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.
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-~a~cet~yl-~am~ino-phen~ol vs ~para-~acet~yl-~amino-phen~ol.~
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!
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.
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.
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.
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:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4341275/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5756434/
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 this, 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.
Pain is usually a message, often that message is "This body part is damaged, try to modify how you are moving to not aggravate the wound" In those instances I dont actually WANT to remove the pain because its helping me heal faster and correctly. When its bedtime and its stopping me from sleeping? THEN I'll take some pain meds, as lack of sleep is also bad for my health
It would be nice if it was that simple for everyone, but it isn't. Migraines especially are debilitating for me and I will 100% take my pills over trying to ride the pain.
Sometimes, I know why I have a headache, but most of the time, it pops up for no apparent reason. Always had been since I was 10 years old. So fuck that noise, after a certain threshold, I take ibuprofen and acetaminophen instead of suffering for hours.
Oh yeah, I'm definitely not arguing against pain meds for when its extreme or not helpful, the human body isnt perfect, and our body systems dont work with computer like precision. I'm also pretty sure I have a dulled sense of pain.
Hey this is what I think too!
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.
medicine on other side of room tho
I just sent this to my wife lol. She needs to hear it.
I'm bad about this myself.
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.
What? Whenever I've needed pain relief enough where I've been to the doctor, they tell me to use both ibuprofen and paracetamol, as they have different active ingredients, and that precisely because of that it's 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.
I've tried everything you can get OTC, including Midol. None of it works.
As someone has had a headache since 1986... take the medicine.
And if you don't have any to take, keep talking to doctors until one of them listens.
Pain medication IS medicine!
There is no point in suffering.
Just because you are dependent on a medicine, does not mean you are an addict.
No, it does... that's pretty much the definition of it.
You're VERY wrong.
There is difference between the two as they are two completely seperate things.
I am a disability advocate, and I took many courses in college on this subject while getting my doctorate.
Drug dependence is typically defined as what causes tolerance and withdrawal. The physical effects of the need of medicine. Everything from diabetes meds, like insulin, to blood pressure medicine, to even cold medicine could be in that category.
It's why a person shouldn't use nose spray but for 2–3 days as you become dependent on it, causing you to need to consume it to be able to breathe out of your nose. (FYI: It's a VERY bad idea to become dependent on nose spray as it SUCKS for a few days getting off of it.)
Addiction is a mental component. It is a neurological state of being. Some things are more addictive than others, with things that change the neurological state being more addictive than those that don't.
For example, sex, roller coasters, and YouTube shorts can affect your brain chemistry in the same way that METH can!
TL;DR - Addiction is a neurological condition, while dependence is when a body depends on a substance medicinally.
The number of people who suffer horrifically because of the misconceptions of addiction VS dependence is sickening.
We NEED to remove this stigma of taking proper medication to increase the quality of life of the disabled.
I.E. a chemical process.
I.E. a chemical process.
I.E. a chemical process.
Seeing is a chemical process as well! Ergo seeing is the same as addiction!
Thank you for your insight! Seems like there aren't many chemical processes in your thinking.
Wow, "seeing is a chemical process"... that takes the cake for stupidest thing I've ever read.
So what are the optic nerves doing then? ;)
A friend actually needed this lol, just take your meds.
Glory can only be found through dying in battle,
To Valhalla!
Spoken like a true someone who doesn't have secondary side-effects to headache medication.
Things a MF who will never ride in to Valhalla at the head of a winged horde would say...
Idk, man... I'm all for serving under Thor and shit, but headaches suck.
There's no glory in suffering, but there's stubbornness in my heart.
The headache medicine doesn’t do shit anyway. I need a cold, silent room and sleep to make the headache stop.
I'll be fine...
(applies to all medications)
Is that a personal attack or something?
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.
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.
I wish that was enough for me.
I want to, but my brain says "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAÀAAAAAAA..."
I feel exposed...
Tylenol doesn't do anything tho.
RIP liver
If im having a headache that means I have fucked up in some way, its motivation to correct the issue or sleep it away.
A headache has many causes one of them I found is the food you eat for example my mom eat only meat because if she eats anything else she feels like dying
I did once and you all went away.
I know people who now take many medications and aren't affected. Overdoing is also wrong. It's always better to understand the cause.
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?
Unless what you were prescribed is an opiate or other addictive substance not proven to be effective pain relief.
Or don't since most of them aren't good for your stomach, liver and such.
Well do not do nsaid, is what i learned after about 30 years of taking them
I heard some doctor say during a podcast that these medicines are really bad for your microbiome. Apparently this is still not common knowledge in the medical science and the effects may be much more devistating than once thought.
My microbiome is filled with microplastics... So I'm guessing a couple ibuprofen won't kill me.
No expert, but my take on this is that medicines work because they resemble the chemicals your body already makes itself. Better not interfere with a finely balanced immune system in which pain is an essential signal for the body to cope with infections and injuries. It might be more comforting to take a pill against something but I'm afraid it messes up the immune system too much, better to avoid that as much as possible. Works fine for me.
Where did you get your medical degree?
And this is why you are not an expert. Maybe you should talk to an expert and clear your doubts
Yes and no: address the cause of the pain and the pain itself. For example if you're hung over then drink a load of water and eat some food, but have some ibuprofen too. Medical professionals tell you to do this.