RunningAHEAD - Topic: Overuse of Anti-inflammatories (page 2)

Trent

Good Bad & The Monkey

posted: 5/14/2007 at 5:07 PM

I used to take ibuprofen all the time. Now I rarely do. The daily aches and pains remind me of the joys of my run.

I'm running somewhere tomorrow. It's going to be beautiful. I can't wait.

Poor baby

olethros

posted: 6/12/2007 at 8:07 AM
modified: 6/12/2007 at 8:09 AM

Quote from Trent on 5/14/2007 at 4:58 PM:

Antiinflammatories, such as ibuprofen, reduce the inflammation, but typically they do not reduce the healing. ..... It is reasonable to take antiinflammatories in the short term, but then to wean off as soon as you can tolerate it.

This is not entirely correct. Most antiinflammatories can delay or even inhibit the healing process: http://www.intelihealth.com/IH/ihtIH/WSIHW000/333/21291/350519.html The keyword is 'can'. I don't know of any complete human studies yet. So, you might be able to take some drugs just to make the pain tolerable - this may delay healing somewhat, but maybe not. It probably depends on the dose. What _is_ known is that large doses will definitely interfere with healing. In any case, never ever run while on analgesics. Another important bit. It is the immediate period after the injury where the delaying effect is greater, at least for some drugs. Celecoxib therapy in the therapeutic range used by humans significantly impaired fracture healing if administered during the first 2 weeks after a fracture in this animal model.

Trent

Good Bad & The Monkey

posted: 6/12/2007 at 8:55 AM
modified: 6/12/2007 at 8:56 AM

Always beware of anything starting with "New research suggests some of the most widely used painkillers may delay healing of a broken bone". By definition, new research is unsupported by other, larger and more defrinitive studies, and new research is often simply wrong. Also, this single study, unsupported by others, is looking at vioxx (off the market now) and celebrex (a prescription-only drug that is not the same as ibuprofen, naproxen or aceptaminophen), and so its findings may not generalize anyway to other painkillers. Lastly, this was a study in animals, not in humans. Wink

I'm running somewhere tomorrow. It's going to be beautiful. I can't wait.

Poor baby

rockenmamaof5

posted: 6/12/2007 at 9:17 AM

I found out the hard way about the delaying of healing. I broke my collarbone in 2 places in 2001 and it took over a year to heal thanks to the meds I was on (vioxx being one of them)

Your toughness is made up of equal parts persistence and experience. You don't so much outrun your opponents as outlast and outsmart them, and the toughest opponent of all is the one inside your head." - Joe Henderson

AbbaSnail

posted: 6/12/2007 at 9:27 AM

As someone who has been dealing with a stress fracture for way too long and also looked at some of these studies, here are my thoughts: There are some very poor studies which show some NSAIDs delays bone healing in some rats and mice. I am not convinced that this applies to people in doses that people take. People are not mice. Aleve and advil are not viox or celebrex. Nonetheless, I am taking tylenol when I need it on the chance that these studies prove to be applicable to me and my injury. There are no studies that I know of that show NSAIDs to be a problem with non-bone healing. (That I know of being a key disclaimer!) There are also some older studies that showed there was a slight decrease in non-union ie non-healing in arm fractures when the patients took NSAIDs, but they were also fairly preliminary stuides that never had follow-up which makes me think nothing much came of them.

How I feel these days... This helps too!

Overuse of Anti-inflammatories (Read 1708 times)