Hello and welcome to The Own Your Health Podcast.
I'm Cyndi Lynne, and I can't wait to
help you step into your health power.
Continuing in this series of ask me how. This
goes back over the last two episodes of not
necessarily asking myself or any expert you come across
what they think about a particular drug or medical
intervention, or nutrient, or food product, but asking someone
who you respect, their opinion, their expertise, how they
think about a particular item
so you can start thinking in that way yourself.
So, today we're going to talk about how to
think about NSAIDS, and NSAIDS are non steroidal anti
inflammatory drugs, and that's a category of drugs that
includes things like Aleve, Advil, Motrin, even aspirin, although
I would handle that a little bit separately.
So what is it about
these drugs that become controversial?
Well, for starters, they're over the counter.
You can buy them on your own, take
them on your own without any physician intervention,
without any physician information, without pharmacist information.
It's really upon the onus is upon the user
to figure out how to use these products.
Now, we know that even though they're over
the counter, they doesn't automatically mean that they're
safe or that they're safe for everyone.
So there, as always when there's a controversy, there's
people who become very divided into two camps.
You should never ever take these,
these drugs are awful
they'll kill you.
And the other side is that these are perfectly fine.
They're approved for use.
I've been taking them every 4 hours, you know,
for the last three weeks, and everything's been fine.
Not me.
That's just, you know, the other side of
the story, what you hear people saying.
So, and you know, you also hear other comments and
you've probably heard someone say, well, if you have
pain in your knee, it doesn't mean that you
are deficient in ibuprofen or motrin or naproxen
sodium is aleve.
These are the generic names and some
of the commercial names of these products.
And it's true that your body doesn't have a deficiency,
but do these have a place in your medicine cabinet?
And that's for you to decide.
This one came up because I had a client come
in last week, and I asked them how they were
feeling, what was bothering them, what they wanted to work on?
And they kind of, again, sheepishly said, you know,
I've been taking some ibuprofen from my back.
And I said, okay, what's going on with your back?
Well, I know, you don't really like those drugs.
And I said, wait, wait, hold on a minute.
These things are tools, and
tools can be used correctly.
They can be used incorrectly.
They can be suitable for certain
circumstances and not suitable for others.
So he asked the question, so what
do you think about taking ibuprofen?
And I said, all right, here's
how I think about taking ibuprofen,
aleve, any of those kinds of products.
It's absolutely correct that you aren't
in pain because you're lacking these.
Okay, so it's not a necessary nutrient that you
need to have to be healthy by any stretch.
Very often when we're in pain, and this is typically the
people I see who have old injuries that act up;
they have situations where they are not sleeping
well and end up in strange positions;
they overdo in activities; so their muscles are
hurting, typically from overuse or misuse.
And what's important when that happens in terms of
the functioning of the muscle, is to keep moving.
And that's where it can be really tough, because people
will come in and say, my neck's been really sore,
and I'll see them
they're wearing their shoulders like earrings.
My neck's been really sore, and I'm
really careful not to move it,
if I sit just
just right in the chair, then I can go to sleep.
And I say, well, we need to start,
we need to have you start moving your shoulders.
And they say, well, I can't because it hurts.
At some point in the cycle, you actually end
up with more pain because you're not moving.
Our bodies were designed to move.
We need to move in order to have adequate blood flow.
We need to have adequate blood flow in
order to clear away or move out or
transfer the lactic acid that builds up when
we exercise hard. We need the inflammatory process
if we have an injury or a reinsult
to a previous injury. We need that circulation
in order to get that properly.
We need motion within the muscles.
And this is how I think of these tools, these nsaids.
If you can take a product like this, assuming you're
not allergic to it, but if you can take a
product like this according to instructions for a brief period
of time and for brief, I think, of 24, maybe
48 hours, depending on the circumstances. If it can allow
you to move, to bring that circulation back into the
body, to allow the body to start healing itself, it
may well have a role.
Now, if you absolutely hate
these products, don't take them.
You know, there's.
There's no reason you have to. But if these
are products that you've used in the past, you're
trying to take control of your health.
You want to be in charge of your health.
You still have aches and pains and things that
come up, and you're wondering, how do these tools
potentially fit into my choosing a healthy new lifestyle?
This is one way that they may.
And I think about it as a bridge.
I think about it as a means to get us back to movement.
Because the goal, although it may feel like the goal
is pain relief, really what you want to do is
you want to be able to move again.
You want to be able to walk again
or move your shoulder or sleep properly. Okay?
So think about it.
If you just took the pain away and you still
couldn't do those activities, then you wouldn't be solving.
What you want to solve for is the
inability to move due to the discomfort.
So the goal is to get back to movement.
And nsaids or non steroidal anti inflammatory drugs
are a potential way to do that.
I also think, okay, what else is going on in my
body if my stomach has not been real good lately?
These might not be a good option
because they can really irritate the stomach.
You'd always want to take them with food.
And when any product says, when any drug says take
with food, that typically means about the quantity of a
couple of crackers or a half a slice of toast
or something like that, something that's solid that the medication
is going to mix in with so that it doesn't
simply stick to the side of the stomach.
That sticking sensation or that getting stuck
sensation is also important when it comes
to the esophagus and swallowing.
When we take any medication by mouth, we want
to take plenty of fluids, like a full glass
of water, because we want two things to happen.
One, the pill doesn't do much of
any good form as it is.
It needs to dissolve.
And in order to dissolve, it needs fluids.
And if it depends just on your stomach
fluids, it's going to take longer to dissolve.
The second part is if we just take,
i f we take a pill, even gel caps
that are a little bit easier to swallow.
But if we take this dry pill with a sip of
water and it gets stuck partway down our esophagus and kind
of just sticks on the side, it's going to be very
erosive, it's going to be very irritating to that tissue.
So we think about getting the blood
or getting the medication into our bloodstream.
In order to do that, it needs to dissolve and
it excuse me, it needs to get mixed in and
not just kind of stuck in the stomach.
So if you choose to use this tool to help you on
your path to health, as a short term way to help you
get moving again, be sure and drink with plenty of water.
Take with food.
And that is, like I said, a few
crackers, half a slice of toast, at least.
If it's more food, that's okay.
And then really monitor how long, really plan
how long you're going to take this, because
when you blunt the pain, you're also cutting
off a potential warning signal from your body.
So if you take this for 24 hours,
your shoulders feel better, you can move around
with ease, then you've accomplished your task.
If you take it for a period of time,
like 24 hours and there's no change, then we
don't want to continue to mask that pain.
We want to find out what potential
other underlying causes there may be.
So let me know if you have any questions about this.
If you have questions about managing musculoskeletal
pain in particular, I'm here to help.
I'm always here to help in
the office with that as well.
And by all means, join us on future podcasts.
Now, if someone you know needs to hear
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So until next week, let's go out and own it.
