I’m not surprised. The inflammation probably occurs for a reason:
Blocking Inflammation May Lead To Chronic Pain – Neuroscience News
Using anti-inflammatory drugs and steroids to relieve pain could increase the chances of developing chronic pain, according to researchers from McGill University and colleagues in Italy.
Their research puts into question conventional practices used to alleviate pain. Normal recovery from a painful injury involves inflammation and blocking that inflammation with drugs could lead to harder-to-treat pain.
Growing up we didn’t have any pain killers in the house. I did not even take an aspirin until sometime after college. Yes, I had anesthesia for dental procedures, but nothing afterward.
In later years I had sports and related injuries but almost never took pain medications. And some interesting things did not happen.
I injured my left knee playing tennis in my early 30’s. As a result, the medial meniscus was removed. I had bone-on-bone action from then on. The orthopedic doctor told me I probably would be looking at a total knee replacement in 20 years. Nope. I’m still using the same knee for hiking, shooting action pistol, and shoveling tons of dirt for my underground bunker.
It is not that I am just pushing through the pain. Unless I push things with really long hikes or carrying a heavy load, I don’t feel any pain in that knee. It does have a lower threshold than the undamaged knee. But I still have endurance that exceeds most of my five children*.
Barb calls me amazingly durable. I feel pain sometimes. But I almost never take medication for it, and it goes away and I heal up quickly.
There are some exceptions. A few years ago, I had a pain in my shoulder. I tried some anti-inflammatory drugs, but it did not seem to help beyond the short term. The doctor finally got an MRI. I had a bone spur tearing up the soft tissue. They removed the bone spur. Then without pain medications and just a few days of rest, I was back to shooting again.
* Xenia and Maddy are exceptions. Xenia competes in long-distance running events. Maddy is a competitive dancer.
I’ve been saying this for decades.
You know that old joke about “doctor it hurts when I do this” to which the doctor replies “well, don’t do that”.
Duh.
Pain is your body telling you “don’t do that”. When you take meds to dull the pain, you don’t get the message your body is trying to send to you, so you keep doing the thing that’s doing the damage, and you end up making the damage even worse.
Not rocket science.
I’m not saying that there are no circumstances where pain meds are called for, but we use them way too often to mask pain that we should be paying attention to.
Pain is amazingly subjective. And what is painful to some is of no consequence to others. The science of “pain management” is difficult and frustrating due to these facts.
I think it’s also a function of the levels of pain a person has previously experienced.
Stubbing your toe hurts pretty bad…until you get stabbed. Or sear your hand grabbing a piece of metal that didn’t look hot but was actually still 500 degrees. Or break a vertebrae. Or develop a kidney stone. If you’ve never experienced real, severe pain, then something comparatively mild (in the grand scheme of things) might in fact be the worst thing you’ve ever experienced.
And of course whatever pain you are experiencing would have course be the worst thing that you are experiencing in the here and now, regardless of history.
I, too, seem to have less inflammation than at least my sister. She is 4 years older than I am, and I couldn’t begin to count the number of medications she’s on. And it’s not that I’m in way better shape than she is. I am over weight, and have struggled for some time (with the occasional victory), with it. I just take fewer drugs to begin (like none) with and only when I deem it absolutely needed.
25 years ago, I busted up my knee and arm in a motorcycle accident (It made one of the newspapers there in your area), was airlifted to Harborview and spent 20 days in their ICU… then they transferred me to a “skilled nursing facility”. I had a brilliant surgeon, who put me back together with 2 separate surgeries.
When I arrived at the Nursing home, they looked at my chart and predicted that I was going to be there for quite a while. I said, no, I’ll be out of here in a week. I was a day off.. it was 8 days. Then I got on an airplane and flew to San Diego (where I was moving from) to finish recovering. The ONLY thing that would touch any pain I had was Aspirin. Not Ibuprofen and least of all Tylenol.
I am on my 70th trip around the sun, and am starting one of my lifelong dreams – to sail around the world… will I actually do it? Dunno, but I’m going to give it a try. I really need to renew my HRT… that seemed to help with the energy/motivation part.
Wish I had one of those gov’t buyouts… unless someone knows of a remote development position LOL – I can always use a few extra $$ in the cruising kitty.
It’s been known for quite some time that taking pain meds reduces one’s pain tolerance/threshold. And the longer you’re on it. The longer it will be, if ever, before you can have a normal one.
Good on you, Joe.
Our streets are filled with victims of the “pain management industry”. And our natural human desire to avoid it.