Do Painkillers Really Work?
So many people nowadays are relying heavily on painkillers to deal with everyday pain, but this is not how you should be dealing with back pain or knee pain or whatever pain you struggle with every day.
Painkillers do exactly what they say, they kill pain, but only temporarily. If you have a headache, or if you have broken your leg or arm, then painkillers are very helpful. They help by reducing the suffering you are feeling. They won’t completely kill the pain, but they will give you some relief from something you cannot fix any other way.
Muscular or joint pain is much different. When you get pain in your back or your foot or your neck for example, that is your body telling you something is not right and needs to be looked after. Let’s just say you have pulled a muscle in your back and you are in considerable discomfort. This discomfort is a message from your body telling you to do something about it. If you take painkillers to reduce the pain, you will be able manage a bit better.
Imagine now that the painkiller killed the pain completely. You are not in pain, but the muscle in your back is still pulled.
So now that you are pain-free, you are doing activities which your back pain prevented you from doing. Your back pain was stopping you from doing these activities because you could be making it worse. So, now that you are able do these things pain free (because of the painkillers) you are likely making the issue worse. It has stopped the pain but hasn’t fixed the problem.
Take the broken leg example I mentioned earlier. Imagine if you had a painkiller strong enough to make your leg completely pain-free after breaking it. You would most likely get out of bed in the morning and forget your leg is broken, take a step on the ground and fall in a heap, making the leg break much worse, because your body was being tricked into thinking it was fine. Here is a similar real-life analogy.
When I was younger, my older brother had just gotten his first car, a 1994 Renault 19, so we went for a drive. As he was driving down the road, the engine light came on. My brother fancied himself as a bit of a mechanic, so he went home and said he’d fix it himself. So, he pulled out the toolbox and went at the car. After a half an hour he told me he had it fixed. He turned on the car and the engine light was no longer on. When I asked what he did, he showed me a tiny bulb.
His solution to fixing the engine light was to take to bulb out.
So now when he was driving the engine light was no longer on, with his ‘fixed’ engine. However, 3 or 4 months later his car broke down and he couldn’t understand why. The cost of fixing the car was more than what he initially paid for it, so he never had it fixed. He went through 4 Renault 19’s that year!
This is what happens when you take painkillers for your pain. You continue dealing with the situation for a while with the aid of painkillers until your body eventually “breaks down”. If my brother had taken the car to an expert (a real Mechanic) the day the light came on, he would’ve had that car for a much longer time than he did. If you go to see an expert (Physical Therapist) about your back pain, or whatever pain you suffer from, you will be moving well and PAIN FREE for much longer periods of your life than if you don’t.
Now, I understand that when we are in pain, all we want is pain relief. And that’s fine, and perfectly understandable. Take a painkiller to help ease your pain, but then go to see a Physical Therapist as soon as you can.
Don’t go to the Doctor for a 3-month prescription of strong painkillers. They are slowly destroying your body and hope the problem solves itself. When you go to a Doctor, they wont really know what is wrong. It is not their area of expertise. They sympathise with you and give you tablets for pain relief, when what they should really do is send you to see a Physical Therapist.
If you are worried about having to rely on pain medication and doctors’ visits, or you are worried about needing medication. Call Pain Relief Limerick NOW and book in for a FREE Discovery Visit. If it is, we come up with a suitable treatment plan. If we cannot help you, we will point you in the right direction.
