Ibuprofen is a common over the counter medication used to manage pain. But it could actually be doing more harm than good.
Summary:
There are new FDA warnings on the Non-Steroidal Anti-inflammatory class of drugs (ibuprofen). It used to apply only to Vioxx before it was taken off the market but research has shown there are problems with all of them. This includes both over the counter and prescription varieties.
They can cause damage to your digestive system, kidneys, and are bad for your heart. Non-steroidal anti-inflammatories actually kill more people in the United States than HIV does each year.
They prevent our bodies from healing. Muscles, tendons, and bones don’t heal well when we take anti-inflammatory drugs and that’s really important because our bodies want to heal.
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Transcription: Is Ibuprofen good or bad for you
Dr. Heather Tick: Why are non-steroidal anti-inflammatories like ibuprofen bad for me? You may have noticed or maybe you missed it but the FDA has put new warnings on the class of drugs called Non-steroidal Anti-inflammatories. These are the ibuprofen type of drugs. They’re sometimes called anti-inflammatories and they come in over-the-counter and prescription varieties and the warnings now apply to them all.
It used to just apply to Vioxx before it was taken off the market but research had actually shown that there were problems with all of these drugs. They actually kill more people in the United States than HIV does every single year. They cause kidney damage. They can cause bleeding anywhere in the gastrointestinal tract that means your digestive system and now we know that it can also harm your heart.
So the problem with them is that they’re harmful but there’s another reason that you have to actually be careful with those types of drugs and that is they interfere with healing. So let me repeat that. When you take a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory, an anti-inflammatory drug, it actually stops your body from healing and that’s really important because our bodies want to heal. But we know that muscles, tendons and bones don’t heal well when you are on anti-inflammatories whether they are prescription or over the counter. So you have to be really cautious.
