The Dangers of Managing Chronic Pain with Medication

  • Posted on: Sep 15 2020
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If you have chronic pain from an injury, arthritis, or other condition, you have likely been given medication for it at some point. While medication can help short-term, using it to manage your chronic pain carries with it a number of dangers that you need to be aware of.

You Can Become Addicted

If you take anything stronger than over-the-counter medications, you may run the risk of becoming an addict. It’s even possible to become mentally addicted to something like ibuprofen. You may come to believe that you can’t go about your day unless you’ve taken your medication, so even if you don’t have a physical dependence on the drug, you are still dealing with a type of dependence. Breaking this mental dependency can be very difficult.

It’s Masking the Pain, Not Addressing the Cause

Medication is a short-term solution because it does nothing to actually address the cause of your pain. This means it will never make the pain go away permanently. All it does is mask the pain for short periods of time, forcing you to take the medication regularly to keep that pain from impacting your life.

You May Develop a Tolerance

Your body can build up a tolerance to the pain medication over time, forcing you to take more and more of it at once to get the same effects. At some point, you may reach the limits of how much pain medication you can safely take within a 24-hour period. If you reach that point, you may find that you have to deal with the pain for part of the day because you cannot take any more medication right away.

There Are Side Effects

Pain medication often has a number of side effects, even over-the-counter medications. If you take this medication long-term or take too much of it at once, it can damage parts of your body or lead to other medical conditions.  For example, acetaminophen, the active ingredient in many over-the-counter brand name medications, can lead to liver damage if you take more than is recommended within a certain time period or if you take it with alcohol.

We Provide Other Pain Management Methods

If you want to avoid taking medication to manage your chronic pain, we can help. We can diagnose your condition and determine if options such as chiropractic care, physical therapy, or orthopedic surgery are right for you. Contact Maximum Orthopedics today to schedule an appointment.

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