Pain Pills and Heart Attacks

by Dr. Andrew T. Brady, Chiropractic Physician

Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatories (NSAIDs), such as ibuprofen, have become a household staple for treating everything from hangovers to chronic arthritis. In fact, NSAIDs have become so popular – Advil and Motrin contain ibuprofen – that roughly 30 billion doses are consumed every year in the U.S. Although most people think these medications are entirely safe, the latest research suggests otherwise.

Last month (May 2017) an article was published in the British Medical Journal, a prestigious peer-reviewed journal, discussing the risk of heart attacks with the use of ibuprofen. The study looked at roughly half a million people and compared subjects who took these medications to those who did not and found that the people who took the medication, at any dose, had a 20-50 percent increase in the risk of heart attack. The scariest finding is that the researchers saw this increased risk in heart attack within the first week of taking the medication and once the medication was stopped, they still saw an increased risk up to a year afterwards in some subjects.

It would be crazy for me to say that these medications are never necessary. For example, my son fell this past weekend and dislocated his elbow, and I was very thankful for the small dose of ibuprofen that was available so he wasn’t suffering while it was fixed. In his two years of life, it was the only time he has ever needed a medication. In cases of emergencies, these medications can truly be amazing; however, giving a child ibuprofen every day for an extended period of time for something as benign as teething might be something you want to reassess, considering it is harmful to their heart. After all, heart attacks are the leading cause of death in the U.S.

If you are someone who is always popping ibuprofen, the question you may want to ask yourself is WHY are you in pain so frequently? And no, it’s not because you are getting old. If you put all the pain pills you took in a year’s time into an empty milk jug, how would that make you feel once you see how full it was? Would it concern you after reading what it does to your heart? If so, get help and fix the cause! I see amazing health transformations every single day. Is it time for yours?

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