I had pretty bad and inexplicable hip pain the last few days so my mother stuck one of those patches on my back and it went away. But if something was screwing with my hip causing pain, wouldn’t it still be there? And if so, wouldn’t it be better to suck it up so I can tell when I’m doing something my hip doesn’t like? And suppose I was completely immobilised by pain, would it be better to take a pill or just go lie down? I’m talking pain with a physical cause here, not some sort of neural condition.
Pain is your body’s way of saying that you are doing something, or have done something, that’s not good for it. If you take painkillers, sometimes that will encourage you to further injure yourself, because you won’t realize you’re doing it. I’d recommend going to a doctor to make sure you’re okay.
I guess it would depend on what exactly was causing the pain. If its something that just fixes itself like a headache, then pain killers are a wonderful idea. If its something serious then probably not so good of an idea. I always assumed that was why they warn you not to take painkillers for extended periods of time without consulting a doctor.
Well that and the tremendous potential damage to your liver and kidneys…
Did you ever give birth? Did you ever have a migraine or a ruptured appendix? Did you ever pass a stone or have a spinal tap? Did you ever have a limb amputated? Were you ever a burn victim?
Obviously pain is your body’s way of telling you something’s wrong, but once you get that message and you get the medical situation under control, it’s sadistic to tell someone to “just go lie down.” Pain killers are a godsend, but of course they have to be used responsibly.
Sounds like your hip pain may have been muscular in origin. Those patches do two things, usually - they provide warmth, which in its own right is soothing, and some of them include an irritant (capsaicin) which is thought to essentially overload the nerves and put so much “static on the line” that the brain can’t sort it out and eventually ignores it.
In your case, it sounds like the warmth from the patch, and a little rest was all you needed to stop the pain and associated muscle spasms.
A good thing, because pain can be self-peretuating, and beyond a certain point, it can be almost unstoppable and you’re then in the territory of chronic pain.
Treating severe acute pain is a good idea. If left untreated, the pain neurons can end up re-modeling themselves, and one ends up with chronic neuropathic pain, which is far far harder to treat than acute pain.
However, the key is appropriate pain treatment. Constantly covering up cardiac pain with a dose of morphine is unwise. Treating the pain of a broken ankle (after proper diagnosis, immobilization, etc) with either narcotics or non-narcotic pain meds is a smart thing to do.
If one is uncertain about what to do about their pain, they should consult their doctor.
Not to mention cancer.