Most of the common over-the-counter pain meds are also anti-inflammatory, and can help the root cause of musculoskeletal pain. I was surprised, as a young adult, when a doctor I’d gone to for knee pain told me to take aspirin every day for a week, whether the knee hurt or not, to reduce the swelling so the knee could heal.
that is surprising, since a single aspirin tablet a day is not enough to reduce inflammation.
NSAIDs like aspirin, ibuprofen, naproxen, meloxicam, etc. are indeed anti-inflammatory, but only if taken at a high enough dose for a long enough time. Ibuprofen will reduce inflammation if 800 mg is taken 3 x a day for at least 2-3 weeks. Naproxen should be given at 500 mg a day for that duration, Meloxicam requires 15 mg a day for at least that long. Aspirin requires such a high dose to reduce inflammation that most people experience side effects like stomach upset or tinnitus before they get reduced swelling on it.
In high school about 1973 I had some kind of small, non-reddish, bumpy rash that kept itching like crazy. I went to a doctor about it and he gave me pills. They were quite small, gray, spherical. I’ve always wondered what they were, and wondered if they were placebos.
I said, “aspirin”, not “an aspirin”. And it was a fairly high dose, and the doctor talked to me about watching for stomach upset and tinnitus. I think that was right before Ibuprofen became OTC. At any rate, I remember discussing other nsaids he might prescribe. But I was young and had never had stomach upset from aspirin.
And it’s possible it was two weeks, i know it seemed like a long time.
It worked, fwiw, but since then when I’ve wanted to control knee pain I have used ibuprofen or naproxen.
2 tabs 4 to 6 times a day would work to fight inflammation, for sure.
They also used fever cabinets, which had their own set of dangers. The doctor who discovered that high fevers could cure syphilis won a Nobel Prize, which was appropriate for the times.
I can almost guarantee that you were given Sparine (promazine) which at that time was used extensively as an antihistamine, and also for psychiatric ailments and interestingly for migraine treatment and prophylaxis. It’s no longer marketed for human use, although Wiki says it’s sometimes used to sedate horses.
IIRC, its main hazard, and the reason its use fell off, was because of a slight risk of agranulocytosis (not making enough white blood cells) and safer drugs were available which did the same things. I do recall dispensing it a couple times, which is how I knew what the tablets looked like.
I see “Pinetarsol” available for purchase on Amazon. Pine tar is definitely an old-fashioned treatment for psoriasis.
(Threadjack: Because I haven’t practiced since 2012, I’m thinking about not renewing my licenses when they come due next year. Maybe I should after all.)
And it would probably cause tinnitus, vertigo, and bleeding issues!
More than once, an elderly grandparent would stop by the grocery store pharmacy counter and tell me that the aspirin was for their grandchild they were babysitting who was running a fever, and get a little miffed when I refused to sell it to them, and instead recommend acetaminophen (liquid ibuprofen and naproxen were still RX-only). My parents gave me aspirin too, but that’s just because we didn’t know about Reye’s Syndrome, which was and is extremely rare, but devastating when it happens.
Yes, I mentioned that in my original post on the subject.