Using Pain Killers / Bruising
03.17.09
Using Pain Killers
Or
Feel the pain it’s good for you.
Taking pain killers and anti-inflammatories is a really good idea when you are in pain and wanting to rest or sleep as the reduction in the level of pain will allow better rest and deeper sleep improving the quality of the healing and speeding up that healing.
However taking pain killers to go to work, be that hard physical labour like housework, digging the garden, farming or building or more gentle tasks like computing, washing up, or telephoning masks the pain and allows us to work on through and to do real irreversible damage. Were we able to feel that pain we would know it was long gone time to stop. It is a really bad idea to take pain killers to play Tennis, Golf or even snooker.
However taking pain killers to go to work, be that hard physical labour like housework, digging the garden, farming or building or more gentle tasks like computing, washing up, or telephoning masks the pain and allows us to work on through and to do real irreversible damage. Were we able to feel that pain we would know it was long gone time to stop. It is a really bad idea to take pain killers to play Tennis, Golf or even snooker.
When we take pain killers we stop feeling the true level of pain and, especially when we are physically doing, we can go on damaging tissues beyond all reason, to inflict real harm where there was only mild damage. Increasing healing times from a matter of weeks to months or years, if ever.
Even in relatively sedentary jobs like computing we may be concentrating so hard that with pain killers the level of pain that is being ignored as we stay almost still can be doing serious harm before we become so uncomfortable that we move about and give it relief.
Personally I normally prefer locally applied gels, lotions and sprays that penetrate the skin and relieve the pain where the cause is rather than taking them orally, where from the stomach they enter the blood stream and circulate to where they are needed. With local application any adverse reaction will be noticed on the skin but with oral administration the lining of the stomach may be becoming seriously inflamed before the analgesic (painkilling) effect is overcome and the nervous system starts to report the problem strongly enough for us to become aware of it.
Anti-inflammatories can be pain killers because their effect of reducing inflammation does also reduce the pain.
Ibuprofen products work for men as both anti-inflammatories and as analgesics (painkillers) but for women they have little or no analgesic (painkilling) effect directly except as they are anti-inflammatories. For women they reduce the inflammation and so can reduce pain.
Aspirin and Paracetamol based products both work as analgesics and anti-inflammatories for both men and women.
The discovery of this has enforced a reassessment of how women feel pain. Childbirth holds the clue, women’s pain tolerance in the last three months of pregnancy rises phenomenally. As a result of this realisation there will in due course be a whole new range of painkillers based on hormones, that will work for both men and women.
Bruising
Bruising happens when small blood and lymph vessels break and leak fluid into the surrounding tissues. We can then generally see it through the opaque skin.
We have all seen inflammation where skin has been rubbed raw and is a bright red and weeping just after we fell over and skidded across the playground on our forearms. The tissues were red and sore with scratches and abrasions.
The first fluid to seep out was a clear bubble which became suffused with blood and then the whole area started bleeding. It certainly stung like mad and picking the bits of gravel out of the wound was horrid.
That first fluid to emerge was clear, that was lymph and then the wound went through a stage of being very sticky, and then with the mixing of oxygen from the air the blood set and became a clot over the wound.
Inflammation internally is very similar but without the grit and only very limited supplies of oxygen.
The tissues are all red and weepy with lymph and blood mixing and this may sometimes be apparent under the skin as bruising. If it’s a bad bruise with a reddish centre that is arterial blood carrying oxygen surrounded by the dark blue part being venous blood without oxygen and then the yellowish lymph on the outside. The pressure within this area being what gives it that distinctive tenderness of bruising.
In really heavy bruising the natural process is that the lymph bruising round the outside is diluted and carried away allowing the lymph to work its way into the dark blue venous blood and gradually dilutes this to carry it away as well. The centre that initially was a reddish colour turns blue as the oxygen in it is absorbed by the surrounding tissues. Gradually the bruising fades and clears.
Initially if we can reduce the bleeding it is a good idea and there are two good ways of doing this. If we have either ice or distilled witch-hazel to hand. Apply over the injury. Ice works fairly well by reducing the size of the blood vessels and so they leak less before self-sealing and stopping the flow.
Distilled witch-hazel works by causing the hole in the tube to seal itself faster than it would naturally and reduces bruising by more than half if applied quickly enough. It also has the benefit that because it feels cold on the skin it distracts the brain which does not then concentrate on the pain.
After the bleeding has ceased the application of Arnica in almost any form over the next few days speeds the removal of the blood.
In cases of spontaneous bruising always see your Doctor.
Addendum
I have been asked why? Well really it is very simple if you bleed spontaneously then there is an increased risk of an embolism or a stroke. Should a patient be on a blood thinning agent it might be appropriate to lower the dose as thinner blood does not clot and so a minor stroke could then be lethal.
This has in fact been happening. Because it would be unethical to do a study where patients who needed blood thinning agents were given a placebo no such study has been done. The efficacy of blood thinning agents has therefore never been properly researched and it now seems some may have died as a result of being on them.
“Evidence based Medicine”. I wonder if anyone has researched what happens in hot climates? Because the blood thins.