Can Painkillers Make Pain Worse Over Time?

Painkillers come in many, many forms and have been used as early as the sixteenth century, long before the FDA monitored the safe use of the substances. With a current extreme emphasis on taking pain medications when we hurt, it’s surprising that the same medicines that are overstocked in pharmacies might, in fact, be doing us more harm than good. This is startlingly becoming more and more common in the world today, especially for those who suffer from chronic pain.

A Startling Discovery:  Painkillers Make Pain Worse

A Dr. Michael Baron made a startling discovery in 2006 that his patients might actually benefit from not using their prescription pain medications. Of course, the patients themselves were puzzled at this suggestion. Since his first study, Dr. Baron has found the same symptoms reproduced in study after study. According to him, the medical field was a under-treating pain in the 1980s, but in the 1990s physicians began to over-treat pain.  Studies show that prescriptions and painkillers make pain worse for some patients due to the number of side-effects they experience.  For instance, so medications cause a headache, flu-like symptoms, muscle aches and pains, and distress in the digestive system.

Domino Effect

What started in the 90s led to a domino effect of painkiller addictions. In fact, since 1999 the number of prescription painkillers prescribed and sold in the US alone has nearly quadrupled, but there hasn’t been a change in the amount of pain that Americans report. Medications do have a place in medicine, but an epidemic of drug addiction has occurred from over-prescribing of these substances. For example, more than one million people in Britain may be suffering from constant headaches due to over intake of painkillers. This isn’t counting the 17,000 Americans killed by painkillers every year.