Pain: Basics and Benchmarks

Pain is an individual experience, difficult to describe precisely, even though we all know what we mean by it. Characteristically, it is a straight response to an unpleasant event associated with tissue damage, such as injury, inflammation or cancer, but severe pain can arise autonomously of any evident predisposing cause (e.g. trigeminal neuralgia), or persist long after the advancing injury has healed (e.g. limb pain).

Pain is a major cause of disability and distress and when the pain is less responsive to the conventional analgesic (or pain-killer) drugs we need to think of pain in terms of disordered neural function rather than simply as a ‘normal’ response to tissue injury.

Pain relief medications help to decrease or stop pain. They also help to reduce fever. Pain killers that are available on prescription basis are steroidal or morphine based medicines used to treat severe pain cases such as those associated with cancer. There are mainly two types of OTC pain killer medicines.

1. Acetaminophen or Paracetamol

2. Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medicines (NSAID’s) e.g. Generic Aleve

OTC pain killers come handy to relieve pain of different types such as headaches, arthritis pain, back pain, earaches, and pain from surgery, etc.

Acetaminophen work on parts of brain which receive the pain messages. These medicines do not reduce inflammation like the other variant of pain killer OTC medicine, but they have fewer side effects associated with them compared to NSAID’s. This makes Acetaminophen safe for long term use and also usable for children to help them manage pain. Acetaminophen is used widely for relieving headache, ease common pain, treat arthritis and common pain conditions and most importantly used by children or people who need to use pain medicines for a long time.

As far as NSAIDs are concerned, there are several types which include aspirin, naproxen (generic Aleve) and ibuprofen. NSAIDs are particularly useful to reduce the level of hormones like substance known as prostaglandins. These pain killers work by provisionally blocking the body’s production prostaglandins.

The dose pattern of these NSAIDs states that they should be taken by adults every 8-12 hours when the symptoms of pain and inflammation exist. Taking this medicine along with water is the best practice. If extreme pain is experienced, one may even take 2 doses in the first hour but should not take another within the next 8-12 hours. These medicines are strictly not to be administered to children below the age of 12. It is also recommended not to take these medicines for a period of more than 10 days on a continuous basis as it may give rise to unwanted ill effects to the body. NSAID’s are particularly useful in treating conditions such as fever, menstrual cramps, and pain due to headache, muscle ache and stiffness, to reduce swellings or inflammation unlike acetaminophen and muscle sprains.

For most people OTC medicines come in handy and work well to reduce pain, but in case they don’t and if the signs and symptoms are more serious one could go to a doctor and opt for prescription pain relief medications.