Dr. Aneesh Singla

Again, let's say you...

you had a knee injury you ran too much on it and now it's swollen and those are prostaglandins at work and by taking ibuprofen you're blocking the production of prostaglandins thereby reducing your pain and inflammation so that's just one example of a pain medication there's many medications we use for pain and i'm happy to go into more detail if you'd like

You know, they all work differently.

You know, for example, Tylenol, we believe works by a central mechanism.

We actually don't quite fully understand how Tylenol works, even though it's been around for a long time, but we believe it works by a central mechanism.

So whereas ibuprofen might work directly on your muscles or your joints or your knee by blocking those prostaglandins and stopping the inflammation, Tylenol works more centrally.

And that's why it's so beneficial when we have a fever because it

can actually lower our fever and it can also stop the production of or the sensation of pain centrally.

So they sort of work synergistically.

A lot of people think that it's either ibuprofen or Tylenol, but believe it or not, you can actually take both together and they actually work on slightly different mechanisms.

There's also a painkillers that we might use after surgery.

For example, those are opioid medications also referred to as narcotic medications.

And, you know, but we usually reserve those for more serious cases, not just your run of the mill headache.

That's a great question.

I would say that if I've sprained an ankle or experiencing some musculoskeletal type of pain, worked out a little too hard in the gym, for example, then I think ibuprofen is a great medication to use, and as is Tylenol.

So sometimes I reach for ibuprofen, sometimes it's Tylenol.

I would say that both are very reasonable options.

They're over-the-counter medications.

and they you know have have low side effect profiles when used in in low doses and in moderation and if if those are not adequate to manage my pain then you know i'm certainly gonna go see a physician about that to try to number one understand what's going on and why is it not going away

I'm going to get imaging.