Pain Killers Causing More Pain?

New peer-reviewed science suggests anti-inflammatory drugs and steroids may cause more pain than they relieve

With major changes to how we work, such as working from home, our posture might be affected if we do not take the time to work on our posture, and reduce back pain. Shutterstock

Your 12-year-old daughter says her stomach hurts. Your 50-something spouse complains of a headache. Then there’s your own joint pain: the dull ache just below your elbow, perhaps from spending too much time typing on a computer keyboard, and your sore hips from the slow jogging you’ve been doing to keep in shape.

“Pain is a near-universal experience,” the authors of a 2019 systematic review about western medicine’s understanding of pain assert. Because so many of us are plagued with so much pain, healthcare practitioners in every country are always looking for ways to help patients alleviate it. ⁽¹⁾

Big Pain

But pain relief is also a multi-billion-dollar business.