Taking Ibuprofen is becoming second nature for a lot of people. Anytime you have a headache, menstrual pain, muscle aches or some small fever, you take one of these "magical" pills, and 9 times out of 10 - the pain goes away. What you didn't know is that each time you take one of these Ibuprofen pills, you pay a price. Each time you take on of them, you make yourself less healthy in the long-term. Ibuprofen damages many different organs in your body, and today, I will explain all of this to you.
1961 is less than 20 years after WWII. It is weird to think how fast time flies by, and fast is the technological process. Ibuprofen is now traded as a generic drug, and one of the most sold trade names are Advil and Motrin.
For the first few decades after Ibuprofen as first released, you couldn't just buy it anywhere, and many places didn't have it as an OTC drug. It was in 1983 that Ibuprofen got OTC status in the US, and in just 2014 alone, Americans spend 4 billion on the drug.
Yeah, a lot of people know that taking drugs comes with risks and potential long-term organ damage, but not too many drugs are taken as easily and as often as Ibuprofen. This is one of the saddest parts of today's society - we always try to take the easy way out.
After getting more thorough research on the harms and dangers of consuming Ibuprofen, the FDA tried to tackle the problem by placing warning labels on the boxed editions of the drug. This was first done in 2005, and continues to this day.
10 years after the original warning label was placed on the Ibuprofen bottles, the text got updated to include the risk of getting heart attacks and strokes from using the pain reliever. Sadly, these are not the worst possible side-effects of the drug's usage.
One of the new parts of the warnings included with every Ibuprofen drug, is that they may cause heart attacks and stroke, even in the FIRST week of usage, with every additional week of usage, increasing the chances of this happening.
One of the worst aspects of this whole scandal, is that you don't need genetic predispositions to get a heart attack from the consumption of Ibuprofen. Everyone is vulnerable, even healthy, young individuals can get fatal results from using the drug.
Despite the inherent risks, there are no plans to ban the drug, since for most people, the damage doesn't occur instantly, and the pharmacy lobby in Washington is quite strong. A similar drug, Vioxx, was pulled off the market in 2004 after causing 140,000 heart attacks.
If you think you are safe from using Ibuprofen or other NSAID's (they are all dangerous) by not using pain relievers - think again. Drugs that are sold for the treatment of cold, flu and sleep problems can also contain various types of NSAID's.
This is the same as with all drugs, even the illegal ones - the more you take of something, the higher the risk of something bad happening. This is so true, that people can even get an overdose from getting too many vitamins - think about that.
Dr. Steven Nissen, chief of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, has told reporters that he thinks the labels on NSAID'S need to get updated as soon as possible. He says some of the pills got approved because the FDA didn't have enough research done prior to the approval.
The doctor I referenced in the previous picture, Dr. Steven Nissen, was the one who did the study that ultimately stopped the sales of the deadly Vioxx drug. Unfortunately, he says we still don't have enough research done on the bad side-effects on NSAID usage.
Dr. Steven Nissen is actually a very amazing doctor and researcher. He was the one who led the ground-breaking study called "The Precision Trial," a study that compared Ibuprofen, Celebrex, and naproxen, and ultimately proved that Celebrex was the safest drug.
Reading the previous picture, you might think that "Great, I'll just stock-up on Celebrex and be done with using Ibuprofen." That is not the case, as even Celebrex as some serious side effects - including gastrointestinal problems, which could damage your stomach's lining.
The research began in 2005 and was simultaneously done in 13 different countries, with a total of 900 involved medical centers. They focused on different kinds of patients, who used the pills for different kinds of pains - that is how we got the knowledge that NSAID's are dangerous.
