Good morning everyone. Dr. Alex Hernandez, Chiropractor in North Bergen, NJ. Today I’m going to talk about over the counter medication and back pain. I’m going to talk about a patient who came in and was taking OTC medication for a long period of time. Typically what happens is when most people have back pain from raking the leaves or taking the garbage out and they feel a little twinge in the back, one of the most common things that people do is they take either Advil or Tylenol, or a muscle relaxant. That’s okay, we’re not against you taking any of these medications, nobody wants to be in pain. However, you really have to get to the underlying cause of what is creating your back pain.
What I decided to take after doing an examination, I took this patient’s x-ray. Look at this back here, this is the spine, and we’re looking at it from the front, this is the pelvis, these are the bones on the back. We could see really what the low back problem is, why he was getting pain. The green line is where the spine should be and the red line is how his back is. So taking pain medication isn't really going to do much for him, after taking them for 2-3 weeks twice a day, he said, okay I need to get some professional help, I need to figure out what’s causing my pain.
The last thing I want to share with you today is it’s okay to take these anti-inflammatories, these OTCs. But this isn’t really the solution to your problem. If you’re going on four, five or six weeks trying to manage your pain with these, your body is telling you that there is something deeper causing your pain. So the lesson here is to look at the source of the problem, seek professional help. If you have a back problem, it’s important to see a professional. See a Chiropractor, get some x-rays, find out what the cause of the problem is, and don’t prolong taking the over the counter medication. Thank you.
