Aspirin is the safer choice for the millions of people who take over-the-counter pain relievers like Advil or Aleve to deal with headaches or arthritis, a top cardiologist says.
“People who take these drugs to deal with the pain from inflammation need to realize that these medications are not safe for daily use,” Chauncey Crandall, M.D., tells Newsmax Health.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration last week issued a new warning regarding ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin) and naproxen (Aleve), saying that they increase the risk of heart attack and stroke.
The medications are a category of pain reliever called nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs or NSAIDs.
The new warnings will apply to prescription NSAIDs as well as over-the-counter drugs.
Aspirin is also an NSAID, but it is not included in the warning because it is safer for heart health, the FDA said.
“Aspirin is the safer choice for those suffering from chronic pain,” said Dr. Crandall, author of the Heart Health Report newsletter.
“We’ve had hundreds of years of experience with aspirin and its precursors, going back to ancient times, and it has a good safety profile.”
Doctors are concerned about people with chronic pain who use NSAIDs on a regular basis, even if they have good heart health, said Dr. Mark Creager, president of the American Heart Association and director of vascular medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
"Even after just several weeks of use of an NSAID, the risk of heart attack or stroke goes up,” said Dr. Creager. “The risk is high with regular use, and it’s likely that the risk is greater when higher doses of these drugs are used.”
The new warnings are the result of recent studies of the heart effects of NSAIDs, but ibuprofen and naproxen have other detrimental effects as well, said Dr. Crandall.
“These drugs are hard on the kidneys and make people vulnerable not only to heart attacks, but to kidney failure as well," he said.
While aspirin is safer than other NSAIDs, there are alternative ways to deal with chronic pain, according to Dr. Crandall.
"We are a society in which people think they can just pop a pill whenever something bothers them instead of looking into non-drug methods,” he said.
Current labeling on over-the-counter ibuprofen and naproxen warns patients to take the lowest dose possible for the least amount of time possible, and to not use them for longer than 10 days.
The new warnings go further by stating that people with high blood pressure or heart disease should consult a doctor before using the pain relievers. They also state that while risk increases the longer the drugs are taken, people can suffer a heart attack or stroke in the first few weeks of use.
The labeling will also note that NSAIDs increase a person's likelihood of heart failure, and that in their first year after a heart attack, patients treated with such medications are more likely to die than heart attack victims who do not take them.
Here are Dr. Crandall’s tips for nondrug relief from chronic pain:
• If you suffer from arthritis or other types of joint pain, lose weight. As the rate of obesity has gone up, so has that for arthritis. Losing weight takes stress off joints.
• Try eliminating gluten from your diet, as gluten can result in inflammation, which translates to chronic pain.
• Products that contain milk protein also have been linked to inflammation-caused pain.
• Drink a small glass of cherry juice or eat a handful of cherries daily. Multiple studies have found that antioxidant-rich cherries can also help lower pain-causing inflammation.
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