Jim Snider: The Slippery Slope of NSAIDS

Pain is a necessary mechanism our bodies have to alert us of the potential damage we may be causing or the damage that we have already caused. Often, while an athlete is competing at a high level of their sport or even if we consider the everyday Joe trying to keep healthy by staying active, each will encounter pain as a result of training or exercise and often their first instinct is to reach for the ‘I’ candy…

Ibuprofen, Advil, or Motrin are common over the counter NSAIDS. They are attractive in cases of pain because they are touted as anti-inflammatory. However, in otherwise healthy folks that may be experiencing pain from a difficult training session or perhaps an injury that inflammatory response is necessary for healing and adaptation to occur.

The Inflammatory Response in a nut shell

The inflammatory response is described quite well from one of the best books out there “Why Zerbras don’t get Ulcers”, as Dr. Robert Sapolsky says:

“Cut yourself with a paring knife, and you will slice open various cells of microscopic size that then spill out their proverbial guts; and typically, within this cellular soup now flooding out of the area of injury is a variety of chemical messengers that trigger pain receptor into action. The tissue injury also triggers an influx of cells of the immune system, which are there to scarf up and dispose of this infiltration is what we call inflammation, and those inflammatory cells release chemicals that make pain receptors more sensitive.”

If we think about this logically, we understand that the body needs the inflammatory response to save us from our rock head selves making us STOP what we are doing and heal. It is understandable that sometimes this is just not a possibility to completely stop and allow the inflammatory response to run its course. However, understand why the increase in pain is felt as a result of the chemical messenger system and necessary healing process. Understand too that dampening the entire inflammatory pathways with the use of NSAIDS may in fact prolong the healing process.

ALTERNATIVES and TIPS

Anyone who has trained hard understands what it means to feel a little ‘dinged up’. Rather than reaching for the Ibuprofen here are a couple of tips for managing inflammation and also speeding up the recovery process to go from ‘dinged up’ to ‘fired up.’

1. Good things in. = good things out – Take care of yourself through solid nutrition focusing on removing the items promoting inflammation such as dairy, safflower oils, peanut oils, legumes, grains and grain fed animals. Don’t panic, remember baby steps if it seems too daunting to remove each of those items all at one time. It is a process but you will feel the difference if you remove the excessive inflammation that is voluntarily consumed into your system.
   Consider doing food allergy tests from infinite allergy labs to determine inflammatory foods in your diet.
2. Targeted supplementation – use Tetrahydrocurcuminoids to support and manage systemic inflammation. Tetrahydrocurcuminoids are the major metabolites of curcumin in the human gut. Curcumin has numerous documented studies and its positive anti-inflammatory effects by regulating inflammatory signaling pathways.  Allowing good inflammation in while keep bad inflammation out. TetraCur LPT

3. Get into a good sleep pattern – Sleep is incredibly important as a part of the recovery process. The amount of information is enormous on the benefits of sleep. A great simple resource to start with is our 14 days to Better Sleep. 14 Days To Better Sleep eBook
4. Massage – Who doesn’t love getting a massage? Even if you have to beg your significant other to spend 5 min working the elbows into those erectors it might be worth it for a bit of relief even if temporary. Try to match your “type” of massage to balance your most current nervous system dominance. Parasympathetic = more aggressive, deep tissue, trigger point type work, Lacrosse Balls. Sympathetic = more Swedish massage, effleurage and longer stroke emphasis, Foam Roller (slow long rolls)
5. Contrast baths – The use of contrast baths has been in practice for quite some time and although the physiological mechanisms behind why they seem to work in injury recovery are less known, the bottom line is they are used often as a post training recovery modality. Evidence suggests that hot – cold water immersion assists in the reduction of injury in the acute stages. This is attributed to the vasodilatation and constriction which stimulates blood flow, removes metabolites, and repairs the injured tissues.
6. Spice it up – Spices such as ginger, turmeric, garlic, dill, oregano, coriander, fennel, red chili pepper, basil, rosemary and kelp help fight inflammation naturally.
7. Rest – Consider an unload phase in your training. You will keep active but considerably reduce the volume of training and allow the body to reset not only physically but also mentally.

FINAL THOUGHT

Simply put NSAIDS relieve symptoms they are not a cure. So next time the ice, stim, and ibuprofen mantra comes out – let’s think again and perhaps get outside the box a bit. All too often we put band-aids on things and chronic NSAID use is certainly one of them. Understand that symptoms are a result of a dysfunction – so turn your attention on the dysfunction rather than continue to treat symptoms. If you don’t, pretty soon that dysfunction is going to turn into a nightmare. NSAIDS often cause more harm than good, take into consideration alternative inflammation management strategies rather than sweep it under the rug of pharmaceuticals yet again.