Popping Pills Won't Cure Muscle Pain

By Serena Gordon, HealthSCOUT Reporter

Listen up all you over-exercising weekend warriors who become pill-popping Monday moaners: Those drugs you're taking to ease your muscle aches and pains won't get you well any faster, says a new study.

Commonly used painkillers -- like aspirin, acetaminophen and codeine -- do little more to help overused muscles than temporarily mask the pain, say researchers from Coventry University in England.

"Our results showed that none of the drugs had any effect whatsoever on the stiffness, pain and swelling associated with overuse," says researcher Panos Barlas, a lecturer from the university's physiotherapy group. Results of the study appear in the July issue of the Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.

Barlas and his colleagues studied 84 people from Northern Ireland -- half male -- between 18 and 35 years of age. They had the participants lift weights to exercise their biceps to the point of exhaustion. The participants lifted weights until they were so weak that they were dropping the weights, Barlas says.

They then gave the participants a single-dose of either aspirin, acetaminophen, codeine or vitamin C. Some got nothing at all.

None of the medications helped heal the post-exercise soreness, Barlas says. Only Vitamin C showed any promise at all, he says, but even those results were not strong enough to be considered statistically significant.

The researchers say they also studied the effects of acupuncture, ultrasound, massage and more and found that none of those treatments helped heal the muscle pain any faster either.

"It takes seven days to get better on its own and a week with treatment," Barlas says.

Others, however, think some drugs may be useful for more than temporary pain relief.

Helen Reinking, a physical therapist and director of the Southwest Georgia chapter of the Arthritis Foundation, says aspirin does have anti-inflammatory properties and should help if swelling is a problem.

But, she doesn't recommend using drugs to kill pain because that can set up a vicious cycle, she says.

"If you have an overuse injury and you cover it up with codeine, you're not aware of the pain so you're not aware of your limitations" and that can set you up for further injury, Reinking says.

What To Do

First, don't believe advertisements, Barlas says. "Don't believe claims about ibuprofen or other over-the-counter drugs because they won't do anything other than provide a temporary analgesic effect," he says.

His suggestion: "Wait it out."

In fact, adds Reinking, some pain is a normal part of exercising. The delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) you feel is micro muscle tears that the muscles need to develop and get stronger, she says.

Don't repeat the same exercise for 24 to 48 hours, she says. Instead, go for a gentle walk or bike ride to get more oxygen into your blood and more blood moving throughout your body.

If you've really overdone it, Reinking says, think RICE: rest, ice, compression (wrapping in a bandage) and elevation.

The American Medical Association offers a primer on exercise that details why you should exercise, how to start exercising and how to exercise safely.