Kat's Blog

Painkillers

An interesting factoid on painkillers: while inadvisable to mix NSAIDs or multiple drugs containing acetaminophen, combining acetaminophen and an NSAID at the recommended dose is good for managing severe pain w/o opioids. Acetaminophen has a different metabolic pathway compared against NSAIDs, so they don't interact and the chance of OD from this combo is near zero.

I was given 2400mg (3x800mg) ibuprofen and 4000mg (8x500mg) acetaminophen daily for my wisdom tooth removal instead of an opioid, and it sucked massively. After 4 days, I started ended up with pretty bad melena and promptly stopped it, taking acetaminophen only for the remaining 3 days. The pain was dulled, but it never went away until the wound fully healed and stitches dissolved roughly a week after the operation.

I don't like shilling for anything, especially if you're contraindicated for naproxen sodium, but it really is an outstanding painkiller. When my tooth was slowly rotting out, naproxen blunted the pain quite well all things considered. Best thing is there was no additional stomach bleeding, and I took it for about 2 weeks straight before my root canal. Hell, it even works for my sciatic nerve pain, removing the most of the pain and leaving only tingling.

The best 20 bucks I've ever spent was on a bottle of generic naproxen.