Transcript: Aspirin works through suppressing prostaglandin. Prostaglandin is the molecule in the body that is proinflammatory. It causes inflammation. Inflammation irritates nerves and tissues which causes pain. Even one aspirin can decrease some inflammation fairly quickly. It doesn’t do a great job of that, but it works. Does it extinguish the inflammation? Probably not. But in this case, you’re probably just looking for an occasional aspirin. I certainly don’t have a problem with an occasional aspirin or occasional ibuprofen or Aleve. Occasional.
Now, being a functional medicine doctor you might say “how could he say that?” Well, I’m a pragmatist, and sometimes it works. So as an MD, we have holistic medicine with all its wonderful things. We have allopathic medicine with all its wonderful things. We have chiropractic and acupuncture. All these other disciplines have all of their aspects that are fantastic and work very well. But all of them have areas that they don’t work so well.
In the ideal world, you’re going to combine everything to produce the best results for you. And an occasional aspirin or ibuprofen, fine. It’s the chronic use that becomes a problem. There are 16,000 people a year, approximately, who die from gastric bleeding caused by ibuprofen or aspirin. Sixteen thousand, and medicine thinks that’s okay. I don’t think that’s okay. That’s why I got into holistic medicine and magnetic field therapy because I don’t think it’s okay. So that’s why I use magnetic field therapy. If you have a chronic pain problem, you should be using other techniques to decrease chronic pain. For acute pain purposes after surgery or bone break, et cetera. it may be okay short term. I would not say you shouldn’t. And whatever works the quickest, the best, easiest, and probably the safest and the least expensive, sure go for it.
