Follow your Body's Signal

There is an ongoing advertisement war between different pharmaceutical companies on pain killers - Advil and Aleve both claim that they can keep a patient pain free for a whole day, and Tylenol cannot.

Pain is human body reaction to stress and diseases.

Do we really want to use pain killer to keep us pain free for a while but ignoring our body's signal to us that our body is over stressed?

Headache is mostly due to stress and sleep deprivation.

Muscle ache is mostly caused by over pull, fatigue and incorrect sitting/standing/sleeping postures.

I would say that we don't need pain killer for common headache or muscle ache.

For example, if my headache is caused by stress or overwork, I slow down, relax; if the head ache is caused by insufficient sleep, I take a nap during the day to make up or go to bed early at night. Taking measures to eliminate the root cause of the pain, the pain will go away.

If I work in the yard for long time and my muscle aches, I skip my daily muscle exercise. If I work on computer for extended hours, I feel pain and numbness at my fingers and arms. I slow down for a few days to allow the symptom go sway, then I adjust my work habit by taking one or two breaks regularly.

One time, my muscle fatigue was caused by incorrect sitting posture at my desk. I asked an ergonomic specialist to help me - adjust chair, desk and my sitting posture. This along with breaks and stretch exercise helped to eliminate my muscle fatigue problem

If body ache is caused by flu, I just drink water and sleep more.

Bottom line, find the root cause of the pain, eliminate it, the pain will go away without pain killer!

We rarely use pain killer unless fever or surgery, never use pain killer for common headache. 

Because of this, when we do use painkiller, it is very effective.