What should you do when you have a tension or a migraine headache? What should you do when you are experiencing chronic pain? Take a pain pill, right? WRONG! Most people don’t have a second thought when it comes to taking analgesics for their chronic headaches or other assorted aches and pains, but research from the St. Louis University School of Medicine demonstrates that “analgesic use seems to be the primary factor in promoting the development of chronic pain.” It was found that painkillers, instead of helping relieve the chronic pain, can actually be the cause of it.
“The best thing a person with chronic headaches can do is get off the painkillers,” says Paul Duckro, associate professor of psychiatry at St. Louis University. “In our studies, two-thirds of the chronic headache sufferers benefited from the withdrawal of medication.” Two-thirds of the chronic headache sufferers not only did not get rid of their headaches with the medications they were taking, but increased their severity through the use of analgesics.
“Evidently, at a certain point in a chronic sufferer’s intake of analgesics (including...