Low Back Pain Medication, Which Works Best?

Dr Barry L Marks,
Chiropractor, Spinal Decompression Specialist
A Review of Recent Literature on Back Pain Medications

A recent Cochrane Review looked at different medications for back pain to determine which ones were most effective. The results were surprising and should lead medical physicians to change their prescribing habits for their back pain patients.

The retrospective review gathered data from numerous double blinded placebo controlled studies of medication for back pain.

The back pain medications studied were:

• NSAID’s (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) include drugs such as aspirin, ibuprofen (Motrin and Advil) and naproxen (Aleve)
• New class of NSAID’s called Cox 2 inhibitors (Celecoxib aka Celebrex)
• Acetaminophen (Tylenol)
• “Muscle relaxers”

Their findings:

• NSAIDs work in the short-term, but they aren’t really better than plain Tylenol
• NSAIDs are more effective than a placebo but with more side effects
• COX-2 inhibitors do spare the GI tract; but they don’t work better than the traditional NSAIDs
• There wasn’t one individual NSAID that worked better than others
• It is not necessary to combine an NSAID with a muscle relaxant. This doesn’t provide greater symptom relief but it does increase the negative side effects

How this affects you and your back pain:
Expensive prescription drugs like Celebrex do not work any better than Tylenol, Advil, Motrin or Aleve.

All NSAID’s are about the same as far as efficacy for relieiving back pain and are no better than Tylenol.

Muscle relaxants should not be routinely prescribed for back pain as they do not improve outcomes, but do cause more side-effects.

For more information on back pain treatments such as chiropractic, spinal decompression and more, visit www.orangespinaldecompression.com