How America’s #1 Painkiller Can Be a Real Pain

What You Should Know About Any Painkiller.

“Here, take this painkiller and it should make you feel better.  Back pain is one of the worst kinds since our backs are involved in everything our bodies do.  But this should help.”  So begins the patient’s experience with Norco or Hydrocodone, one of the most popular drugs prescribed today.

This comes from doctors hundreds of times a day to hundreds of patients, and they are right.  The Norco, also known as Hydrocodone backed by Tylenol, works.

What they do not tell us is that, especially with people 60 years and older, there is another effect that is extremely painful – Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS).  This nasty side effect causes constipation, bloating and severe belly pain.  With this painkiller, we swap one problem for another. The patient usually opts for a laxative.  However, when the laxative works, there is no relief.  Instead, the constipation symptoms immediately start once more.

A Most Popular Painkiller Doctors Give Patients

Not understanding that the origin is the Norco, the patient continues to take the painkiller, then the laxative, then Immodium to settle everything down.  And the cycle continues until there is no relief night or day from abdominal pain.

There are other side effects of this drug.  A few are stopping breathing, overdosing due to addiction, and the aspirin added into it can cause liver damage if taken too often.  The type you get decides whether Tylenol or Aspirin is added to the dosage.  In my case, I have to wonder if the doctor checked my record.  You see, I have a history of bleeding ulcers in the past and aspirin is deadly when combined with ulcers.

Doctors hand this particular painkiller out for any type of discomfort.  My daughter had a needle removed from her foot.  She required one whole stitch.  The doctor sent her home with a prescription for Norco.  I shredded it.  She never had pain sufficient to warrant such a dangerous drug.

Should your doctor ever prescribe this drug, please let him/her know if you have or have had any of the following problems:

• Liver disease, cirrhosis, or if you drink more than 3 alcoholic beverages a day;
• A history of alcoholism or drug addiction;
• Diarrhea, inflammatory bowel disease, bowel obstruction, severe constipation;
• Kidney disease
• Low blood pressure, or if you are dehydrated;
• A history of head injury, brain tumor, or stroke;
• Asthma, COPD, sleep apnea, or other breathing disorders.

New Medical Rules Allows Little Time for Record Checks

This is an instance when you must police your doctor when the option of pain relief drugs arises.   Today doctors are being required to see more patients in much less time under the Obamacare rules.  They do not have time to check every item in your folder, especially if it is a thick one.  We must know ourselves and what we can and cannot take.  Patients go to doctors literally demanding to be made better.  Too often, the easy path is a pain killer.  It is up to us to check the side effects of any drug given to us for any reason.  It is up to us to question whether it is the best thing for our ailments.

We have become lazy, too lazy to work out, to strive to heal ourselves with our actions; instead we look for the easy way – a pill.  The pill that, with regular use, may cause more problems than it solves and with misuse, it may provide us with death.