There are several articles telling the world that if you have ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin) in your body and contract coronavirus that you will rapidly develop pneumonia and die. The ibuprofen is taken to reduce pain, fever, and body ache.
It is commonly recommended and taken for many other maladies. This drug, ibuprofen, and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatories treat symptoms, not causes of disease and illness. They make you feel better because they mask the symptoms – pain, fever, body aches, etc.
When in doubt, always rely on the old standby, there hasn’t been enough testing to give a definitive statement on the validity and efficacy of taking or not taking ibuprofen while having coronavirus. If you wait for the World Health Organization or the Centers for Disease Control to run tests and give you a proven opinion based on lots of research, then wait a few more years. It is not going to happen overnight.
If they can’t disprove it because it hasn’t been tested, how do they know? They don’t. They are siding with the ‘no testing yet’ side. If it hasn’t been tested, then it can’t be true (or false). I am sure there are some good meaning people that have observed coronavirus patients die and they had or might have had, ibuprofen in their systems. They want the world to know they consider it dangerous.
When we are not feeling well, we want to take a simple pill to fix the problem. We have been conditioned over the years to know how our bodies respond to certain drugs and dosages. We have our ‘old standby’ drug that we take whether it is recommended or not. It acts as a placebo in many cases because we expect that it will make us feel better.
Therein lies a problem. Side effects are standard with any prescription medicine. The prescription medicine is trying to mimic a natural cure in many cases. The natural cure has dozens or hundreds of other components that act together to affect a solution or cure for a health problem. These side effects might be heartburn, ulcers, nausea, diarrhea, constipation, allergic reactions, liver and/or kidney problems, high blood pressure, and more.
The drug was used to treat a side effect of the illness you have and now you have more side effects that need another medicine to relieve additional side effects. Why do so many people, especially seniors, have multiple medications? Could a possible answer be that one drug taken to address a malady caused side effects that could be treated with another drug? That drug also has side effects that can be treated with a third drug, and on and on.
We don’t want to suffer. We want relief. Scientists and mathematicians tell us that one thing may appear to be related to another. However, that doesn’t mean that one thing caused the other. It is referred to as ‘correlation is not causation‘. Causation explicitly means that this causes that. You do that same thing repeatedly and you will get the same result.
Correlation is a relationship. It could imply causation, but there is no guarantee. This may be what we are seeing from the different reporting around the world that ibuprofen causes the rapid development of pneumonia in coronavirus patients. It may be coincidental. Got example, if the murder rate and sales of ice cream were related – the more murders occurred when ice cream sales were higher. One cannot say that buying more ice cream will cause the murder rate to escalate. One can say it, but it is not true.
Anti-inflammatories reduce our immune response. Therefore, we can expect an increased risk of some complications from prolonged use of these kinds of anti-inflammatory drugs, whether it be pneumonia or sepsis or other outcomes.
If you have a pre-existing condition that affects your lung, or your liver, or your kidney, you should expect that over the counter medicines might exacerbate or interfere with the normal progression of coronavirus in our bodies. There are too many variables now. Many over the counter cold and flu medicines contain ibuprofen. We must all be label readers to control our health – medicine labels, as well as food and personal care products.
Six months ago, we didn’t know about this virus. Why would anyone expect to know what medicines, over the counter or prescription, are effective in treating patients that also have diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, or related life-threatening health issue?
We are seeing more test kits in use. If you have a cough, fever, and shortness of breath, call your physician. Don’t wait. Based on your consultation with a medical professional, you may be directed to get a coronavirus test. Testing negative doesn’t mean you don’t have the seasonal flu or related disease. It also doesn’t mean that you can modify your self-imposed house arrest and circulate in society.
It means that you hunker down and wait till you have no symptoms. If you have coronavirus, you may only experience mild symptoms and survive with a modicum of pain and suffering. We have seen many cases where elderly patients with multiple pre-existing conditions die from coronavirus. We are seeing younger, obviously healthy patients also die from coronavirus.
Everyone who contracts coronavirus is at risk of death. Don’t forget it.
Will ibuprofen cause early death in coronavirus patients? We won’t know soon enough to make a real difference. Avoid ibuprofen and you won’t have to wait to find out. Also, check the labels to make sure that you aren’t taking in conjunction with some cough medicine or antihistamine.
Live Longer & Enjoy Life! – Red O’Laughlin