Painkiller effectiveness for people with ME/CFS

Following up on a mini discussion here:

I'll make a poll on this thread to see if there's some trend toward one painkiller being more effective for people with ME/CFS. I've always thought it was interesting that aspirin and Tylenol seem to do nothing for me, at least at recommended doses.

Spoiler: Text about how to word poll

Before I add the poll, since it can't be changed after the fact, I wanted to get feedback to make sure it's worded well:

For those with ME/CFS: Of these painkillers, are any of them significantly more effective for your pain than the other two? (Pain of any cause: headaches, stomachaches, injuries, etc)
* Ibuprofen (Advil)
* Acetominophen (Tylenol)
* Aspirin
* No single painkiller stands out as better than the other two.

Someone suggested adding a "something else" option, but I'm not sure that's a good idea, since yeah, sure someone can say morphine is a better painkiller than any of these, but that's probably the case for most people.

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Edit: I'll keep an updated draft of the poll here:

For those with ME/CFS: Of these painkillers, are any of them significantly more effective for your pain than the other two? (Pain of any cause: headaches, stomachaches, injuries, etc)
* Ibuprofen (Advil)
* Acetominophen/paracetamol (Tylenol)
* Aspirin (Bayer)
* No single painkiller stands out as better than the other two.

For those with ME/CFS: do aspirin and acetaminophen/paracetamol have zero, or close to zero, effect on any pain, when taken at recommended OTC doses?
* Yes, those two painkillers don't do much for me.
* No, one or both of them is effective for my pain.

Edit: Feel free to describe any experience with any painkillers in the thread though.

 

Acetaminophen is called "paracetamol" in the UK.

 

I don't know if that's necessary since the question is specifically about the three painkillers listed.

 

It depends, I use paracetamol and ibuprofen for different sorts of pain… One works better than the other in some circumstances. Would this sort of mixed usage mean a no in the context of this survey?

 

Hmm, not sure. I guess mainly what I wanted to see was if this might be a common thing in ME/CFS: that Tylenol and aspirin don't work for anything, while ibuprofen does. Doesn't sound like anyone has said anything similar yet though, so probably not.

 

Maybe the question could be more bluntly stated, something like: do any of these medications not work for you at all for any pain?

 

Yeah, I think you're right.

 

Paracetamol works for most headaches but I do have bouts where I need to follow up the paracetamol with Ibuprofen within a hour for a more severe headache.

I haven't tried aspirin in over 40 odd years. I did buy a packet recently as I heard it was good for a sore throat but have still yet to try.

 

Ok, poll is up.

 

I haven't voted yet, as I can't take one of them. (Some asthmatics find aspirin and ibuprofen cause wheezing or chest spasms that are more uncomfortable than whatever it is that hurts.)

I do keep paracetamol in the house for bugs and viruses. Little or no effect on ME/CFS pain, but it seems to help nicely when I get to the really-fed-up-now stage of a head cold.

 

I'd say just vote No, since the paracetamol at least does something.

 

As always I seem to go off on a tangent. I usually take the proprietary cold and flue treatment ‘lemsip’ that contains Paracetamol, Guaifenesin and Phenylephrine hydrochloride when I am in PEM. It does not eliminate pain but takes the edge of things making sleep easier to achieve.

In the poll I selected the ‘one or both of them is effective for my pain’ option, because lemsip contains paracetamol, though ‘effective’ perhaps overstates my experience and I don’t know how much any benefit is down to the other ingredients as well.

I try not to take it too often as that seems to reduce its efficacy. Further I don’t know how much is just a comfort factor as at such times I tend to rely on things my mother gave us when I was a child. So I also have Lucozade which then was marketed for its health value, rather than as now an energy drink containing glucose and caffeine which is unlikely to have any real health benefits.

(An aside, I had not checked on Lucozade’s ingredients until just now and this seems to contradict my belief that I am caffeine intolerant. I never regularly drank tea or coffee and some years ago found the various colas triggered migraines some six hours after consumption so assumed it was the caffeine. Being addicted to coco cola it was hard to eliminate from my diet, though undoubtedly a good step. I might stick with saying I am caffeine intolerant as it is a more socially acceptable way of turning down tea or coffee than just saying I don’t like it.)

 

Neither works for me but I've discovered that paracetamol has a synergistic effect with codeine, making it more effective. I know this because I have taken codeine extracted, out of curiosity, from some 10mg codeine/paracetamol tablets, and the codeine alone didn't do much.

On the numerous occasions I've been prescribed 30mg codeine+500mg paracetamol tablets after surgery and dental procedures, I haven't found them to be as effective as the 10mg codeine+500mg paracetamol. I've put that down to the ratio of codeine to paracetamol being not ideal for me at least.

 

Ibuprofen helps me with muscle pain, which also helps me sleep better, but it upsets my stomach so I take it rarely.

I used to take an extremely overpriced product called Migralex for migraines and anticipatory next day delayed PEM migraines which worked if the trigger wasn’t too severe. Migralex went out of business many years ago.

Migralex was just aspirin and magnesium oxide but for some reason it worked for me while taking aspirin and magnesium oxide or other forms of magnesium in separate pills didn’t work for me. I can also have issues tolerating magnesium but I didn’t in the Migralex.

Desperate when I could no longer get Migralex, I tried different brands of aspirin again and they did nothing. What ended up working is letting 8 St. Joseph low dose chewable aspirin dissolve under my tongue for like 20 – 40 minutes. I use St. Joseph because it dissolves the slowest under my tongue. I don’t know if it’s alright to do this or not but it’s a better option for me than what I refer to as “suicide migraines”.

I usually only need 1 dose, sometimes 2 doses if it’s gotten out of hand, like it’s already really bad when I wake up. It doesn’t work for triggers that involve something I’ve ingested like food or supplements. My multiple vitamin power that I mixed with water and sipped through the day changed and was giving me migraines and I didn’t figure it out for weeks. Also, some foods don’t trigger migraines unless I eat more of them. Lastly, when watching something that gives me motion sickness and a migraine, the St. Joseph low dose chewable aspirin may or may not work. I’m bedridden so I don’t have huge triggers.

Yesterday afternoon I was on my feet for too long after I got up from last sleeping (sleep reversal) and my pulse was in the 150s for too long. When I got back to my bed, my back was in a lot of pain and I was going to take ibuprofen when I settled down a little and could take it with food. Then I started feeling nauseous and like I was starting to get a migraine so I thought I’d take the St. Joseph low dose chewable aspirin instead because I didn’t want to take them both at the same time. After a while I felt better and took neither. But before I go to sleep, I will take the St. Joseph aspirin so I don’t have a PEM migraine tomorrow when I wake up and that will work for me.

The St. Joseph aspirin makes my ears ring and throat close a little so I only use it when I have to. It is also sedating for me and helps the generalized pain.

I should add that prescription migraine medicines that I’ve tried in the past didn’t do much if anything for me although I haven’t tried newer medicines. The ones that did very minimally help, took hours to work and seemed to mask the pain in some way where the St. Joseph low dose chewable aspirin under my tongue gets rid of the migraine. I can usually count on the migraine to stop escalating and be completely gone within an hour and a half when I take the St. Joseph and no rebound migraines.

Edited to fix a word.

 

Ibuprofen good for pain and I believe generally perks me up, but maybe that's the relief that the pain has gone.

Paracetamol good for headaches depending on the type of headache.

Asprin meh, prefer ibuprofen.

Having trialled Sumatriptan I found it is good for migraine, but it causes pretty bad joint pain which is probably a bad omen for me but don't think that's MECFS related because as JE has said we don't necessarily have inflammation.

Fentanyl after a procedure was well tolerated.

 

Suspect I'm a bit odd (that'll not be the first time) that I rarely take painkillers for symptoms.

My reasoning being that I need symptoms to tell me when I've overdone things. Early on, for example, I'd take paracetamol for the 'faux cold' thing (headaches, sore throat etc.) but that would mask other symptoms which would then mean I'd not know when I'd done too much.

So, it has to be pretty dire or something un-ME related for me to take and then it's just paracetamol as I'm not able to do Ibuprofen due to POTS meds.

 

Oh, I wanted to see if what I experience of only getting relief from ibuprofen, but not the other two is common. Maybe it would have been better to ask if none of the three work, I'm not sure.