Fitness: Study warns against mixing painkillers with exercise

Do you ever pop an ibuprofen before a workout as a preemptive measure to help ease muscle soreness? If so, you could be causing damage to your intestines, reports the New York Times.

According to a new study, published in the December issue of Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, taking painkillers such as ibuprofen before or during a workout doesn’t offer any benefit, and could cause physical damage‘notably colonic seepage or intestinal leakage into the bloodstream. Ironically, this results in higher levels of bodily inflammation, meaning athletes taking an anti-inflammatory painkiller before a workout wound up being just as sore as those who didn’t.

The study only focused on the effects of taking ibuprofen before or during a workout, and since the effects were the result of combining exercise with the painkiller, it’s likely that occasionally taking an anti-inflammatory post-workout wouldn’t have the same effects. That’s good news for me, since after a tough workout, I often pop an ibuprofen to help ease muscle pain.

Do you ease muscle soreness with an anti-inflammatory? What do you do to soothe sore muscles after exercise?

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