A Follow-Up that Nobody Asked For
So remember back at the beginning of the year when I was suspecting that ibuprofen was destroying my insides?
I’m pretty sure I was right.
Reflecting back on the symptoms I had – super bad upper gastrointestinal discomfort (especially when running, which was conveniently right after I took ibuprofen), lots of gastro pain in general, puking, puke that looked like coffee grounds, and very dark stool (TMI, sorry) – I’m pretty sure I had some sort of gastrointestinal bleeding going on. My guess is the source of the bleeding was higher rather than lower based on the pain and that it might have even been an ulcer.
The fact that the pain and other symptoms stopped a month or so after I stopped taking ibuprofen and switched to Tylenol is another hint.
Now I guess I have to worry about too much Tylenol, though, haha.
Or just be in pain all the time.
Either/or.
Claudia vs. NSAIDS (I think the NSAIDS won)
Alternate Title: How I Possibly Destroyed My Stomach Lining with Ibuprofen and Am Now, Ironically, in Tons of Pain
Alrighty, sit down, it’s story time, you little nerds.
So I take ibuprofen when I run, and I’ve been doing so since…well, probably since I started running. I actually don’t know. Maybe once I started going the longer distances. Anyway. I’d take a single ibuprofen for my “regular distance” runs during the week (I did two of these, so two ibuprofen total) and two ibuprofen for my “long run” on the weekend.
So four total per week.
That’s not really that much, in my opinion. But I guess over a long period of time (several years) it adds up.
But I never had any issues, so I figured it was fine.
Now let’s fast forward to July of last year. That was when I angered my sartorius muscle and it hurt to even just walk. But because I’m me and I’m insane, I still wanted to run while the muscle healed. So I started taking two ibuprofen before every run. That adds up to six per week.
Again, not too much in my opinion. But I kept up this dosage even after my sartorius healed (mainly out of fear) and have been taking six per week for about eight months or so.
Well, I’m pretty sure I’m starting to experience some side effects of that practice. I’ve been dealing with some frequent bouts of nausea and pretty bad upper abdominal discomfort. Not pain in most cases, but this feeling of pressure and…churning? I don’t know how to describe it.
Anyway, over the past few weeks, I’ve had to walk/run inside on my treadmill because the weather has been ass. Every time I run, I take my ibuprofen. But I’ve been getting really bad nausea/discomfort/pain/other gastrointestinal stuff that YOU DON’T NEED THE DETAILS TO IMAGINE hitting me just a few miles into the run.
Which makes running horrible.
I thought it was the treadmill at first. I’m so used to running outside that I figured the different tempo and stride involved with running on the treadmill was just upsetting all my insides and making me feel like garbage. I experimented a little bit with different speeds and such, but nothing helped.
Then I realized it might be the ibuprofen. I looked up stomach damage from NSAIDS and found a list of basically all the symptoms I’ve been having.
Soooo that’s fun.
I’m going to switch to Tylenol for a bit and see what happens. I doubt the symptoms will just stop if it is what I think it is, but maybe they won’t get worse.
Who knows!
Eigenblogger 