Oral medication is simply that which is taken via your mouth, normally in tablet, but sometimes in liquid form. Discussing this topic as a generalised guide is very difficult and it should be made clear that you should always follow implicitly, the guidance given to you by your medical practitioner or qualified pharmacist.
Taking medication for spinal related pain for most is an accepted part of the treatment regime however, some still fear the damage they will cause if they cover the pain up. This decision is of course up to you however in the most part, if you are doing yourself further injury, oral medications are unlikely to completely block the protective message, irrelevant of their type.
An important point to consider in this equation is the compensatory factors that can occur as a direct consequence of the pain and not the injury itself. Many of these may manifest as what we call psychosocial maladaptations (see individual site area). In essence, these are changes in your behaviours and beliefs as a direct reponse to the pain of which some are shown to greatly inhibit your recovery and in some cases, may completely prevent it. Thankfully, the more severe cases are rare, and normally occur in thoses with certain personality traits however, sometimes taking medication is ultimately better than ‘braving it out!’
Prescribing medication is a bit of an art form in its own right, taking great skill and understanding to gain beneficial effects without being detrimental to your health. For simple pains, many of you will sufficiently manage your symptoms with over the counter medicine however for those episodes that are a little more acute, prescription drugs may be needed.
How do we do it?
The way in which the drugs act on your system and provide their action is inherently important in how and why they are prescribed. We tend to group drugs into different catagories depending on this very basis. A very basic example of grouping this is shown by the pizza chart below. If we choose drugs that use different routes in our body we can get multiple effects but without them interfering with each other. If howevever we use two drugs from the same pathway, even if they are weak, we risk the sum of their action being greater than their individual parts and this can consequently be very dangerous. LEAVE THIS TO THE PROFESSIONALS!
There are thousands of drugs available on the market, many having both ‘pharmaceutical names’ and ‘manufactuing names’ to make life a little easier!!!!!! Because of this we have no intention of expanding on individual drugs here but the following links are to excellent web based facilities that will allow you to serch and read about different drugs. The British National Formulary (BNF) is probably the most widely accessed text by health proffesionals in the UK but unfortunately the online database is not open to the public.
