When Ibuprofen (NSAIDs) Becomes Harmful

What happened to if symptom persists after three days, visit a doctor? Because I have seen and heard cases where people overdose on medications, I do not mean recreational drugs or Opioids, I mean something as common as NSAIDs and commonly ibuprofen.

Let's look at a person who loves to perform athletic exercises but when he does so, he will feel pains all over his body, and he thought to himself that he might be getting older and that was the reason for his pain so he decided to get buprofen, and would use it for religiously for a month. For people who think like this, you must know that it is not the first time they will be using it for any type of pain and for all manner of sicknesses.

Since Ibuprofen is an over-the-counter medication, then anyone can get it without a doctors prescription. Ibuprofen can come in sachet, and pack of 1000 tablets, and people believe that it is important to finish an entire medicine because it is the dosage. If you ask a regular Nigerian who is using an Anti-malaria medication (which is the most common medication here after aspirin) what is a full dose, they will tell you to finish the pack of medication, so I will not be surprise if this person thinks the pack of 1000 tablets of 200mg or 500mg ibuprofen should be finished to complete the dosage because if it wasn't so, why will they sell it like that.

Deciding to take about 18 tablets a day, with 6 each in the morning, afternoon and night. He was feeling the pain so much and just wanted it gone. He continued using the tablets and was committed but since he isn't a bot, there was a high chance he was going to either forget or take more than his regular intake. So he took the drug 2 at night one day, making it a total of 24 tablets.

At midnight, he jumped up as he felt a sharp pain in his chest but over time the pain subsided but since ibuprofen is the answer to pain, he decided to take more of the drug and increased it to 7 each time he took it. Within a month, he had finished the pack of 1000 tablets and was going to start another but in the middle of the new one, he noticed that he couldn't swallow properly, he began to have dark stools and he began to have those serious abdominal pain. He also noticed that the water he expelled while urinating was small compared to what he drank but he though his body was just using up a lot of water.

He decided to visit the hospital but on getting there he felt like vomiting something instead he was vomiting blood. HE was immediately rushed into the ICU where medical practitioners noticed he had pale skin and was Tachycardic (fast heart rate in tachycardia). Although he had high heart rate, he suffered Orthostatic hypotension where his blood pressure decreased when he stood.

Doctors questioned him and were able to find clues when he mentioned that his stool looked like Asphalt, coupled with the vomiting which meant that blood found a way into the GI tract. The heart was beating fast to complement for the hypotension when he stood and this was as a result of a GI bleed. Unlike Cortical-steroid, NSAIDs are not the same. With cameras down the throat, doctors were able to see that he had ulcers in his esophagus and stomach and with this, they found the cause of the bleeding but they didn't know the cause.

His kidneys were also starved of oxygen and began to necrose gradually within the past few days that he began to take the overdosed Ibuprofen. Also, since the liver is responsible for detoxification, then the majority of the drug he consumed would have passed through the liver when reaching their half-life. When used properly NSAIDs are an effective anti-inflammatory drug effective as an analgesics.

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Post Reference

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^{https://www.dovepress.com/gastrointestinal-injury-associated-with-nsaid
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-laryngology-and-otology
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5643597/
https://bpspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/prp2.817
https://academic.oup.com/aje/article-abstract/151/5/488/117194?redirectedFrom=PDF
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-nsaids-overdosing/many-people-take-dangerously-high-amounts-of-ibuprofen-idUSKBN1FS336/
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/aimcc.2022.0880
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK547845/}

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Image Reference

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^{Image 1 || Wikimedia Commons || 200mg ibuprofen tablets
Image 2 || Wikimedia Commons || Gastric Ulcer}