People often believe that we, people have survival instincts. Certainly, this is one of the divisive physiological and psychological topics, which gathered dispute. These days, it’s almost explainable by a solid scientific evidence.
Stress and pain are two of the aspects of the fight-and-flight mechanism, which may force us to do something about what’s really causing them. From time to time, they come as a prevailing combination when the pain is the root cause of stress. Nevertheless, there can be some unfortunate times that no matter how much we want to get rid the pain, there’s nothing that we can do. One such example is during the gout attacks. Certainly enough, the pain designates that something isn’t supposed to be right there, yet we’re left helpless. We cannot just remove our limbs just to remove the pain. Therefore, the idea of taking multiple medicines to ease the pain was born.
This article wishes to answer the question “Can you take colchicine and ibuprofen together?”
Ibuprofen
Ibuprofen is an NSAID or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug. Ibuprofen helps in reducing the pain by messing up with the enzymes. In order to understand this, we must first understand how the pain works.
All throughout the body, there are various nerve cells known as the nociceptors. These nerve cells are just like alarm systems of the body. Each time something adverse happens, they shoot signals to the brain if the detrimental happening ruptured the pain threshold.
Take a look at this particular scenario:
I have a 5 liter-container of water. You may think of this as the amount of pain you feel. If I am going to transfer them all, of course I’ll be needing containers totaling about 5 liters in volume. Unluckily, I only have containers with 3 liters in total. If I will try to transfer all of the water, some of them will spill and I’ll be forced to do something.
Now, what if for some reason, one of the containers vanished and I’ll only have 2 liter-containers left? The water may spill faster since I’ll have lesser space, and I’ll be forced to do something earlier. That’s what happens when the enzymes are being fired to the nociceptors. For example, when the neutrophils fail in dissolving the uric acid crystals, this may cause them to release the arachidonic acids that may trigger the release of prostaglandins, which will be made by the Cox-1 and Cox-2 into some other substances, which may trigger pain and inflammation.
If the aforementioned scenario ever made you dizzy, you can take a look below:
The neutrophils fail in dissolving the crystals, then the arachidonic acids get released, and then the prostaglandins are being released, next, the prostaglandins are being processed by the cox1 and cox2 enzymes, after, the pain and inflammation kicks in.
Ibuprofen is capable of stopping the pain through binding with the cox1 and cox2 enzymes thus distressing the transformation of the prostaglandins. Therefore, the pain and inflammation fail to begin. In contrast, the colchicine binds with the neutrophils distressing its reproduction. Furthermore, it also disturbs the cytoskeleton of the neutrophils hence it may not try to dissolve the crystals. There’ll be no neutrophil problem, this means no pain.
Can You Take Colchicine And Ibuprofen Together?
Yes! You can, but it’ll not be as effective as the increasing of the dosage. Statistically, the colchicine and ibuprofen have zero proven interaction. Nevertheless, since the neutrophils no longer react to the uric acid crystals, arachidonic acids will not be able to get released. They’ll not reach the point where the prostaglandins are being processed by the cox1 and cox2 enzymes, the same point where the ibuprofen attacks. This will just cause the ibuprofen to bind with the enzymes in various parts of the body thus causing gratuitous numbness. Moreover, both of them has side effects so it’s imprudent to improvise taking them.
For short, the answer to the question “Can you take colchicine and ibuprofen together” is:
Yes, you can, yet it’ll be like wearing two layers of socks. Minus the palliative effect, it’ll be useless. It’s actually highly improbable that your doctor will be telling you this because there’s no statistic that defines the drug interaction in between colchicine and ibuprofen, yet hypothetically, it’s counterproductive.
