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Wellness Wednesday for May 1, 2024

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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How bad is long-term use of ibuprofen really? Is taking 200mg twice a day going to wreck my GI tract or kidneys? What about only on workdays? What if I'm also on an ACE inhibitor?

Ibuprofen inhibits enzymes that produce prostaglandins, and this can, long-term at the doses you describe, cause the problems in the gastrointestinal tract and kidneys that you allude to as well as increasing the chance of blood clots and the associated risks of those (including atherosclerosis and all that baggage, e.g. heart attack). The ACE inhibitors increase potassium, which also isn't good for the kidneys if they're already working harder than necessary (ppl with kidney issues are told to avoid potassium-rich foods for this reason).

In short, long-term, not so great. Short-term probably fine. Presumably the ACE inhibitors are for blood pressure?

Edit: As usual this is not my wheelhouse, not an MD, just this stuff is what I read all the time for work.