I Once Took Advil to Mask an Injury. Here’s Why I Wouldn’t Do It Again.

There has been a recent trend of running influencers advocating a household, over-the-counter drug to help them with their running: Advil. I am not going to out any influencers because there are some I follow and highly respect. But according to Jessy Carveth at the Marathon Handbook, there has been a surge of running influencers promoting Advil in recent weeks, with some female running influencers talking about how Advil helps them with their menstrual cycles in advertising the product, while others talked about how Advil more generally helps them through their pain.

This seemed to indicate that Advil was paying many running influencers on social media to promote their product, which didn’t have the same disclosure of risks as TV commercials, per se.

And then came the backlash: taking Advil to run is dangerous. It can cause kidney failure, gastrointestinal issues and dehydration. Also, pain is a signal that something is wrong and needs to be addressed, often right away, instead of something to be subdued and ignored. It’s a band-aid that causes you to not treat your injury or recover the right way and can make the injury much worse.

I agree that running influencers should be responsible for the products they promote given their platform and influence over people who may not be the most informed. But I find it hard to judge given where I’ve been as a marathon runner for the past 15 years.

When I was a sophomore in high school, I was on our backup 4×800 meter relay. A week or two before, I started to develop some lower back pain. This pain reached its peak just before the big race. We were a go as the B team to run and give it our best, and it was supposed to be a showcase of the best generation of our high school team’s talent given our seniors were graduating and would not be returning to us the year after.

On race day, I took an Advil so my lower back would give me no problems, and it didn’t. I didn’t race great, but I didn’t race badly. I split a 2:11, which I don’t think was particularly fast, but the 800 was never my best race and it was an opportunity to participate at that level. Moreover, for that race, I had no lower back pain. I had two weeks off after that race when I did not have to run at all and where my body could naturally recover, and it did.

If I told my coach about the pain, he would have told me to take off. He would have had someone replace me. He would have advised me against taking Advil to run, perhaps not because he worried about all the possible adverse health consequences (he did), but because the principle was just wrong in terms of masking pain rather than taking the right precautions.

But at 16, I wanted to hear none of that. I did not tell my coach. I told none of my teammates. I have only revealed it in writing more than ten years later. And I would not be open with my coaches about injury or pain when I felt it until I had my first debilitating injury at 20 years old, when my hip was in so much pain I could not run at all.

I did an informal survey of runners I knew. It’s not like a lot of them were popping Advil every day, but some did use it, similarly, when injured. Others used it on the day of races, although I did not ask why. This is a very small sample of my own friends and runners I knew who may not be representative of the overall population, but these are all very smart, accomplished, college-educated people who are well-attuned to the risks of taking Advil to run and do it anyway.

No one is sitting here and saying taking Advil is on the same level as abusing prescription opioids or morphine. But taking painkillers to run is still dangerous — it’s not like I did anything illegal, but I’ve been down that road and can completely see the mindset that goes behind it. And I’m sure some of the rationale, too, is that if you start with Advil, there is a risk you could go down a darker path once the pain gets worse.

For me, I was not stupid when I was 16 either — to me, the stakes of the moment, a championship meet that was the last race of season, outweighed the risks. I was not willing to do anything, but how much was one Advil going to hurt? Of course, nothing bad did happen, but I knew it was a slippery slope at the time, too, and that the pain in my lower back was not something I could just ignore and take Advil to magically go away.

I doubt runners are the only athletes who take Advil when in pain. Each of us has that part of us that is wired to push through pain, and 16 years in as a runner, I know there is normal pain and abnormal pain. Normal pain is the soreness I feel after running 20–24 miles. Abnormal pain was the lingering pain in only one of my hips that took me out for months, the pain in my lower back during my sophomore year of high school, and the shin splints that took me out for two weeks as an adult.

I have had to take Advil and Tylenol for other occasions. I have taken Advil to deal with tooth pain. I take acetaminophen and Tylenol PM or NyQuil when I’m sick, sometimes, with a respiratory infection. When I had the flu, two weeks ago, NyQuil greatly assisted my recovery by helping me comfortably sleep more than ten hours a night.

You might wonder how taking Advil for running is different than those occasions — it’s because masking the pain of an injury is different than taking Advil for the flu.

I’m also not going to sit here and spew doom, like taking Advil before a run or race is the worst thing you could possibly do. But I think plenty of smart people know the risks and do it anyway. Who am I, for example, to say that a woman should not use Advil to help with their menstrual cycle? What people decide to take or do with their health or fitness decisions is their own business, and although it can be irresponsible for influencers to promote Advil, there are plenty of people, a lot of people I know, who will pop an Advil on race day to deal with soreness or a lingering injury.

But that part of us that is willing to do anything to run fast — that’s the dangerous part. I have it, and so many of my runner friends have it too. At one point in my career, I was willing to cross that line at the expense of my own health and hide it from people. As much as I’ve grown as a runner and a person since being 16, that temptation to do anything to run fast and push through pain is still there, and is something I have to fight back.

The point is, however, there are lines we don’t cross not only for long-term health but out of principle. Cheating is one of those lines, which is easy for me to say as a recreational runner and not a professional athlete with my whole livelihood dependent on how fast I run. But another one of those lines is to not mask the pain of an injury with Advil or another painkiller, no matter the stakes or circumstances. I can continue to preach that it’s just not worth it, but it’s really only something I have learned through experience.

I hope others can learn an easier way than I did.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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