From lowered testosterone to blunting your natural recovery, those post workout painkillers are only making things worse.
Some discomfort is inevitable when you’re exercising, mostly thanks to your muscles adapting. This is particularly true when it comes to resistance training with increasingly heavy weights (a process known as progressive overload) which is a crucial driver behind building size.
As the weights lifted get progressively heavier, your muscle cells respond by growing in size to cope with the increasing demands. Although bigger muscles allow you to attack the training room with renewed vigor, in the days following a workout, reaching for the ibuprofen is the exact wrong way to reap the benefits of your workout.
While it may subdue some pain, the new research shows it may pose little benefit for muscle growth and actually hinders your muscle recovery.
Removing the hurt, hurts you more
Your body was meant to feel a little pain for a reason and blocking this sensation is messing with mother nature, found a paper at the Karolinska Institute of Sweden.
They tested the effects of ibuprofen on folk who engaged in 8 weeks of weight training and took around 1200mg of the pill each day. The researchers discovered ibuprofen negatively impacted the natural production of cyclo-oxygenase, an enzyme responsible for (among other things) muscle growth and repair. Not a good outlook if you want to build muscle.
Ibuprofen is more generally categorized as an NSAID (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug) and although being in an anti-inflammatory state is mostly a positive thing, there are times it proves counterproductive.
When you lift weights, your body undergoes a degree of inflammation. This is a good thing and not a sensation you should hide from your brain.
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What’s worse, a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found using this medicine too often alters testicular physiology, yoking testosterone production to the amount of ibuprofen taken. This is your chief muscle building hormone, which means you could be sabotaging your improvements.