The Relationship Between Pain Relievers and Illness

By: Samantha Austin

Pain relievers are shown to interact with cells, specifically, the nervous system and brain, to inhibit pain perception. Danger to a patient may be imminent if antibiotics and other pain killers suppress the immune system. Medications that are commercially sold for colds and fevers may not be entirely necessary since they tend to only ease symptoms such as coughing. This project will attempt to find the affect of pain relievers on the human body’s immune system. How many times the individual has taken commercial pain killers (such as Ibuprofen, Aleve, Advil) would act as an independent variable. How many times the individual has gotten sick would be the dependant variable. The purpose of this study would be to find the correlation between these two variables. It is hypothesized that if there is an excessive use of commercially sold pain killers, then they will decrease the ability of the human body’s immune system’s ability fight off viruses. The procedure would be to gather volunteers. Then, create a one or two page survey with questions asking about the subject’s use of commercial pain killers, when they last became ill, and more. Then distribute these surveys to the volunteers. Then, gather data and evaluate subject’s responses. Do this by making graphs that show the amount of pain relievers taken in correspondence to the amount of illness the person has experienced. The final step is to present it to the scientific community.