What is an "analgesic"?

What is an "analgesic"?

Marc Darrow (Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Joint Rehabilitation Sports Medical Center, Inc. ) gives expert video advice on: Besides analgesics, what other treatments are there for acute pain? and more...

Analgesic just means "away from pain"; "a" or "an" in Latin means "away from". So, what we're doing is we're using something to take pain away. That is what an analgesic is. There are many types of analgesics. One can be simple cold, using ice around the area. Another can be heat. It depends. Typically, with a new injury or what we call an acute injury, for the first three days we use cold and then we'll start using heat after that. We use the heat to help mobilise more motion to the area to get more fluid going, and to have the blood rushing around the area to get the white blood cells actually chewing up and removing the debris from the injury. The first part, called ice therapy or cryotherapy, will be used to actually stop the inflammation of the area, and to close down the blood vessels so there's less leaking of the blood vessels to produce inflammation.