Quote Originally Posted by michelem View Post
A newer study shows that it actually enhances muscle growth over time!

http://www.bicycling.com/article/0,6...7040-1,00.html
Yeah, I saw that when it came out, but just as it's been shown that studies on adult men don't always translate to women's or children's bodies, I'm wary of assuming that test results on a sample aged 60+ apply to younger persons.

Just taking the simplest possible explanation into account, did they survey the subjects for pain before beginning the study? (None of the accounts that I've read says that they did, although I haven't found the full text of the journal article.) Just as a number of posters have stated, if you're in chronic pain anyway (as unfortunately a lot of older adults are), and if you understand (or have a trainer explaining) when it's appropriate to work through the pain vs. when it's going to injure you further, then anything that relieves the pain is going to help you work harder and, over time, build more muscle.

It's also notable to me that the acetaminophen group performed MUCH better than the ibuprofen group in that study.

I think we're really talking about two different things in this thread: (1) whether a healthy individual without chronic pain should take a maintenance or prophylactic dose of pain relievers (IMO absolutely not), vs. (2) whether someone WITH chronic pain should try to relieve that before and during exercise (IMO, yes, as long as they have a good understanding of how to avoid injuring themselves either by over-exertion or by medication side effects).