Applying a cream, gel, patch, or spray that contains a pain reliever onto your skin can be more beneficial to your wellness because it can target the pain exactly where it is whilst avoiding some of the body-wide side effects of oral pain relievers. According to Dr. Rosalyn Nguyen, a clinical instructor in physical medicine and rehabilitation at Harvard Medical School, these pain relievers, also known as topical analgesics, are particularly effective on your more superficial joints like the knees, ankles, feet, elbows, and hands. ‘In those areas, the medication can penetrate closer to the joint,’ she says.
So what’s so great about topical analgesics? Like in ibuprofen, naproxen, aspirin, or diclofenac, the active ingredient in most rub-on pain relievers is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID). Often, your arthritic pain, swelling and stiffness is caused by inflammation, and so, as the name suggests, NSAIDs target the cause of this discomfort, but as a scientific review by an international body of health experts, the Cochrane Collaboration, found, when this NSAID comes in the form of a topical analgesic, you can experience the same pain relief as oral medications but with fewer concerns about your gastrointestinal wellbeing.
Because topical analgesics work locally, they have the added advantage of targeting pain more precisely. This means you can boost your overall pain relief, but you don’t need to add another pill to your daily regimen if you have an extensive routine already. Neither do you need to experience discomfort if you have trouble taking pills or if your stomach is sensitive to NSAIDs. That said, you should bear in mind that a small amount of the medicine will still end up in your blood stream, stomach and elsewhere, so while there is less of a chance of NSAID-related stomach irritation, a topical analgesic isn’t a guarantee against it.
Also, there can be mild, and generally uncommon, side effects from topical medications, including redness, itching, and other skin irritation. However, Dr. Joanne Borg-Stein, medical director of the Harvard-affiliated Spaulding-Wellesley Rehabilitation Centre in Massachusetts, says that the cause of skin irritation is often the material used to make the cream or gel, not the NSAID, and your pharmacist can create a preparation with ingredients that are less irritating to your skin if need be.