Medications

There are many medications that can help to reduce pain. Some require a prescription, while others can be purchased over the counter.

• Some of these medications work best with acute pain.
• Others are better for chronic pain.
• Each medication has a slightly different mechanism of action in how it reduces pain.
• For example, some medications act to suppress nociceptive signals from reaching the brain.
• Others change how the brain processes pain once the nociceptive signals are there.

This section reviews some of the more common classes of pain medications.