The New York Times takes a more in depth look at the use of Toradol in sports to lessen pain. One doctor shares my concern:
“The limit I’m worried about is, does it dull the pain so much that it dulls the body part they’ve injured?” said Carla C. Keirns, a doctor and medical ethicist at Stony Brook University, adding that athletes could be prone to reinjury because the warning signs of pain are muted.
NFL players brought suit that this drug made concussions worse. I suspect we’ll be hearing more about this drug now that this is out in the open.
Even NSAIs can have serious side-effects. I took 400 mg of generic Ibuprofen for about 18 months due to my hip impingement (same thing A-Rod had.) The first 15-16 months were fine (though I still had some pain), but then the side effects of nausea and loss of appetite kicked in. It wasn’t until I got a refill and looked over the side effects that I figured out what was going on. Lost about 30 lbs., which is about 25 too many. Two years later and I still haven’t bounced back. But when I went to physical therapy for a back injury, they worked on the hip as well. 1x a week for 2.5 months plus 15 minutes of daily exercise, and the pain is gone.
Don’t worry about Toradol covering up that much pain. It’s an NSAID and they are all equally efficacious. That means it works as well as a dose of Ibuprofen. So unless you are concerned that things like Tylenol and Advil are dulling pain so much in athletes as to induce further injury, you have no need to worry.
The side effects of NSAIDs are a different story.