Home › Blog › Here’s Yet Another Reason You Should be Searching for an Aleve Alternative or Something Safer than Motrin

NSAIDs like Aleve and Motrin are dangerous drugs. Surprised? In fact, they’re so dangerous that the American Heart Association has implored physicians to look for an Aleve alternative or a Motrin substitute. While they have been associated in various scientific studies with a dramatic elevation in cardiac sudden death risk, now a new study shows a link to atrial fibrillation.

“Afib” or atrial fibrillation is when the top part of the heart flutters rather than efficiently pumping blood to the bottom of the heart. Because blood is hanging out in the top of the heart longer, it can clot and then that clot can be pumped to the brain and cause a stroke. It’s a bad problem to have, as one of the only things you can do is to stay on risky anticoagulant drugs and get your heart shocked back into normal rhythm from time t0 time. NSAID drugs like Motrin, Aleve, and Celebrex have been shown to be connected to all sorts of heart problems. In fact, past studies have shown that your risk of a sudden death heart attack remains raised for up to 5 years after stopping the NSAID drug! This new study on NSAIDs and the heart looked at almost ten thousand patients who were of retirement age. The patients who had taken an NSAID drug in the past 30 days were 84% more likely to have developed atrial fibrillation than those who had never used the drug.

The upshot? NSAID drugs like Mortin and Aleve are bad news. There really isn’t a reason to take NSAID drugs given natural supplement alternatives that work just as well for problems like knee arthritis. If the fact that these drugs can cause long lasting sudden death heart attack risk doesn’t scare you, then the fact that they can cause heart arrhythmias like Afib that can lead to a higher likelihood of stroke certainly should.

Chris Centeno, MD is a specialist in regenerative medicine and the new field of Interventional Orthopedics. Centeno pioneered orthopedic stem cell procedures in 2005 and is responsible for a large amount of the published research on stem cell use for orthopedic applications. View Profile