These are the immediate ways to address pain which don't require prescriptions (although you should seek medical advice about pain when it occurs, just to make sure it is nothing serious).

When you have the type of pain where there is an obvious problem that leads to pain - you fell or you tried to pick up something too heavy, there are several things you can do that can provide pain relief without a prescription. One is to use ice or a cold pack. This is a good way to get pain relief without using medication. Sometimes alternating cold and warm can help - an ice pack, a warm bath, and then another ice pack.

Another way to address pain is through exercise. It sounds counterintuitive to consider exercise as a form of pain relief, but it can be. This is, after all, the basis of physical therapy. If you gently exercise the problem area and strengthen it, the pain may go away. For example, when your back hurts, it may be because your abdominal muscles are not doing their part of the job to hold you upright. So, strengthening those muscles will help with pain relief in the long run. Consult your doctor to make sure that exercising won't damage an already hurting part of your body and be gentle.

The next level of pain relief is to use over-the-counter drugs such as aspirin, acetaminophen, or ibuprofen. These drugs are called 'N-SAIDS': non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. That means they address inflammation that is often associated with pain, but without using steroids - they don't have the side-effects that steroids have.

Although N-SAIDS are a very good class of drug for dealing with a lot of common types of pain, there are a couple of things to be aware of. One is that acetaminophen is present in a lot of different over-the-counter drugs. You can easily get too much of it if you take some of the cold medications along with extra strength acetaminophen.

A second thing to be aware of with using most over-the-counter drugs for pain relief is that a lot of them can irritate your stomach to the point of causing your stomach to bleed. This is a potentially dangerous situation. When you use these drugs, always eat something. If something to eat is not available, drink a lot of water with the pills - at least eight ounces.

For more help with this issue, and to see what the experts have to say through the medium of free, online films, visit VideoJug's Pain Relief section today.