I have been advised to take advil for my hip. Can I take too much?

Yes. Too much advil (or ibuprofen) can result in gastritis (irritation of the stomach lining) or kidney failure if taken at high doses or for an extended period of time. Gastritis is the most common serious side effect, and kidney damage tends to occur to people who already have some mild kidney disease or other conditions that lead to poor blood flow to the kidneys. Here is a list of some of the side effects attributed to ibuprofen. Basically, it depends on how much you take and for how long. A week or two of ibuprofen every 8 hours is most likely safe if you are otherwise healthy. However, taking ibuprofen for months or years has the potential to be more dangerous. At minimum, you should take it with food to try and minimize the risk of gastritis.

@Shilolo GA as always. My father was taking advil to control gout and his kidneys took a major hit. He still has reduced function from it and quit the advil 3 years ago.

Sadly nothing else relieves the pain for him like the advil did.

Any and all medication can have adverse effects if taken over a prolongued period of time… if you want to be a little bit more specific as to what the specific problem you had with your hip was maybe a few of us could suggest a different method of dealing with pain that may not be entirely based on taking medication… just a thought.

Have you looked into physical therapy? I don’t really know what your issue is but maybe a combination of physical therapy and getting custom fitted shoes to help posture and gate?

What the situation is is the cartilage is gone at the top of the hip. Seems to be a genetic thing. I have been doing physical therapy, but it seems the only thing is hip replacement. I also may try a shot of cortisone, which I heard sometimes works for a few months. I was thinking of stem cells to replace the cartilage, but the dr. in London I contacted said that, while this may be a solution in the future, they really aren’t there yet. The last thing I am would like to do more research on is the possibiltiy of a shot of my own concentrated blood—there was an article in the NYTimes about this for athletes. Haven’t learned more about this yet. Thanks for all your interest and help.

if you want a permanent solution with techonolgy that is available TODAY and not in experimental phases… you should try Hip resurfacing… it’s similar to a hip replacement but has had much better results.. also used in pro atheltes (Floyd Landis had this done in San DIego)... worth looking into.

The word I heard on this was it was successful in women only for five years, and then had to be redone. Not the result they were expecting. Have you heard differently?

it varies… but i’ve heard and seen great results using the Birmingham hip… you keep more of your own bone tissue… and it’s been more succesful in younger patients…. and it’s helped then resume an active lifestyle. You may want to check it out.

Obviously, I would like to keep all my own bone tissue. I appreciate the lead, though.
Thank you.

Here is an interesting article about hip resurfacing. My former classmate, Dr. Ed Su is in the picture, sweet!

Other than it tearing your stomach up, it can cause rebound headaches..trust me, you do not want those. I was taking 600mg every day, and started getting severe headaches and went to the doctor, he immediately had me stop taking advil and I slowly got better. He tried giving me other painkillers, I had a bad reaction to one, it was called Tramadol. I know others who used it with success though.

@casheroo: Were you taking the advil for headaches or for other pain?

@skfinkel I was taking it for back pain, mainly.