Health / Pain Relievers / Ibuprofen Helped Me Keep Hiking

This year, for the first time, I allowed myself to take medication for bad heel blisters while hiking, and later for a stress fracture.  It was really helpful, and the Meijer brand was a good as the name brand.

On some hikes I have a really bad time with blisters on my heels.  The entire heel peels and then refuses to heal.  In May, it was really slowing the entire group down because I just couldn’t seem to think myself through the pain.  So I let the others talk me into trying ibuprofen, and I have to admit that it helped a lot.  Because I don’t take a lot of medications, I only took the minimum dose, one pill of 200 mg, every 6 hours.  It really eliminated the pain.  With good padding I was able to keep up the pace of my hiking.

What I didn’t really understand is that ibuprofen is also an anti-inflammatory.  So when I came home from the August hike with a stress fracture in my left leg, the doctor said to keep taking it, 3 times a day, even though the leg had stopped hurting very much.  Of course, I was also supposed to stay off my leg.  So I did all of those things, and my leg healed in 4 weeks, so that I could go on my next hike in October.  I was very impressed.  

Most of the time I was taking the Meijer brand of ibuprofen, rather than Advil, and it seemed to work just as well.  The price is very reasonable. .  It comes in caplets as well as tablets if you prefer that shape.


There are warnings for people who are allergic to aspirin to not take this product. There are other warnings on the box.

The only reason I didn’t give it a 5 is because of the fact that as an NSAID (non-steroid, anti-inflammatory), there are quite a few warnings.