How effective is anti-inflammatory medication for whiplash?

Whiplash is a neck injury caused by a sudden back-and-forth movement. Irritated muscles, joints, and other soft tissues can produce neck pain, stiffness, headache, or pain spreading toward the shoulder. Anti-inflammatory medicine may reduce inflammatory discomfort and make gentle movement more manageable. It cannot diagnose a fracture, nerve problem, or concussion, and medicine may not address pain that has a different main driver.

Follow the recommended dose and avoid taking multiple products with the same anti-inflammatory ingredient. Share your medical history, including digestive, kidney, heart, or breathing conditions, pregnancy, and regular medicines. Short periods of comfortable neck movement and normal daily activity are often more useful than keeping the neck completely still. A clinician or physiotherapist can adapt exercises when stiffness or fear of movement is holding you back.

Have persistent or worsening neck pain assessed, especially after a road collision or fall. Seek urgent help for increasing weakness or numbness in an arm or leg, trouble walking, severe or worsening headache, repeated vomiting, confusion, fainting, or loss of bladder or bowel control. These symptoms require evaluation rather than self-treatment with tablets.

Ask whether an anti-inflammatory is appropriate for you, what warning symptoms to watch for, when to begin exercises, and whether your injury needs imaging or a review of nerve function.