Anti-inflammatory alternative to over the counter (NSAIDs)

I was having a discussion the other day with a patient about commonly used over the counter medications that people take for aches and pains. Ultimately we got to the point where I said "you cannot continue to take 4-8 pills a day, like you have for the past several months". Now I understand when people are in pain that they don't really consider much else, besides what they can do or take to help alleviate their symptoms. A lot of the time we when we are experiencing some pain it is a given that some degree of inflammation is taking place. With that being said some amount of inflammation is a necessary evil when dealing with injury.

The goal of this post is to present an alternative to reaching for over the counter NSAIDs. I found a pubmed article that compared taking Omega 3 Fatty Acids (fish oil). Essentially the article was compared to a similar study where people were taking NSAIDs. Here is a brief summary, in the article about fish oil people were asked to take the fish oil supplement everyday for 1 month for their neck or back pain. The majority of people who actually finished the trial reported positive results with improvement in overall pain, joint pain, and satisfaction with the use of fish oil. The results of this study mirrored one that compared a popular OTC NSAID to Omega 3 fatty acids in that, the fish oil produced an equivalent effect in reducing pain when compared to the popular OTC NSAID.