Anybody who has ever suffered minor back pain has taken a couple of aspirin and rubbed one of the muscle pain-relieving products on the sore spot. For minor muscle strains that cause back pain, these measures are very effective and will relieve the pain. Given a few days, the pain will disappear and all treatment can be stopped. A minor muscle strain that causes back pain will be gone in a few days — it would be gone without any medications being swallowed or rubbed on.

The only purpose of these over-the-counter medications is to help relieve the pain and decrease it to a manageable level until the body takes care of the problem. Taking over-the-counter medications for back pain do not HEAL the muscle strain — the body does that. The medications just help relieve the pain.