Health

The main differences between Advil, Tylenol, Aleve, and Aspirin summed up in one chart

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Flickr / Mislav Marohnić
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You probably have at least three kinds of painkillers in your bathroom medicine cabinet. But they're not all designed to treat the same types of discomfort.

While some pain relievers are great at bringing down fevers, others contain the ingredients needed to reduce the kind of painful swelling linked with muscle soreness or arthritis. 

Depending on your medical history — and even what you've eaten or drank recently — there may be certain over-the-counter medications you should avoid altogether.

Check out this handy chart to find out which medication is best for your pain. 

Please note that many of the medications below can treat all of your symptoms. This chart merely shows which drug studies suggest is best at treating which type of pain.

Painkillers chart
Business Insider

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Mike is Business Insider's graphics editor. He majored in printmaking at Cornell University and earned an MFA in painting and drawing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He previously worked as an illustrator in Groupon's Humor Department. He regularly exhibits his drawings.
Erin was a senior health and tech reporter at Business Insider based in San Francisco, where she focused on startups and Silicon Valley. She's broken news on a variety of life science and health-tech stories, including: Before joining BI, Erin worked as a freelance health and science reporter for outlets including Newsweek, Popular Science, and Scientific American. Erin graduated summa cum laude from the University of California, San Diego and received her master's from the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism in New York, where she spent an extra semester completing her degree after breaking both wrists in a snowboarding accident.