Perhaps if you are a runner and you take these seemingly benign medicines to reduce pain and swelling, you end up causing more permanent damage by continuing to run when you should not (I have experienced this).
I think a lot of medicines work by turning off or on processes that are important but inconvenient at the time. Painkillers are probably the best example. We shouldn't take them when we are healthy, it would be dangerous. Other medicines, such as antibiotics, work by killing pathogens directly and don't affect our bodies like the drugs in this discussion.