'Tylenol Lite' – Will a safer new useless painkiller replace a dangerous old one
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acsh.org
About its effectiveness, it is more useful in some cases and less in others, in principle if inflammation is part of the problem NSAIDs will work much better, but in many cases they are both effective in comparable degrees. It all depends on the source of pain. Personally I take NSAIDs only if it is really needed, because in the past they have really messed up my stomach. And the cases that NSAIDs were effective and paracetamol was not was in some injury cases.
And yeah, there are studies that show paracetamol is effective and others that show it is ineffective, it all has to do with the exact cause of the symptoms because "pain" and "fever" are too general as symptoms. The fact that it does not work in some case does not mean it does not work in another and it is useless.
I think a first step should be banning mixing paracetamol/acetaminophen with other medications, so the people have a better chance of monitoring their dosage.
I doubt it makes a difference for most abusers, and is more about fear of legislation than concern about health.
The LD50 for acetaminophen is something like 380 mg per kilogram.
Extra-strength Tylenol is a 500mg pill; dosage guidelines are no more than 6 pills in 24 hours, which is 3,000 mg.
For a 150 pound person, the LD50 would be 57,000 mg.
although another way of think of it is 13 tylenol arthritis pills is the ld50 for a kindergartner and in the US they come in a bottle not a blisterpack.
Its a 500mg pill, but 2 pills (1000mg) is the recommend dose. So, only 3 doses per 24 hours.
I rarely take Tylenol, since my aches are usually inflammation-related and thus better addressed with an NSAID, but after my hip replacement it was a GREAT aid to me. The experience was kind of revelatory about the effectiveness of the drug.
The notion that it's useless is patently absurd.
- Moderate: Aspirin (250 mg) + Acetaminophen (250 mg) + Caffeine (65 mg)
- "Break glass" emergency: Imitrex (sumatriptan)
" Acetaminophen 250 mg
Aspirin 250 mg –Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug (NSAID)
Caffeine 65 mg "
https://www.excedrin.com/products/migraine/
https://www.excedrin.com/products/extra-strength/
^ both contain exactly the same amounts of exactly the same ingredients.
https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/397g2d/e...
Commercial from 1999 https://youtu.be/RxXVm6Rc-D0
Corny 80's commercials:
(PDF) https://www.tylenolprofessional.com/sites/tylenol_hcp_us/fil...
Notes:
0. It smells bad due to sulfur breakdown.
1. It got a bad rep from shady online vendors.
2. It's a mostly benign supplement recommended by some MDs offlabel for ADHD. Its primary action is aiding glutathione synthesis.
I was to alternate between prescription strength Tylenol and Ibuprofen. It was then that I discovered that Tylenol seemed to do very little if not nothing at all for me. I would be in horrible pain for the couple hours I'd be on Tylenol and in mild discomfort durring the Ibuprofen's reign.
My dad outright refuses to use tylenol because he swears it makes him anxious and angry. I have never encountered this.
My wife uses Tylenol regularly and says it works great for her, just as well as other painkillers.
I am not a doctor nor a scientist and my sample size is meaningless - yet I suspect it's efficacy varies by person.
When I had covid, again nothing worked at all. Terrible pain for 2 days, stopped immediately after a vitamin D megadose, whether it was a relationship or not we may never know.
https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/news/20180206/do-otc-pai...
https://www.healthline.com/health-news/do-painkillers-make-y...
Apparently it can make men more sensitive to emotionally painful experiences and women less sensitive to them.
Very little media is without bias.
In what way do you think it shows bias?
Edit: NSAIDs are bad if you are bleeding (or are about to be bleeding like before surgery), and they can cause stomach ulcers.
Of course 99.9% of American adults are desensitized to caffeine, so are unable to utilize its medicinal effects.
"A mild and transitory vasoconstrictor effect exists, which depends mainly on the caffeine concentration in the VSMC. However, the main and predominant effect of caffeine on the vascular wall is vasodilating, acting equally on the VSMC directly or indirectly and also on the endothelial structure."
The paper also says that withdrawal headaches are caused by vasodilation so I was wrong about that.
"When you abruptly stop the consumption of caffeine in a habitual consumer, there is a greater number of available adenosine receptors, which potentiates the vasodilation produced by adenosine, causing the symptoms"
But your comment is spot on for many, caffeine withdrawal is also a major headache trigger.
Opioids : Nuke :: NSAID : Knife
Looking at it, it seems the dose made the difference entirely. That said for minor pain it's often enough.
I think it's good there are multiple options and people can just take what works for them.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/01/050111123706.h...
So each drug has its place. There is no "one size fits all"
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/better-liv...
0. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20142348/
1. https://www.ada.org/publications/ada-news/2020/march/fda-app...
Please do note the careful phrasing of that rather minimal claim. As one of the things that causes my headaches is red dye, I only recently got reliable access to ibuprofen, as for a long time I thought it did bad things to me. It turns out it was just the way it was colored red by everybody. So I'm still gaining experience with what headaches respond to that, which is why I don't compare it. Mercifully, over the years I've addressed the root causes of most of my headaches, so experience is coming more slowly than it used to.
When I herniated a disc in my lower back, the ER doctor was very very hesitant to give me an opioid even though I was in constant, excruciating pain. But if you're allergic there's basically no other options out there.
The JNJ drug is "comparable" but with less toxicity. That's great!
But the author then goes on some weird tangent saying "well, acetaminophen isn't that great of a pain reliever anyways".
Ok, but the goal wasn't a better analgesic, just a safer one?
This is the first time I have read that Tylenol is of questionable efficacy. I haven't done any self-study of it, I tend to take one of the other NSAIDs. I have a bottle of ibroprofen at the moment, but Naproxen Sodium is usually my go-to.