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Comment by nine_k | Hacker News Reader

Basically, paracetamol turns out to be mildly contraceptive, by meddling with cell division cycle.

I wonder if it might also slow healing of wounds, or wherever else intense cell division happens.

The authors touch on potential wider implications in the abstract:

> These results suggest that APAP should be used with caution by women attempting to conceive. Given that cell division is fundamental to all development, further investigation is now warranted to substantiate these findings and to elucidate possible implications for other developmental processes, such as gonadal and brain differentiation.

NSAIDs reduce inflammation. Since inflammation is part of healing, they can slow recovery, but they’re useful when inflammation itself is a problem.

paracetamol is not an NSAID.

True but one of the proposed mechanisms of action is on the same pathway as NSAIDs

You are right COX-1/2 difference

Yes, but since the parent was talking about drugs with similar effects slowing healing, I thought it was appropriate to mention.

Unsure if this is related, but I’ve heard that taking painkillers for delayed onset muscle soreness will reduce muscle gains.

Same goes for icebaths, they reduce inflammation, which is the whole point of working out.

Does the opposite hold true as well? If I taunt a wasp nest after hitting the gym will I discover the fast route to mad gains?

You'll certainly get swole.

What about ginger? Because that apparently only downregulates COX-2 without affection COX-1 (most inflammation-reducing drugs affect both)

Etoricoxib does just that and is widely available at least in the EU

Interesting, I didn't know. My original question was more about whether that affects muscle gains differently though, do you happen to have any insights into that?

The whole point of working out is to stress the organism in order to induce a physiological adaptation. Inflammation is NOT the point, but rather an unfortunate side effect.

So, literally "no pain, no gain" ?

Just NSAID’s - they’re anti-inflammatory and muscle synthesis happens in response to inflammation.

Anti-inflammatories - not all painkillers.

The studies I saw had people taking a lot, it wasn’t looking at people taking 400mg once a week of their knee or shoulder got sore during the workout.

Painkillers like ibuprofen are NSAIDs which inhibit the enzyme COX1/2, reducing prostaglandin production.

Prostaglandins are an inflammatory hormone that do a variety of things, but specifically PGE2 plays a role in muscle stem cell activation to divide and produce more muscle fibers. The effect is probably realistically small, but you will leave gains on the table by taking ibuprofen after hard workouts.

Are you saying that lifting weights makes more muscle fibers? I was under the impression it does not, that it simply makes your existing muscle fibers bigger and stronger.

The main muscle fiber cells don't divide (usually), but satellite cells reproduce. Those fuse with the fibers though.

Though the science is not completely established here and there are some exceptions (obvious ones like cancer, etc...)

I think rapid cell division might occur during embryo development. Not a biologist. Just a guess.

The vaccine-autism smoking gun that Andrew Wakefield and RFK Jr. heroically tried to find has, so far, failed to turn up. But there was a study recently that showed that autism is correlated with the mother taking acetaminophen during pregnancy.

> Andrew Wakefield and RFK Jr. heroically tried to find

I'm not sure if that was supposed to be sarcastic, but these two people have done more harm to public health, and are responsible for more health dis/mis-information, than pretty much anyone I can think of. (I am a biochemist, no conflict of interest)

In gp’s defense—I interpreted their formulation to suggest vaccine skeptics applied effort to an heroic degree/amount, not that the effort was of heroic virtue. That is, that those people applied ridiculously high levels of effort to searching for an effect, and still did not find an effect.

As distinct from the retort that “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”: It can be, if you’ve tried hard enough to gather the evidence and come up short—which is what these guys have done.

I was being highly, highly sarcastic. People still banging the vaccine-autism drum are heroes only in their own mind.

Thanks for clarifying, it was really not obvious given the incredible prevalence of vaccine skepticism!

Yeah that was my charitable reading as well, but with the incredible prevalence of anti-vax/vaccine skepticism, you can never be sure. I thought clarifying could be helpful!

Or maybe it's genetic. Or whatever. Cite yer sources matey, or it be all hot sargassum.

Arrh, be this good enough for ye?

https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/using-acetaminophen-during-pre...

https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-...

The general advice is to not take any medication during pregnancy without a physician’s advice. This includes all over the counter medicines.

Provide a reference please. Which country is that from?

USA, what my wife’s OB told her. 20 years ago.

The OB will give you a list of what you can and can’t take. Tylenol is the only pain reliever you can take.

I’d say that qualifies as physician advice.

Oh I was hoping for a written down reference from an organisation responsible for giving medical advice rather than an single doctor.

Well here’s one:

https://health.clevelandclinic.org/pregnancy-safe-medication...

While they do list some medicines, note that they also say check with your doctor first.

Read a paper long time ago, something to do with increase of sulfur in the brain

Physicians find it hard, perhaps impossible, to say "do nothing and go home". They always prescribe something or other.

Okay some don't, particularly North American and Northern/Western European ones.

But mostly, on average, physicians always try to prescribe you something.

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