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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

A friend of mine, Eric Engstrom, died of liver failure after taking (too much) Tylenol. Tylenol use over time can sneak up on you in the form of cumulative liver damage.

No, I'm not a doctor and this isn't medical advice.

Personally, a works-most-of-the-time treatment for headaches is going out for a walk. I don't know why it works, but it does.

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My understanding is that if taken in the recommended dose, and not taken for a longer period of time (consecutive doses, I mean) than the bottle says to, you don't end up with cumulative damage.

The damage should only occur if you take more than the recommended dose, or continue using it longer than the recommended period.

(Also not a doctor and this isn't medical advice.)

You have to take a lot at one time, or chronic overdoses, to damage your liver.

Taking the maximum daily recommended dose (4g per day, thereabouts, in 1g doses) every day for months on end is fine and won’t do any damage.

I’m sorry about your friend but his experience is unrelated to the fact that using the medication as recommended, even long term, is not harmful in the least.

It's a common failure mode and most other OTCs won't kill you if you occasionally accidentally take an extra dose or two. Agreed that it's safe at the correct dose but the hazards are severe and dosing incorrectly is inevitable at population scale.

Headaches have various causes, and you have to look at where the pain is "originating" from to even try and figure out why. Going out of a walk could be due to a sinus getting irritated and going out for fresh air helps relax it. It can also just be a stress headache and going for a walk relaxes you.

Oh I fully agree that it working depends on the cause of the headache. But when one doesn't know the cause, it's well worth a try.

Yep, my mom worked in the pediatric ER, she never let Tylenol/acetaminophen in the house, my understanding is that she saw way too many cases of liver damage and death.

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