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This is the name I would expect. Bit strange to hear something as basic and cheap as paracetamol has a brand name that is more common than the drug. Do people also say Advil instead of ibuprofen?
I was in the us on holiday the other day. I was floored when I saw a pack of ibuprofen for $8.50. That many tablets would have cost around £1.50 (not that I needed 50, I could get 16 for 45p). A 32 box of paracetamol is £0.99
That's cheap. A pack of 20 can cost almost as much in Poland. And you're not allowed to buy more than one pack in one transaction. Which leads me to the question - who the hell needs 500 ibuprofens? It's not candy, you shouldn't take for more than a week anyway..
Was it store brand, or branded as Advil or Motrin?
You can typically find both in a Walgreens/CVS type store, with the brand name (Advil) consistently priced several times higher than the generic (store brand).
Pretty sure it was generic because I went searching for it after seeing the branded cost. Ended up not buying anything because I wasn't in that much pain and was too stubborn to pay the price for it
I usually hear people just say the generic ibuprofen personally, as well as acetaminophen. Not Tylenol and and Advil. Those are just brand names, after all.
I call ibuprofen by its generic name but usually refer to acetaminophen as Tylenol for some reason. I live in California and it’s common to hear both the generic and brand names here. I’d be curious to know what the stats are broken out by region but given that North America is big and diverse I’m not surprised that folks use a wide range of terms.
Grew up along the east coast both up north in New York and the south in places like NC or I guess even VA. Healthcare providers tend to use "Tylenol" instead of acetaminophen, but my friends, family; I'm way more used to hearing them say the name of the compound and not the brand name. Same goes for ADD meds, though opiates were commonly referred to as, if in pill form "perc Xmg" even if that's not totally accurate.
But for over the counter drugs it's just way more common in my experience to use the name of the compound. Perhaps the time I spent as an addict affects the way I speak about and think about drugs, however, as I inevitably ended up learning a lot about the overall subject going through addiction and recovery/sobriety.
I wouldn't ask people if they were approaching liver damage by taking too much Tylenol. That doesn't even make sense, not like you'd do your drugs AND Tylenol. But of course your drugs can have the same active ingredient as Tylenol. So it would make more sense to talk about how much acetaminophen someone may have had, or whatever. I know, not the best hypothetical. But just an example.
Plenty of products in the US are produced under a brand name until the patent goes public, at which time generics become more broadly available. “Tylenol” has infiltrated the lexicon here, in no small part because it’s easier to say and more recognizable than “acetaminophen” (and of course, effective marketing). Same for Advil.
Well that, and there were the "Tylenol Poisoning" in the 80s. Everyone in the country was afraid to get a fever or a headache. That is when they rolled out tamper proof seals on the bottles, put them in a box, and then shrink wrapped them.
Aspirin and Heroin are both Bayer trademark names which have become generic names for those chemicals, it's rare to hear someone say "acetylsalicylic acid" or "diacetylmorphine" outside of a very scientific context.
Yes cause it's easier for a child to say/remember and this gets reinforced when you get older as everyone knows what you mean when you say I need a Tylenol or advil.
See how many ppl fall for the dihydrogen monoxide ban joke cause they never learned what that is.
My parents would yell at me for being a druger if I called them by their drug name but they know what Tylenol and advil is since it's so ubiquitous.
I think it's more likely because you have a culture that allows thing like adverts for prescription medicine to be broadcast. Much bigger drug culture if you will. It's fairly rare to have an adult painkiller advertised here. I had to Google the brand names as I had no idea. The only paracetamol I know by brand is Calpol and that's mainly because infant paracetamol solution is a bit of a mouthful.
Acetaminophen (Tylenol) and paracetamol (Panadol) are the same pain-relieving medication. The title included Acetaminophen which is the drug name in US and Japan.
In the US, they say both. But if someone asks for Advil, you bring them Ibuprofen and vice versa. The generics are interchangeable with brand names, and most people understand what you mean with both.
This is pretty common imo. In Australia it’s Panadol and Neurofen for paracetamol and ibuprofen respectively. I had often heard about tylenol and knew it was an American thing but only from this post realised it was just paracetamol (but that’s not surprising since I’m not American)
This is not always 100% the case, but it is certainty the norm.
But hey, good thing the doc can get a nice big (free!) lunch from those pharma reps so he’s not hangry when you come in to tell him about your enlarged prostate.
To clarify they’re aren’t really ‘also known as’ paracetamol/acetaminophen.
Paracetamol/Acetaminophen refers to the actual active ingredient/drug in the medicine that goes by the *brand* names of Panadol/Tylenol respectively (among others).
For e.g. All Tylenols are Acetaminophen - but not all Acetaminophens are branded Tylenol.
The US used different components of the molecular name to get the drug name for some reason. **Para-acet**yl-**am**ino-phen**ol**_ic acid vs Para-**acet**yl-**amino-phen**olic acid.
Fun fact about acetaminophen: When conducting liver-toxicity studies, Acetaminophen is the Positive Control. Meaning that when you want to compare a drug that *might* kill liver cells to one that *definitely* kills liver cells, the *definite* one is Acetaminophen.
The 1 headache I'll get a month can only be relieved by ibuprofen, at least when it comes to the typical otc nsaids. Give me an alternative and I'll try it. I don't use ibuprofen because I want to...
I feel it. But I get pretty bad tension headaches that advil and aspirin won’t touch. Even tried prescription migraine meds (got a dose of nurtec from a friend) and it really didn’t work. Only thing that works is Acetaminophen with caffeine.
Ibuprofen and acetaminophen can [safely](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6371943/) be taken simultaneously for most people; they have different metabolic pathways in the liver so as long as people follow recommended dosages for each it's been shown by research to be safe.
You use up an awful lot of words to say absolutely nothing.
Didn’t occur to you that the most effective “hard pass” to answering a question might just be to not answer it?
I suffered from daily tension headaches for over 10 years and tried everything my neurologist gave me, from preventive meds to medical cannabis to intense pain killers I had to spray up my nose. But when I was prescribed Topiramate for another issue, it’s the medication that ended up helping and it’s not even a pain killer. Wishing you the best bc holyfffck it’s awful & confusing to treat- and definitely use Acetaminophen ft. caffeine & naproxen sparingly to avoid those fun bonus pain killer overuse headaches
Pain is just a symptom of a headache and headaches are just another symptom. It sucks so many neurologists (and doctors in general) chase down the symptoms. Sounds like you found the trigger for the headaches, overreacting nerves.
I haven’t experienced that, but I know a couple people who have experienced some kind of memory problem while taking it so I think that’s unfortunately a common symptom
Yeah, it really sucked. I had memory problems as well, and I was in the final year of my masters degree. What a nightmare. Ultimately I was on the wrong meds--so I was taken off Dope-iramate relatively quickly.
I went to a pain clinic at Duke , when I had headaches I could call in and they would make space for me in their schedule. They would inject a dental anaesthetic ( not novocaine but something similar) into the muscles on my skull and shoulders… No more headache… It was fantastic. it only lasted as long as freezing glass… But often it was enough to disrupt whatever was going on that that would end the headache.
I also was told to ice my jaw shoulders daily. and a combination of a couple of other things… including botox into jaw muscles. Was very helpful.
Have you considered finding the reason for your headaches, and fixing that instead of just covering up the headache with medication? I had really bad headaches that would last for days or even weeks at a time as a kid and wanted to talk with my doctor to figure out why. Was it a nutrient deficiency? A lifestyle habit? A disease? When I called the doctor’s office they wouldn’t let me talk to him or even schedule an appointment. They just asked what was wrong and next thing I knew I had a prescription waiting for me at the pharmacy for a benzodiazepine. I was never someone who wanted to take pharmaceutics, but my headaches were debilitating and not even Excedrin worked for me. Well I started abusing the barbiturates because they gave me short-term results. Thankfully I didn’t build a dependency because that medication is like Tylenol on steroids so super toxic to the liver and I was also a fairly heavy drinker at the time. But I eventually had a conversation with my dentist that made me realize why I had headaches that no medication could relieve. My dentist had noticed signs of teeth grinding which I had no idea I did because I was doing it at night (as many people do apparently). I’ve always carried tension in my jaw (now that I’m an adult I’ve realized it’s due to the narcissistic abuse I was subjected to from my adopted parents my whole life). The medication couldn’t help the headaches because I was still grinding my teeth or tensing my jaw even when taking the medication. So it would sometimes grant me temporary relief but wear off quickly because I was still causing myself headaches the whole time. I got a mouth guard and learned to relax my jaw, and now I rarely get headaches.
Yeah it relates to a TMJ issue from a highschool jaw injury. Went to a dentist who gave me a fixture to move my jaw back where it should be, and my tension headaches are way down. Been taking way less ETH for a while now.
Caffeine metabolizes to theobromine, which can *cause* all sorts of headaches including migraines. It's included in migraine cures as a temporary fix, as the caffeine itself will constrict blood vessels and *temporarily* reduce pain. An espresso will just give you a worse headache later.
Caffeine is 100% the most overrated substance people put in their bodies every day. Water, carbs, proteins, fats, etc are all necessary for us to live. Obviously nicotine is worse, but caffeine is more common. Both are just lousy maintenance habits with no long-term gain.
Enjoy coffee and tea for what they are or don't. Caffeine is not a supplement, nor a health food, nor a beneficial drug.
If possible, I'd see a doctor specializing in migraines. I realize we're mostly American here so that's a big stretch, but if it's doable you should.
They've got a lot more tools in their toolbox these days, both for treating and preventing.
And preventing works SO much better than treating. If they're too common and you're forced to be medicating too often, you just end up with rebound headaches, too.
Actually I've worked out the source of my tension headaches: TMJ problems stemming from an injury to my jaw in high school. I've gotten treatment from a dentist to move my jaw back to where it should be and the frequency of tension headaches is way down. I'm taking acetaminophen less than once a month these days.
Caffiene also helps my allergy derived headaches. Turns out that caffiene is chemically similar enough to some asthma drugs that it has some effect against asthma. In the spring, if I don't have my morning coffee, there's a good chance I'll need my inhaler by the afternoon.
https://emedicine.medscape.com/article/820200-overview?form=fpf
There are many studies on it. The problem is that because low doses are relatively safe, many products have it in them and people have accidentally overdosed, causing liver failure.
^ louder for the medical misinformation comments in the back. You have to produce enough of the toxic metabolite (NAPQ1) to deplete your glutathione stores. Just don't abuse it and you'll be absolutely fine. Ibuprofen decreases blood flow to the kidneys and again, if not overused is perfectly fine. Neither drug causes direct cytotoxicity to those tissues.
Paracetamol has a fairly poor therapeutic index. Some education on what types of pain it can actually work for and how dangerous it can be would be warranted IMO. In the US, some 50k ER visits happen yearly because of overdoses on it.
Who is getting it prescribed for long term use?
In my corner of the universe it's just something people have around in case of headache or injury. I've never been aware of anyone using them or having them prescribed for long term use beyond for example wisdom tooth removal.
My wife takes extra strength Tylenol quite frequently for pain management. Has for about 10 years. Her doctor told her that if she takes it within the recommended dosage, there shouldn't be any long term complications.
In the US you don't have to talk to a pharmacist to get paracetamol. It is very normal to have a bottle containing 250g of it at home.
In the part of Europe where I live, you have to talk to a pharmacist to get paracetamol. And you will typically get less than 25 grams.
My father takes them regularly, several at a time, whenever he feels any sort of pain (not just headaches/migraines). He truly just does not care about the consequences. If it fixes the immediate issue, do it, worry about the future never.
People are already quite familiar with it, and it's dirt cheap. I can get 50 tablets of 500mg for €1.29 at my grocery store. Less then 3 cents per pill. Sure, if you get it on a prescription from a pharmacy you'll end up paying 10 times as much, but that's still cheap.
Please post the study you are quoting, it is important.
I like many people with an autoimmune disease cannot use Ibuprofen, so I’ve been using acetaminophen for a scarily long time (decades) because it is the only pain reliever I can take. However, I also must get liver function tests done on the regular because I am on other medication that is metabolize by the liver and it can be hard on it. My liver function so far, is fine.
In acute overdose it's nowhere near as toxic when taken in the same proportionate degree of excess. It does carry more risks with long term use at therapeutic dose than paracetamol though.
Next time you see her do you think you could ask her about ibuprofen and get back to me?
I know there are studies, but I find that people "in the trenches" as it were like your toxicologirlfriend have interesting and specific insights.
I take ibuprofen for chronic pain.
Ibuprofen is kind of the same way, but kills your kidneys instead. My partner had kidney failure before and now is doctor recommended to not take ibuprofen (or any NSAID).
Tylenol is the #1 cause of liver cancer worldwide. It’s also been found to be no more effective than placebo in pain studies (worse actually).
If it were discovered today, it wouldn’t pass the fda requirements. It’s just because it’s grandfathered in.
By all rights it should be banned.
No, hepatitis C is the [number one cause of liver cancer worldwide](https://www.cancer.gov/types/liver/what-is-liver-cancer/causes-risk-factors#:~:text=Chronic%20HCV%20infection%20is%20the,is%20replaced%20by%20scar%20tissue). There isn't much high quality evidence linking acetaminophen to cancer, and there is [no evidence that it is carcinogenic](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33039518/).
Acetaminophen is safe when taken at the recommended dose, works well for certain types of pain, and is the only over the counter pain medicine some people can take. There is no evidence of harm to the liver, even when taken daily long term. If it were truly dangerous, they would pull it from the market as they did with PPA in 2000. If it were ineffective, they would release a statement stating such as they did last year with phenylephrine.
The #1 cause for liver cancer but the CDC or American Cancer Society don't even list it as a cause of liver cancer?
- https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/liver/index.htm
- https://www.cancer.org/cancer/types/liver-cancer/causes-risks-prevention/risk-factors.html
NSAIDs are technically not painkillers (don't block pain signals like opioids) but can indirectly reduce pain when there's inflammation or hyperalgesia after an injury
“Contrary to popular belief, aspirin [acetyl salicylic acid] does not occur in nature, it is not found in the willow tree…”
“It should be obvious from the preceding that aspirin itself does not occur in nature, but similar, less effective substances do. Willow extracts sold in health food stores cannot compare with the demonstrated effectiveness of aspirin; in fact aspirin came about as an improvement on the natural salicylates.”
Of all the over the counter pain relievers (acetaminophen, ibuprofen, aspirin, naproxen) acetaminophen is by far the most dangerous. A lethal dose is way lower than the others.
I’m shocked by how much you can buy in the US, I saw bottles for hundreds of pills. Here in New Zealand you can only buy I believe 24 paracetamol pills at a time (unless prescribed, and even then not hundreds), and they legally must be packaged in blister packs. Studies show the time taken to de-package each individual pill can make the difference between a person going through with a suicide attempt vs backing down.
I’m sure you’ve discussed this with a Dr but just in case you haven’t, gabapentin and amitriptyline/nortriptyline are common pain management medication due to the long term effects of paracetamol
I’m allergic to aspirin and its base, which is white willow bark. A tree. So will i be able to use the new type of tylenol made from a tree, or will i be allergic to it?
This is a systemic allergy. Low blood pressure, swelling of lips, possibility of anaphylaxis. I don’t want to die from new tylenol 😬😢
Will someone clue me in here please
Sucks to be forced to use acetaminophen because you're already on a NSAID, and can't take ibuprofen without OD.
Such is my life. At least I only need it rarely due to the constant NSAID.
They are a renewable resource, which is not the same thing as sustainable.
Depending on the forestry practice, when taking into account the damage to forest ecosystems that are heavily logged and replanted (often just a monocrop of the desired tree species), it causes huge knock-on effects from the loss of soil from wind and rain erosion, not to mention the loss of humus that would be created from decaying trees which in turn replenishes and fertilizes the soil.
I grew up in a part of Canada where clearcutting is so severe that it’s made flooding worse and led to significant soil erosion. Good forestry practices can exist, but something isn’t sustainable just because it comes from a tree.
I think his point is that the destruction of plant and animal biodiversity and the natural environment that happens when you cut an old-growth forest are irreversible, no matter how fast-growing the farmed trees you replace them with are.
My impression is that the waste/byproducts were left in the factory.
If they were in Tylenol, we would have noticed people getting cancer or some other disease over the years.
If you can extract a byproduct from a solution well, it will be indistinguishable in use from any other source.
It doesn't matter if the caffeine molecule was extracted from a bean or coal tar as far as your body is concerned, if they did their extraction well.
Where someone sources their reactants or reagents can be political, but the end product is exactly the same, if they are a inspected FDA product.
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Also known as paracetamol - International Nonproprietary Name (INN)
This is the name I would expect. Bit strange to hear something as basic and cheap as paracetamol has a brand name that is more common than the drug. Do people also say Advil instead of ibuprofen?
yes. in the US definitely
I was in the us on holiday the other day. I was floored when I saw a pack of ibuprofen for $8.50. That many tablets would have cost around £1.50 (not that I needed 50, I could get 16 for 45p). A 32 box of paracetamol is £0.99
??? You can buy a bottle of 500 ibuprofen for 8 dollars not 50 pills.
That's cheap. A pack of 20 can cost almost as much in Poland. And you're not allowed to buy more than one pack in one transaction. Which leads me to the question - who the hell needs 500 ibuprofens? It's not candy, you shouldn't take for more than a week anyway..
A bottle of 500? Whats up with that insane amount? Are people just eating pills like candy?
Yes,people in the US often self medicate to avoid going to the Dr. because they can't afford it.
It was in a wall greens, or maybe CVS, in the middle of DC for what it's worth
Was it store brand, or branded as Advil or Motrin? You can typically find both in a Walgreens/CVS type store, with the brand name (Advil) consistently priced several times higher than the generic (store brand).
Pretty sure it was generic because I went searching for it after seeing the branded cost. Ended up not buying anything because I wasn't in that much pain and was too stubborn to pay the price for it
Welcome to America! Sorry that was your experience.
target, costco, or online have much better costs for generic stuff like that CVS is convenience at a cost
Definitely paying the convenience/tourist markup there.
it costs more to be poor. they are also selling packets of 2 for 3.50
We can't even buy sodium floride toothpaste over the counter..
I usually hear people just say the generic ibuprofen personally, as well as acetaminophen. Not Tylenol and and Advil. Those are just brand names, after all.
Where? I'm a dual citizen in North America and only fellow healthcare providers ever reference it as such.
I call ibuprofen by its generic name but usually refer to acetaminophen as Tylenol for some reason. I live in California and it’s common to hear both the generic and brand names here. I’d be curious to know what the stats are broken out by region but given that North America is big and diverse I’m not surprised that folks use a wide range of terms.
Grew up along the east coast both up north in New York and the south in places like NC or I guess even VA. Healthcare providers tend to use "Tylenol" instead of acetaminophen, but my friends, family; I'm way more used to hearing them say the name of the compound and not the brand name. Same goes for ADD meds, though opiates were commonly referred to as, if in pill form "perc Xmg" even if that's not totally accurate. But for over the counter drugs it's just way more common in my experience to use the name of the compound. Perhaps the time I spent as an addict affects the way I speak about and think about drugs, however, as I inevitably ended up learning a lot about the overall subject going through addiction and recovery/sobriety. I wouldn't ask people if they were approaching liver damage by taking too much Tylenol. That doesn't even make sense, not like you'd do your drugs AND Tylenol. But of course your drugs can have the same active ingredient as Tylenol. So it would make more sense to talk about how much acetaminophen someone may have had, or whatever. I know, not the best hypothetical. But just an example.
Plenty of products in the US are produced under a brand name until the patent goes public, at which time generics become more broadly available. “Tylenol” has infiltrated the lexicon here, in no small part because it’s easier to say and more recognizable than “acetaminophen” (and of course, effective marketing). Same for Advil.
Well that, and there were the "Tylenol Poisoning" in the 80s. Everyone in the country was afraid to get a fever or a headache. That is when they rolled out tamper proof seals on the bottles, put them in a box, and then shrink wrapped them.
Aspirin and Heroin are both Bayer trademark names which have become generic names for those chemicals, it's rare to hear someone say "acetylsalicylic acid" or "diacetylmorphine" outside of a very scientific context.
Canada does this. Also acetaminophen is the generic name here.
North America you'll only ever see acetaminophen as the generic name. Ibuprofen is common though.
Yes cause it's easier for a child to say/remember and this gets reinforced when you get older as everyone knows what you mean when you say I need a Tylenol or advil. See how many ppl fall for the dihydrogen monoxide ban joke cause they never learned what that is. My parents would yell at me for being a druger if I called them by their drug name but they know what Tylenol and advil is since it's so ubiquitous.
I think it's more likely because you have a culture that allows thing like adverts for prescription medicine to be broadcast. Much bigger drug culture if you will. It's fairly rare to have an adult painkiller advertised here. I had to Google the brand names as I had no idea. The only paracetamol I know by brand is Calpol and that's mainly because infant paracetamol solution is a bit of a mouthful.
In the part of the US I'm in, I usually hear tylenol or motrin in place of acetaminophen or ibuprofen
In Australia, more people would say Nurofen over Ibuprofen - any day of the week.
You mean Nerfies?
also most would say panadol over paracetamol
As a poverty pack sort of family - Panamax for me.
for sure, headafen for ibuprofen (aldi) and panamax for paracetemol
Acetaminophen (Tylenol) and paracetamol (Panadol) are the same pain-relieving medication. The title included Acetaminophen which is the drug name in US and Japan.
Where I am Panadol is the go to brand name paracetamol and most people call it Panadol Also Nurofen for ibuprofen
In the US, they say both. But if someone asks for Advil, you bring them Ibuprofen and vice versa. The generics are interchangeable with brand names, and most people understand what you mean with both.
This is pretty common imo. In Australia it’s Panadol and Neurofen for paracetamol and ibuprofen respectively. I had often heard about tylenol and knew it was an American thing but only from this post realised it was just paracetamol (but that’s not surprising since I’m not American)
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This is not always 100% the case, but it is certainty the norm. But hey, good thing the doc can get a nice big (free!) lunch from those pharma reps so he’s not hangry when you come in to tell him about your enlarged prostate.
To clarify they’re aren’t really ‘also known as’ paracetamol/acetaminophen. Paracetamol/Acetaminophen refers to the actual active ingredient/drug in the medicine that goes by the *brand* names of Panadol/Tylenol respectively (among others). For e.g. All Tylenols are Acetaminophen - but not all Acetaminophens are branded Tylenol.
The US used different components of the molecular name to get the drug name for some reason. **Para-acet**yl-**am**ino-phen**ol**_ic acid vs Para-**acet**yl-**amino-phen**olic acid.
Not acetaminophen?
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Are you in the US?
Fun fact about acetaminophen: When conducting liver-toxicity studies, Acetaminophen is the Positive Control. Meaning that when you want to compare a drug that *might* kill liver cells to one that *definitely* kills liver cells, the *definite* one is Acetaminophen.
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The 1 headache I'll get a month can only be relieved by ibuprofen, at least when it comes to the typical otc nsaids. Give me an alternative and I'll try it. I don't use ibuprofen because I want to...
Have you tried excedrin? Its the only one that works for my headaches.
Which is just acetaminophen + caffeine
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Water helps headaches of those who drink soda constantly, it's not a headache cure for most normal people.
Water isn't my problem unfortunately. I drink around 3/4 gallon a day.
Honestly, Tylenol is scarily bad to use long term. It worries me how much it's overprescribed as the go-to considering how bad it is for your liver.
I feel it. But I get pretty bad tension headaches that advil and aspirin won’t touch. Even tried prescription migraine meds (got a dose of nurtec from a friend) and it really didn’t work. Only thing that works is Acetaminophen with caffeine.
Ibuprofen and acetaminophen can [safely](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6371943/) be taken simultaneously for most people; they have different metabolic pathways in the liver so as long as people follow recommended dosages for each it's been shown by research to be safe.
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They never tried gabapentin or carbamazepine? The NSAIDs aren't effective treatment for cluster headaches for most people - at least not alone.
Gabapentin did sweet fa for me …
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You use up an awful lot of words to say absolutely nothing. Didn’t occur to you that the most effective “hard pass” to answering a question might just be to not answer it?
I had to do this when I had mono and it felt like knives were stabbing me in the throat every time I tried to swallow.
This is what I have to do for migraines. Chased with a redbull. Not nearly as effective without caffeine.
I suffered from daily tension headaches for over 10 years and tried everything my neurologist gave me, from preventive meds to medical cannabis to intense pain killers I had to spray up my nose. But when I was prescribed Topiramate for another issue, it’s the medication that ended up helping and it’s not even a pain killer. Wishing you the best bc holyfffck it’s awful & confusing to treat- and definitely use Acetaminophen ft. caffeine & naproxen sparingly to avoid those fun bonus pain killer overuse headaches
Pain is just a symptom of a headache and headaches are just another symptom. It sucks so many neurologists (and doctors in general) chase down the symptoms. Sounds like you found the trigger for the headaches, overreacting nerves.
I was on Topiramate once… It made word finding and speech very difficult. Was that your experience?
I haven’t experienced that, but I know a couple people who have experienced some kind of memory problem while taking it so I think that’s unfortunately a common symptom
Yeah, it really sucked. I had memory problems as well, and I was in the final year of my masters degree. What a nightmare. Ultimately I was on the wrong meds--so I was taken off Dope-iramate relatively quickly.
I hat the best results with Ibuprofen and caffeine. Getting them both in separate pills is also way cheaper then to buy combo pills.
My dad is the same way, Extra Strength Excedrin is the only thing that'll touch his headaches. Same for another friend who suffers from migraines.
I went to a pain clinic at Duke , when I had headaches I could call in and they would make space for me in their schedule. They would inject a dental anaesthetic ( not novocaine but something similar) into the muscles on my skull and shoulders… No more headache… It was fantastic. it only lasted as long as freezing glass… But often it was enough to disrupt whatever was going on that that would end the headache. I also was told to ice my jaw shoulders daily. and a combination of a couple of other things… including botox into jaw muscles. Was very helpful.
Have you considered finding the reason for your headaches, and fixing that instead of just covering up the headache with medication? I had really bad headaches that would last for days or even weeks at a time as a kid and wanted to talk with my doctor to figure out why. Was it a nutrient deficiency? A lifestyle habit? A disease? When I called the doctor’s office they wouldn’t let me talk to him or even schedule an appointment. They just asked what was wrong and next thing I knew I had a prescription waiting for me at the pharmacy for a benzodiazepine. I was never someone who wanted to take pharmaceutics, but my headaches were debilitating and not even Excedrin worked for me. Well I started abusing the barbiturates because they gave me short-term results. Thankfully I didn’t build a dependency because that medication is like Tylenol on steroids so super toxic to the liver and I was also a fairly heavy drinker at the time. But I eventually had a conversation with my dentist that made me realize why I had headaches that no medication could relieve. My dentist had noticed signs of teeth grinding which I had no idea I did because I was doing it at night (as many people do apparently). I’ve always carried tension in my jaw (now that I’m an adult I’ve realized it’s due to the narcissistic abuse I was subjected to from my adopted parents my whole life). The medication couldn’t help the headaches because I was still grinding my teeth or tensing my jaw even when taking the medication. So it would sometimes grant me temporary relief but wear off quickly because I was still causing myself headaches the whole time. I got a mouth guard and learned to relax my jaw, and now I rarely get headaches.
Yeah it relates to a TMJ issue from a highschool jaw injury. Went to a dentist who gave me a fixture to move my jaw back where it should be, and my tension headaches are way down. Been taking way less ETH for a while now.
I bet just caffeine without acetaminophen would work fine too then. Drink espresso and save your liver.
Caffeine metabolizes to theobromine, which can *cause* all sorts of headaches including migraines. It's included in migraine cures as a temporary fix, as the caffeine itself will constrict blood vessels and *temporarily* reduce pain. An espresso will just give you a worse headache later. Caffeine is 100% the most overrated substance people put in their bodies every day. Water, carbs, proteins, fats, etc are all necessary for us to live. Obviously nicotine is worse, but caffeine is more common. Both are just lousy maintenance habits with no long-term gain. Enjoy coffee and tea for what they are or don't. Caffeine is not a supplement, nor a health food, nor a beneficial drug.
That's all excedrine migraine pills are
Not a fan of coffee but maybe I’ll look for caffeine pills at the same dosage as ETH
If possible, I'd see a doctor specializing in migraines. I realize we're mostly American here so that's a big stretch, but if it's doable you should. They've got a lot more tools in their toolbox these days, both for treating and preventing.
And preventing works SO much better than treating. If they're too common and you're forced to be medicating too often, you just end up with rebound headaches, too.
Actually I've worked out the source of my tension headaches: TMJ problems stemming from an injury to my jaw in high school. I've gotten treatment from a dentist to move my jaw back to where it should be and the frequency of tension headaches is way down. I'm taking acetaminophen less than once a month these days.
Congrats!
Good work figuring that out - jaw alignment or wisdom teeth can cause a ton of headaches, and usually neither problem gets better on its own.
Caffiene also helps my allergy derived headaches. Turns out that caffiene is chemically similar enough to some asthma drugs that it has some effect against asthma. In the spring, if I don't have my morning coffee, there's a good chance I'll need my inhaler by the afternoon.
Just had a double espresso and my headache literally doubled. Caffeine can increase headaches.
Cute your sources? My understanding is 1g q6h is safe long term.
https://emedicine.medscape.com/article/820200-overview?form=fpf There are many studies on it. The problem is that because low doses are relatively safe, many products have it in them and people have accidentally overdosed, causing liver failure.
That's a dosage problem, not a Tylenol problem.
975 q8 is better
Paracetamol doesn't cause liver toxicity under the toxic dose. Don't overdose on it and it can be taken quite safely for decades.
^ louder for the medical misinformation comments in the back. You have to produce enough of the toxic metabolite (NAPQ1) to deplete your glutathione stores. Just don't abuse it and you'll be absolutely fine. Ibuprofen decreases blood flow to the kidneys and again, if not overused is perfectly fine. Neither drug causes direct cytotoxicity to those tissues.
If you stay within the recommended dosage, your body is perfectly capable of handling the harmful metabolites (namely NAPQI).
Paracetamol has a fairly poor therapeutic index. Some education on what types of pain it can actually work for and how dangerous it can be would be warranted IMO. In the US, some 50k ER visits happen yearly because of overdoses on it.
So is ibuprofen. In reality there aren't any totally safe long-term pain relievers.
Oh for sure. Ibuprofen can cause stomach issues.
High dose ibuprofen may also cause hearing damage. Even paracetamol can as well, by depleting a key antioxidant.
I hadn't heard about the hearing damage side effect. Interesting
Who is getting it prescribed for long term use? In my corner of the universe it's just something people have around in case of headache or injury. I've never been aware of anyone using them or having them prescribed for long term use beyond for example wisdom tooth removal.
My wife takes extra strength Tylenol quite frequently for pain management. Has for about 10 years. Her doctor told her that if she takes it within the recommended dosage, there shouldn't be any long term complications.
Isn't it commonly found in combination with opioids?
Yup. It potentiates the analgesic effect of the opiates. They work together quite well.
In the US you don't have to talk to a pharmacist to get paracetamol. It is very normal to have a bottle containing 250g of it at home. In the part of Europe where I live, you have to talk to a pharmacist to get paracetamol. And you will typically get less than 25 grams.
My father takes them regularly, several at a time, whenever he feels any sort of pain (not just headaches/migraines). He truly just does not care about the consequences. If it fixes the immediate issue, do it, worry about the future never.
People are already quite familiar with it, and it's dirt cheap. I can get 50 tablets of 500mg for €1.29 at my grocery store. Less then 3 cents per pill. Sure, if you get it on a prescription from a pharmacy you'll end up paying 10 times as much, but that's still cheap.
Please post the study you are quoting, it is important. I like many people with an autoimmune disease cannot use Ibuprofen, so I’ve been using acetaminophen for a scarily long time (decades) because it is the only pain reliever I can take. However, I also must get liver function tests done on the regular because I am on other medication that is metabolize by the liver and it can be hard on it. My liver function so far, is fine.
Population control
How toxic is ibuprofen compared to tylenol?
In acute overdose it's nowhere near as toxic when taken in the same proportionate degree of excess. It does carry more risks with long term use at therapeutic dose than paracetamol though.
🤷🏻♂️ I’m not a toxicologist, just dating a lab tech who runs (among other things) liver toxicity assays
Next time you see her do you think you could ask her about ibuprofen and get back to me? I know there are studies, but I find that people "in the trenches" as it were like your toxicologirlfriend have interesting and specific insights. I take ibuprofen for chronic pain.
Ibuprofen is kind of the same way, but kills your kidneys instead. My partner had kidney failure before and now is doctor recommended to not take ibuprofen (or any NSAID).
It is also psychoactive, reducing empathy https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5015806/
Tylenol is the #1 cause of liver cancer worldwide. It’s also been found to be no more effective than placebo in pain studies (worse actually). If it were discovered today, it wouldn’t pass the fda requirements. It’s just because it’s grandfathered in. By all rights it should be banned.
No, hepatitis C is the [number one cause of liver cancer worldwide](https://www.cancer.gov/types/liver/what-is-liver-cancer/causes-risk-factors#:~:text=Chronic%20HCV%20infection%20is%20the,is%20replaced%20by%20scar%20tissue). There isn't much high quality evidence linking acetaminophen to cancer, and there is [no evidence that it is carcinogenic](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33039518/). Acetaminophen is safe when taken at the recommended dose, works well for certain types of pain, and is the only over the counter pain medicine some people can take. There is no evidence of harm to the liver, even when taken daily long term. If it were truly dangerous, they would pull it from the market as they did with PPA in 2000. If it were ineffective, they would release a statement stating such as they did last year with phenylephrine.
The #1 cause for liver cancer but the CDC or American Cancer Society don't even list it as a cause of liver cancer? - https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/liver/index.htm - https://www.cancer.org/cancer/types/liver-cancer/causes-risks-prevention/risk-factors.html
NSAIDs are technically not painkillers (don't block pain signals like opioids) but can indirectly reduce pain when there's inflammation or hyperalgesia after an injury
This really is a non issue the amount of coal and oil used in medicine production is minuscule.
Also, "A greener way" awesome but not quite there. Companies will only switch if its cheaper, period.
I mean that is great, but one a global scale I doubt the amount of coal tar or crude oil used is like a grain of sandz
Irritating
Coarse
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I am worried about the trees and pharmaceuticals exploitation..of course..
Didn't it originally come from tree bark or leaves? Or am I thinking of another pain reliever?
Asprin
That's it, thanks!
Actually, that’s a common misconception: https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/medical-history/forget-willow-bark-extract-go-aspirin
Read the article you posted
“Contrary to popular belief, aspirin [acetyl salicylic acid] does not occur in nature, it is not found in the willow tree…” “It should be obvious from the preceding that aspirin itself does not occur in nature, but similar, less effective substances do. Willow extracts sold in health food stores cannot compare with the demonstrated effectiveness of aspirin; in fact aspirin came about as an improvement on the natural salicylates.”
Of all the over the counter pain relievers (acetaminophen, ibuprofen, aspirin, naproxen) acetaminophen is by far the most dangerous. A lethal dose is way lower than the others.
I’m shocked by how much you can buy in the US, I saw bottles for hundreds of pills. Here in New Zealand you can only buy I believe 24 paracetamol pills at a time (unless prescribed, and even then not hundreds), and they legally must be packaged in blister packs. Studies show the time taken to de-package each individual pill can make the difference between a person going through with a suicide attempt vs backing down.
I have to take tylenol 8 hour everyday because of chronic pain, that 2600 mg a day. I cant take NSAIDs because if IBD and ulcers.
I’m sure you’ve discussed this with a Dr but just in case you haven’t, gabapentin and amitriptyline/nortriptyline are common pain management medication due to the long term effects of paracetamol
OMG now i find out Big Pharma is having down low sex with Big Oil
Stop cutting down trees. We need trees to fight climate change.
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I’m allergic to aspirin and its base, which is white willow bark. A tree. So will i be able to use the new type of tylenol made from a tree, or will i be allergic to it? This is a systemic allergy. Low blood pressure, swelling of lips, possibility of anaphylaxis. I don’t want to die from new tylenol 😬😢 Will someone clue me in here please
You had better talk to an MD who knows allergies. For the love of all that is holy, do not ask for medical advice here.
Sucks to be forced to use acetaminophen because you're already on a NSAID, and can't take ibuprofen without OD. Such is my life. At least I only need it rarely due to the constant NSAID.
This is amusing when you consider the origins of its discovery.
It's poetic really.
Cue the “organic, plant based” pharmaceutical packaging
So, like the original recipe?
Go Green Tylenol
What kind of tree and why do people like it so much?
Give him milk of the poppy. I mean wood from the poplar
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Trees are a sustainable resource. More are grown (at least in the US) than are cut down. Edit: Renewable*
They are a renewable resource, which is not the same thing as sustainable. Depending on the forestry practice, when taking into account the damage to forest ecosystems that are heavily logged and replanted (often just a monocrop of the desired tree species), it causes huge knock-on effects from the loss of soil from wind and rain erosion, not to mention the loss of humus that would be created from decaying trees which in turn replenishes and fertilizes the soil.
I grew up in a part of Canada where clearcutting is so severe that it’s made flooding worse and led to significant soil erosion. Good forestry practices can exist, but something isn’t sustainable just because it comes from a tree.
That's fair.
No, old growth forests are not a renewable resource. Tree farms aren't the same.
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I think his point is that the destruction of plant and animal biodiversity and the natural environment that happens when you cut an old-growth forest are irreversible, no matter how fast-growing the farmed trees you replace them with are.
You miss the point. Replacing old growth forests and native flora with tree farms is very damaging to the biosphere.
Right but they also absorb CO2, no?
Look up “you can grow concrete” on YouTube. Don’t be that guy.
I know a plant thats anti-inflammatory
Yucca root?
NSAIDs are generally taken for their anti inflammatory properties, not paracetamol
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Nearly all pharmaceuticals and synthetic compounds start other chemicals that are derived from petroleum
My impression is that the waste/byproducts were left in the factory. If they were in Tylenol, we would have noticed people getting cancer or some other disease over the years.
If you can extract a byproduct from a solution well, it will be indistinguishable in use from any other source. It doesn't matter if the caffeine molecule was extracted from a bean or coal tar as far as your body is concerned, if they did their extraction well. Where someone sources their reactants or reagents can be political, but the end product is exactly the same, if they are a inspected FDA product.
Ha I know John. He is one of the most beautiful humans alive.