Or, people with headaches produce offspring with headaches, but kids don't know they have headaches and just get angry and act out
> They looked for a link between a child’s behavioral problems at age 7 and acetaminophen use by the mother’s partner during pregnancy They thought about that. Doesn't look like it.
Acetaminophen use in pregnancy linked to child's behavioral problems
21–30 of 86 posts
Re: Acetaminophen use in pregnancy linked to child's behavioral problems
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. Acetaminophen is really not safe in high quantities. Ibuprofen has a much better safety profile. PS. Don't walk on the ankle just because you don't feel the pain! You can turn a 3 month recovery into a 2 year recovery if you do that.
Thanks. Have ibuprofen too but it apparently has nasty side effects if you take it too long. Right now I am looking at weeks, so trying to limit consumption. Was given one SAID and one NSAID but also too many side effects for my liking.
Re: Acetaminophen use in pregnancy linked to child's behavioral problems
#23Or, people with headaches produce offspring with headaches, but kids don't know they have headaches and just get angry and act out
> They failed to discern a pattern of increased medication-taking by women who were carriers of genetic variations linked to behavioral problems.
The mothers carrying known behavioral genetic markers were not more likely to take acetaminophen. If the headaches were correlated to a known marker then you would expect it to also be passed on to an offspring in a statistically significant way.
But if there's an unknown marker that correlates with pain complaints? I know of at least one psychologist who is going back to some of Jung's commentary on behavioral issues and trying to carve out a set of people who are diagnosed as 'shy' or 'ADD' but who just have heightened senses.
The gist of it is that some people have a less aggressive filter on their senses, and eventually they can't cope with the information overload and they begin to act out, not unlike an exhausted child. Depending on environment and luck, they might develop shyness, ADD like symptoms, become scarily perceptive (extreme case: Sherlock Holmes, Psych), or some combination of all three.
These people also complain about physical discomforts and pain with a higher frequency than normal people. The question of how exactly they eliminated pre-natal painkiller use of the mother as a predictor for behavioral problems wasn't addressed in either summary but might be buried in the data.
Re: Acetaminophen use in pregnancy linked to child's behavioral problems
#24Re: Acetaminophen use in pregnancy linked to child's behavioral problems
#25What an unnecessary, garbage drug; one that's responsible for half the liver failures in the United States. Maybe a restriction on pregnant women taking it could move it behind the counter, or better, into the dimly-remembered past.
Given the issues with NSAIDs in general (and even moreso with NSAIDs with particular populations), acetaminophen being available remains important. It definitely has dangers particularly if used improperly (and a much narrower gap between normal and dangerous doses than many other drugs), but its not an unnecessary or garbage drug.
Re: Acetaminophen use in pregnancy linked to child's behavioral problems
#26Or, people with headaches produce offspring with headaches, but kids don't know they have headaches and just get angry and act out
If you read between the lines: > They failed to discern a pattern of increased medication-taking by women who were carriers of genetic variations linked to behavioral problems. The mothers carrying known behavioral genetic markers were not more likely to take acetaminophen. If the headaches were correlated to a known marker then you would expect it to also be passed on to an offspring in a statistically significant w…
What if there's a marker that not only correlates the aspirin use and the child's behavioral problems, but subjects with the marker more strongly correlate the relationship than subjects who don't?
That kind of statistical analysis is how we find out a random stretch of DNA is a marker in the first place. All forms of human study will advance dramatically once this becomes standard practice, as indeed it must.
Of course, you're completely throwing out the fig leaf of 'anonymous' health data. But it turns out that for the vast majority of health studies, deanonymizing the data is quite practicable in most cases already. And the gain to medicine would be enormous.
Re: Acetaminophen use in pregnancy linked to child's behavioral problems
#27What an unnecessary, garbage drug; one that's responsible for half the liver failures in the United States. Maybe a restriction on pregnant women taking it could move it behind the counter, or better, into the dimly-remembered past.
I can tolerate a single pill of ibuprofen, maybe 2 in 24 hours but that's it. I don't take acetaminophen frequently, but it is one of the only things I can tolerate for pain (sinus/tension headaches mostly).
Re: Acetaminophen use in pregnancy linked to child's behavioral problems
#28Re: Acetaminophen use in pregnancy linked to child's behavioral problems
#29OK well I'm not pregnant but I've been downing tonnes of these things for a sprained ankle recently. I don't like doing it as they are hepatoxic to some extent, and would prefer codeine, but the authorities make it too hard to get your hands on in most countries. Grr.
For a sprained ankle you likely want a NSAID like ibuprofen...
The short of it: NSAIDs inhibit chemical processes the body uses to heal more thoroughly. Also, they tend to act on the kidneys and can "cook" them if you take too much.
TANSTAFL
Re: Acetaminophen use in pregnancy linked to child's behavioral problems
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. Acetaminophen is really not safe in high quantities. Ibuprofen has a much better safety profile. PS. Don't walk on the ankle just because you don't feel the pain! You can turn a 3 month recovery into a 2 year recovery if you do that.
Thanks. Have ibuprofen too but it apparently has nasty side effects if you take it too long. Right now I am looking at weeks, so trying to limit consumption. Was given one SAID and one NSAID but also too many side effects for my liking.
My father fell off a roof, feet first, onto hard clay and shattered his feet. Doctors said he'd never walk again and it took awhile to find and cajole a doctor to pin his bones back together. He's been on his feet for well over ten years.
The pain is still excruciating, though. 24/7. He refuses prescription pain medication, and has been eating ibuprofen like candy for the entire time. His hearing is bad, but not much different than typical old-man hearing, especially considering he used a skill-saw for most of his life.
There are plenty of bad things ibuprofen is capable of. But the point of my anecdote is that the actual risk is, relatively speaking, much less than you'd think. Consumer warnings lead us to equivocate risks when in fact relative risks can be worlds apart. Look at the actual studies and make informed decisions. I'll run things past a doctor or pharmacist for anything serious or if it involves a child, but 9 times out of 10 they'll know nothing more than the literature and the commonly understood exceptions and unknowns. They always give me the thumbs up for my over-the-counter, make shift drug formulations.
Regarding acetaminophen, I always told my wife during her pregnancy that she should only take as little as necessary, if at all, but of course she shouldn't needlessly suffer. I'm only just learning about this new research, but it's been obvious to me that the safety of acetaminophen has largely been based on a lack of contrary evidence and by the level of comfort that comes with group-think. Like Microsoft, nobody ever got fired for prescribing Tylenol (the brand name in the U.S.). In medicine absence of evidence often is evidence of absence, but only in so far as people have been paying close attention, and only in so far as alternatives have been explored.
But ibuprofen has gotten an undeserved bad rap in the U.S., and in some other countries requires a pharmacists' prescription. That's ridiculous. It seems we're much too risk adverse when it comes to ibuprofen, while dramatically underestimating the risk of acetaminophen. If anything the situation should be the reverse. OTC acetaminophen causes incredible harm. The biggest risks for ibuprofen relate to interactions with other, invariably prescription, medicine, and so there's ample opportunity to inform people to avoid ibuprofen.
Some people would like laws to restrict the sale of both. IMO trying to bifurcate medicines into safe-at-any-dose, OTC and prescription medicine has caused caused both medical professionals and regular consumers to lose our critical faculties. It's caused OTC medicines to become ineffective. And it's caused prescription medicines to become too widely prescribed and abused when people and situations fit the letter of the marketed indications. In both cases professionals and non-professionals aren't thinking as critically as they should, and aren't taking into account how little we actually often know about this stuff. It also substantially increases the cost of care.