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Should DayQuil Be Legal?

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Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#161

Post by jibal »

vlovich123 wrote: post #40
Aurornis wrote: post #35

This article uses the trick where you pick studies that support your argument and ignore all of the studies that disagree with it. There are other studies where Dextromethorphan improves both objective and subjective measures of coughing: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37232330/ They also picked a study that shows honey outperforming Dextromethorphan but ignored all the studies that show honey performing similarly o…

> There are so many studies and papers published now that you can find both positive and negative results for just about anything. Doesn’t that suggest that the effect overall is neutral?

Only if you assume that all studies are valid and accurate. And even then you are drawing the wrong conclusion -- if everything is "neutral" then that means that all the positive studies are wrong and all the negative studies are correct. (You seem to have erroneously assumed that a negative study means that something is bad for you.)

Also, the very claim that there are positive and negative studies for everything is handwavy nonsense. There might 100 studies, all of which agree except for one outlier ... what does that "suggest" to you?

Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#162

Post by tristor »

kube-system wrote: post #144
tristor wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are people who don't know that Tylenol and acetaminophen are the same thing. That is not a reason for us to make everyone's quality of life and access to healthcare worse because some people are ignorant. The desire to nanny-state things to the lowest common denominator is ruining everything, and it's a major driver for various problems all the way to the housing crisis and the cost of healthcare in the first p…

OTC drugs should be both available and regulated to be sold in such a way to minimize harm to people who use it. Honestly, combination drugs are out of fucking control. Some people don't know Advil is ibuprofin. Some people think all Advil is ibuprofin. Both are wrong! It used to be true that doctors could tell people that it was okay to take [X] brand drug with [Y] brand drug but anymore, there are a half dozen form…

I agree that drugs should be regulated, but that regulation should be primarily about ensuring that they are effective, safe when taken as instructed, and that they contain the ingredients they say that they do and don't contain ingredients that aren't listed.

It is not the government's responsibility, nor should it be, to try to solve the fact that someone can do something stupid with medication and harm themselves. Medication, by its very nature, interacts with and changes your body: that's the entire point. There is no way for something to be effective and also impossible to abuse or misuse. Regulating drug safety should always be based on following the instructions for how to use that drug.

That's not to say we can't do more the educate people, but ignorance should not lead to inaccessibility. There are tens of millions of people in this country that are fully capable of reading a box and following instructions and they should not have to live a worse quality of life because some people are not willing or able to do so.

Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#163

Post by lobf »

nostrademons wrote: post #96

The article kinda glossed over it, but one fact under-appreciated by the general public is just how dangerous acetaminophen overdoses can be . Scientists often talk about the "therapeutic index" or "safety ratio" of a drug. It's the LD50 (dose at which 50% of recipients die) divided by the effective dose. Common hard drugs like heroin or methamphetamine have a safety ratio of about 6-10 [1]. "Soft" drugs like marijua…

I simply do not take acetaminophen because of this risk.

Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#164

Post by jack09268 »

timothyisonline wrote: post #157
nostrademons wrote: post #96

The article kinda glossed over it, but one fact under-appreciated by the general public is just how dangerous acetaminophen overdoses can be . Scientists often talk about the "therapeutic index" or "safety ratio" of a drug. It's the LD50 (dose at which 50% of recipients die) divided by the effective dose. Common hard drugs like heroin or methamphetamine have a safety ratio of about 6-10 [1]. "Soft" drugs like marijua…

Ibuprofen isn’t much better, unfortunately.

Would appreciate it if you could elaborate. Someone close to me takes a lot of ibuprofen.

Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#165

Post by currymj »

OTC decongestants that actually work, some useful info for those of us with bad sinuses.

- pseudoephedrine taken orally.

- phenylephrine, but only as nasal spray, not if you take it orally.

- Oxymetazoline (Afrin) nasal spray and others in this broad family

- propylhexedrine, sold OTC as Benzedrex as a vapor inhaler. Unfortunately people crack open the inhaler and swallow the whole thing as a drug of abuse, so often they are out of stock seemingly because of shoplifting, or not sold at all because the pharmacies don't want to deal with the hassle.

Anything that goes directly in your nose has the potential to cause rebound congestion after a couple days which can be pretty bad.

Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#166

Post by cryzinger »

robmccoll wrote: post #59
bityard wrote: post #39

I just can't get super upset about this. Sure, OTC companies are duping customers with marketing, but what's new about that? As the person holding the money, it's my job to look at what is effective and what the active ingredients are in any given product. Or ask my doctor/nurse/pharmacist what to do, if I can't be bothered to make the effort myself. When I want to get irrationally angry about something in a departme…

Not totally accurate - there are a handful of foaming agents and surfactants that are mixed and matched to make shampoos, so really it's nearly the same except that no one has ever overdosed on applying too much sodium lauryl sulfate to their scalp.

You won't OD from sulfates in shampoo, but there are serious pros and cons to using them at all:

Sulfate-containing shampoos give you a deeper clean, but can dry out your scalp and make the color in color-treated hair fade. They're ideal for most people, especially if you don't wash your hair every day.

Sulfate-free shampoos are more gentle, but if you're supremely oily and/or don't wash your hair every day, you might not feel like they clean your hair well enough. Almost all "color-safe" shampoos are sulfate-free. They're ideal if you wash your hair daily and/or have a dry scalp... and they're a must if you dye your hair and want to keep the color looking nice!

Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#167

Post by jambalaya8 »

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #154
Lich wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t know this until recently either. I grew up on a family where if there was pain, you just take tylenol to deal with it. We always followed the dosage timing and never had issues. So recently when my wife had some chronic pain I suggested taking tylenol but even after two days the pain would not go away and she went to ER. They did a blood check to see if they could find anything. They didn’t find the cause, j…

Not to chastise you or your wife, there is an actual "Liver Warning" on Tylenol Product labels. They warn against 4000mg/day or with alcohol consumption. It's not an on/off switch, the damage occurs on a ramp that achieves a critical point after so much consumption. Saying this to encourage label reading and to refute those who might try to characterize your wife's experience as anecdotal. And for those who stop read…

It appears his wife took under that threshold and only for a few days. 4000mg is roughly 8-10 otc painkillers in a day (depending on the brand).

That said, everyone's physical ability to metabolise drugs is different. I might worry something else was wrong, or at least get a followup test done later, if her liver tox screen showed that, just to rule out another cause.

Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#168

Post by jibal »

jollyllama wrote: post #73

They wouldn't be selling the placebos if the real stuff were accessible. That's the real answer. The article mentions this but just accepts the inaccessiblity of the real thing as a given. You used to be able to get Nyquil with real sudafed in it. That was the gold standard. It's not even available behind the counter anymore, presumably because they can make more money from morons buying the placebos. As an aside: >…

> The article mentions this but just accepts the inaccessiblity of the real thing as a given.

Reality is in fact a given. If you mean that the author is just fine with that reality, that's patently false.

> presumably because they can make more money from morons buying the placebos.

If that's your evaluation of everyone who lacks perfect information then you need to look in the mirror.

> You used to be able to get Sudafed; it worked. It was moved behind the counter for $REASONS. You've got enough to guess that the new stuff is some kind of inferior substitute and that you're only going to be able to get the real thing during pharmacy hours.

Grossly intellectually dishonest and downright unintelligent nonsense. Here's a fact that is inconvenient for this moronic argument: acetaminephen is readily available on the aisle. Things not being locked away does not imply that they have no effect. The more complex reality is actually discussed in TFA.

> Yeah, the acetaminophen was there to PREVENT abuse of the Vics and Percs 'cause you'd overdose on the acetaminophen first. Sure, there was an easy workaround, but that was it's intent.

The misspelling of "its" is the least egregious part of this nonsense.

Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#169

Post by ssl-3 »

viccis wrote: post #135
nostrademons wrote: post #96

The article kinda glossed over it, but one fact under-appreciated by the general public is just how dangerous acetaminophen overdoses can be . Scientists often talk about the "therapeutic index" or "safety ratio" of a drug. It's the LD50 (dose at which 50% of recipients die) divided by the effective dose. Common hard drugs like heroin or methamphetamine have a safety ratio of about 6-10 [1]. "Soft" drugs like marijua…

Acetaminophen should be treated with more caution in general. So many people have reacted with shock and upset when I told them that taking Tylenol (or anything with acetaminophen in it like Dayquil/Nyquil) while drinking can cause immediate liver damage.

Indeed.

I like beer quite a lot and have for a very long time, so acetaminophen is banned from my medicine cabinet.

Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#170

Post by [deleted] »

timothyisonline wrote: post #157
nostrademons wrote: post #96

The article kinda glossed over it, but one fact under-appreciated by the general public is just how dangerous acetaminophen overdoses can be . Scientists often talk about the "therapeutic index" or "safety ratio" of a drug. It's the LD50 (dose at which 50% of recipients die) divided by the effective dose. Common hard drugs like heroin or methamphetamine have a safety ratio of about 6-10 [1]. "Soft" drugs like marijua…

Ibuprofen isn’t much better, unfortunately.

[deleted]
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