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Should DayQuil Be Legal?

theargumentmag.com

221–230 of 322 posts

Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ibuprofen isn’t much better, unfortunately.

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

Not a doctor, this is how it was explained to me by my doctor.

Paracetamol/acetaminophen has a therapeutic dose that is uncomfortably close to the fatal dose, but is otherwise as safe as any drug can possibly be. So long as you don’t take too much.

Ibuprofen is also relatively safe, but it has a number of ways that it can do damage even at the therapeutic dose, if you are taking it all the time.

The main one is that it depletes your mucus lining in your stomach, which can lead to bleeding and death (used to be a big problem here in Aus when codeine combined pills were available without prescription). It’s also harder on your kidneys and liver.

Completely fine at therapeutic doses taken as per instructions and not mixed with alcohol. But having it every day is going to be much worse for you than the paracetamol and almost certainly lead to health problems.

Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>or with alcohol consumption This part is what a lot of people miss IME

[flagged]

Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#223

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…

And, all of this, to avoid selling a little bit of the narcotic codeine. Which was technically permitted to be sold "behind the counter" without prescription, but was made Schedule II as part of cough syrup in the US not long ago. (It used to be Schedule III or IV when combined with homoatropine or promethazine).

Codeine is still sold in many countries otc, as part of weak pain killer combination or as part of cough medicine.

Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#225
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most countries 4g is the upper limit and it is considered perfectly safe within that limit. So 8 500mg pills in 24 hours.

Yes. 4g is generally considered perfectly safe and is fairly commonplace dosing. 7g can kill you. Hence a therapeutic index of This is why you have to be very, very careful. If you're doing 8 500mg Tylenol pills and then you also do 6 doses of DayQuil or Mucinex without realizing it's also acetaminophen, you can end up needing a liver transplant.

I wonder why it is not a more commonplace useage for suicides. Females seem to enjoy overdoes more, and men seem to enjoy violent ways. But female sucicides often "fails", seems like eating a box of Tylenols (here they come in 20 packs) would solve the "being alive" issue quite quick, no? Better not tip people off... :)

>end up needing a liver transplant

You won't get one nor should you get one if the reason is this.

Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#226
post #135

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.

>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.

Maybe your package needs to be clearer but here in Sweden it says to avoid taking with alcohol.

Or people cannot read anymore?

Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like the logical thing to ban from your stomach for the time periods you need acetaminophen is the beer, unless I'm missing something.

For a lot of us, Ibuprofen works just as well or better than Acetaminophen, so banning Acetaminophen is not much of a problem. I am on a medication that's contraindicated with NSAIDs, but I made sure that a low dose of Ibuprofen was acceptable.

Ibuprofen is hard on the kidneys and stomach too. And bleeding/clotting issues.

Sooo ya :)

Better just stay off the beer hubby.

Remember, beer makes you fat also.

Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>or with alcohol consumption This part is what a lot of people miss IME

[flagged]

Here's one list of medicines containing alcohol: https://www.hpspmonitoring.com/Content/Oregon/Resources/Medi...

You don't have to be a special kind of dumbass to take, let's see, NyQuil when you're sick.

Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#229
post #199

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…

It's not under appreciated in the UK and Ireland where you can only buy tiny quantities of it at a time. Cash registers will literally refuse to process a sale if there is more than one pack of acetaminophen in your groceries. On the plus side you can still buy psuedo OTC.

[dead]

Re: Should DayQuil Be Legal?

#230

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…

Therapeutic index of fentanyl is much higher than heroin or morphine, but I don’t think people really think that it makes it safer.

Reminds me of a comment I saw on a drug chemist's blog decades ago where they were talking about ACE inhibitors for Parkinsons' Disease - by dicking around with nerve conductivity and acetylcholine reuptake you could "boost" the failing nerves a bit, presumably until they fail altogether.

Anyway much of the discussion was on how hard it is to make suitable drugs, and someone said "We actually have some fairly inexpensive, reliable, and well-characterised ACE inhibitors with a nice long half-life and known efficacy, but the therapeutic window of nerve gas is pretty narrow..."

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