Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Acetaminophen vs. ibuprofen

asteriskmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 504 posts

Re: Acetaminophen vs. ibuprofen

#291

Post by justinc8687 »

isoprophlex wrote: post #72
justinc8687 wrote: post #66

I lived with an ICU nurse for years and one of the things he emphasized was the risk of acetaminophen overdose. He's more than once treated the liver failure (and death) from it and by his words, it's one of the worse ways to go. The positive of it is it got me in the habit of logging whenever I take it, either in a note on my phone or just a sheet of paper I place on my dresser under the bottle. This helps make sure…

I'm not disagreeing with you or trying to be disagreeable, but how do people accidentally exceed 3-4 grams daily? That's 6-8 pills!

You are running a high fever or have a massive headache, so know you are going to max out at 4g/day. At that point, it's kind of hard to keep track of the clock.

"My head is pounding. Shit...did I take this at 3PM or 5PM? I know I took it and then fell asleep, but I can't remember when. It is now 9PM, can I take more or not?"

Re: Acetaminophen vs. ibuprofen

#292

Post by glimshe »

My US doctors almost never recommended Ibuprofen over Acetaminophen for mild pain. In fact, I don't remember them ever recommending Ibuprofen for anything while I hear about Tylenol pretty often.

I've had doctors prescribing short runs of opioids (2 weeks for surgery recovery) but they always said "try Tylenol first and if the pain is too much you can fill the prescription". I liked having the option but never really used it up to this point.

Re: Acetaminophen vs. ibuprofen

#293

Post by justinc8687 »

kakacik wrote: post #145
isoprophlex wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay that's right, if you just keep upping the dose because you're still in pain it might be easy to just slam a few every 4 hours From personal experience if i have a headache I'll take 1000 mg all at once; it either works right away or it doesnt and I stop bothering until I've had a good nights rest...

Imagine if that rest will do nothing for that headache and its there morning day and night. Or some injury-related pain which simply can't be downtuned. Plus when old, half of the body aches, all old injuries and general deterioration. I had only very brief experiences with longer intense pain but it made my mind into pudding and desperate knot of how-to-stop-this-at-all-costs. Normal life is not possible and sanity…

Yah...I've been there for 6 months now with a constant headache. The first month or so, I was taking 3.5g/day consistently. At hour 4.5 - 5, it would wear off. If it wasn't for my tracking, I probably would have ODed.

Re: Acetaminophen vs. ibuprofen

#294

Post by vixen99 »

lapcat wrote: post #282
vanderZwan wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this is one of those things where Europe and the US are very different, culturally speaking - I've lived in the Netherlands, Germany and now Sweden, and the amount of painkillers used and prescribed here seems much lower than what Americans tell me is normal in the US. Pain a warning signal from the body. It's something one should listen to, not just try to ignore and overrule. If I sprain my ankle it onl…

> Pain a warning signal from the body. It's something one should listen to, not just try to ignore and overrule. This is vastly overstating the rationality of the human body. It's no more rational than the human mind, which is often quite irrational. Your body isn't the product of medical school, nor intelligent design, but rather random natural selection, which is decent but demonstrably far from perfect.

Especially if a new one, pain is undoubtedly a 'warning signal from the body' which is a succinct metaphor we all understand and has a clear meaning. If you don't know why or from whence the pain, check it out. It may be one of those things or perhaps not.

Re: Acetaminophen vs. ibuprofen

#295

Post by fc417fc802 »

user_7832 wrote: post #67
throwaway27448 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mm. Apparently i don't understand pain and the medication it drives people towards.

Totally get it, I too only understood it "theoretically" till I had a (fairly minor!) dental operation. ... Suddenly I'm maintaining a continuous note of when I'm taking which medicine to avoid crossing safe limits (which I anyway was crossing most days). I was only told to take 2 paracetamols a day (bullshit dose, I'd be waking up from the pain even with more pain meds). "Diclofenac for rare use" - well, if nothing…

Pain management can be crazy but in your case it sounds like they simply didn't prescribe the appropriate medication presumably due to the anti opiate hysteria that has taken hold.

Re: Acetaminophen vs. ibuprofen

#296

Post by [deleted] »

magicalhippo wrote: post #110

> But if acetaminophen is safer, then why don’t official sources tell you that? Guess it depends on country. Here in Norway official sources[1][2] do say acetaminophen (paracetamol here) should be the default for treating fever and pain in kids, adults, pregnant women and elderly, and have for some time. Ibuprofen they say should be used with caution. [1]: https://www.dmp.no/nyheter/behov-for-smertestillende-slik-ve.…

[deleted]

Re: Acetaminophen vs. ibuprofen

#297

Post by yonaguska »

vanderZwan wrote: post #281
spzb wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AIUI one of the many quirks of the US health insurance system is that a lot of people have only minimal cover which doesn't include things like physiotherapy and rehabilitation treatment. That means that they often can't treat a painful condition at source so their only option is to mask the pain with painkillers.

This is so absurd to me. The expression "prevention is better than cure" isn't just folk wisdom, in just about any country with nationalized healthcare the studies also confirm that this costs less money. The only exception I ever heard was a Dutch study in the 2000s suggesting that people growing older due to smoking less was going to increase healthcare costs, because people were getting older putting pressure on t…

> unless they have ways to externalize the costs onto the rest of society

UNH stock has been tanked all year, until the govt announced that they would raise Medicare advantage reimbursement rates. The insurance companies have an incentive to pursue volume instead of cutting costs for programs that the government is subsidizing. For everyone else, they just raise the prices which is a much more complicated issue.

Re: Acetaminophen vs. ibuprofen

#298

Post by lapcat »

vixen99 wrote: post #294
lapcat wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pain a warning signal from the body. It's something one should listen to, not just try to ignore and overrule. This is vastly overstating the rationality of the human body. It's no more rational than the human mind, which is often quite irrational. Your body isn't the product of medical school, nor intelligent design, but rather random natural selection, which is decent but demonstrably far from perfect.

Especially if a new one, pain is undoubtedly a 'warning signal from the body' which is a succinct metaphor we all understand and has a clear meaning. If you don't know why or from whence the pain, check it out. It may be one of those things or perhaps not.

The previous commenter appears to argue that you need to diagnose every headache, which sounds absurd to me.

Occasionally I have a headache. Not frequently, and I don't necessarily know why. These things just happen. I take a painkiller, and problem solved. I've been seen by doctors over the years for physicals or other reasons, and there's no indication of any underlying medical condition. An occasional headache is not an indicator of something more serious, and the painkiller is not "masking" a larger problem.

The same goes for random muscle aches. They're infrequent, but they can happen, for whatever reason, and there's no reason to panic or to suffer when you can just make them go away.

I don't think I'm unusual here. As far as I've heard, random, infrequent headaches or other aches are extremely common.

Moreover, there are pains that we know the cause: for example, I experience a bump or a cut. My body continues to annoy me with pain unnecessarily. Yes, I'm healing, I'm well aware of that. I just need my body to STFU with the pain and stop reminding me of it.

Re: Acetaminophen vs. ibuprofen

#300

Post by Insanity »

beAbU wrote: post #266
vanderZwan wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this is one of those things where Europe and the US are very different, culturally speaking - I've lived in the Netherlands, Germany and now Sweden, and the amount of painkillers used and prescribed here seems much lower than what Americans tell me is normal in the US. Pain a warning signal from the body. It's something one should listen to, not just try to ignore and overrule. If I sprain my ankle it onl…

> the amount of painkillers used and prescribed here seems much lower than what Americans tell me is normal in the US. Americans' relationship with painkillers is absolutely unhinged.

Might just be an artifact of the broken healthcare system. Painkillers are cheap and over the-counter. Going to a doctor is not.

Additionally, in EU you can just take a sick day to rest and recover pretty much any time you need it. In the US you have limited “sick days”. E.g I now only have 6 “sick days” per year.. (and I’m fortunate to work in tech, I just WFH when I’m under the weather. But people who are less well off need to suck it up and go to work).

Post reply on HN