Some doctor bloke has come out with a chilling warning about two everyday analgesics, taken by… well everyone except him, it seems:
Dr Dean Eggitt, GP and CEO at Doncaster Local Medical Committee, warns patients against taking paracetamol, which is also known as acetaminophen in some countries, and ibuprofen anything more than occasionally, saying that they can cause serious harm.
He said: ‘All these simple over the counter medications can actually prove fatal in the wrong doses—and some, like paracetamol, within a week.
‘It’s a huge problem and people just don’t recognise the risk.’
I should point out that the article also says this:
Paracetamol and Ibuprofen—used by millions daily to treat everything from headache to fevers—[are] safe when taken correctly.
No kidding. As my good friend Doc Russia always says: “Dosage is important.”
The whole point of analgesics is that they offer temporary relief from pain — e.g. a headache — so popping a couple for that purpose poses no problem to pretty much anyone.
But if you’re suffering from a permanent raging headache, the solution is not to pop ten pills a day ad infinitum; in that situation, you need to get checked by a doctor toot sweet because you may have a brain tumor or similar.
Excuse me for asking, but what fool doesn’t know this?
Of course, if you’re suffering from permanent crippling pain — from sciatica or some other ailment that isn’t curable by surgery or therapy — then you have a different kind of problem, and I feel terribly sorry for you. (My own gout — since mercifully abated — made me quite sympathetic to this situation, believe me.)
But let’s face it: overdosing on anything is going to have a bad effect on your health, whether aspirin, acetaminophen, ibuprofen or even water.
The old saying “Everything in moderation” is as valid today as it ever was. There’s no need for “chilling warnings” unless people are being completely stupid about the situation.
Wait…
Reminds me of the 1990s scare that all (first red flag) shampoo causes cancer. Which turned out to be a very mild carcinogenic and would only lead to like a 0.1% risk of skin cancer if you would wash your hair with 10 full bottles of the stuff 100 times a day for several decades.
Remember, about 50-60 years ago, when the local news came on the TV at 6pm and the national-world news came on at 6:30pn and then, for the night owls, a recap at 11pm?
I believe the whole planet could benefit from about 80-90% LESS media of every type.
“There’s too much media going on!”
–gs, 2099
As ever, enough is too much.
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> my own gout — since mercifully abated
Do you think the GLP-1 Agonist you’re taking has had an impact on that?
We’ve known for a long, long time that too much acetaminophen is bad for you, especially if you’re a drinker.
It took us much longer to figure out that ibuprofen is bad when taken chronically.
But for ibuprofen “chronically” is on the order of months or years at the doses that shows up on the bottle.
This is basically panic mongering on the part of the Daily Mail.
And yeah, I’ve got “chronic” issues that mean that taking 800mg of iburprofen 3x a day would make my life better. But I don’t, because kidney failure and stomach issues would make it so much worse.
“Do you think the GLP-1 Agonist you’re taking has had an impact on that?”
No. My gout disappeared several years ago, never to return thanks (I think) to daily 150g intake of Allopurinol. Not a twinge in well over eight or nine years.
What did it for me was dropping most all fruit from my diet, thus stopping the fructose intake almost completely.
Fructose drives the production of excess ureum in the body, which then causes gout as it ends up in the joints rather than being excreted properly by the kidneys.
> unless people are being completely stupid about the situation.
Uh, have you ever MET any people? Being completely stupid is the default setting.
My point exactly.
Have these people realized that none of us are getting out of this life alive?
Every medication has a trade off. Do the cons outweigh the pros? Yes? Then don’t take it. No? Then take it.
Wait six months and 2-3 studies will come out to refute today’s “discovery “