What's Tylenol Doing to Our Minds?

It is pleasing to see error bars on a graph in a mainstream publication. It's very nice to have them saying that the study was small and there are more questions to be asked.<p>It's good that they mentioned the severe toxicity of paracetamol in overdose. It does kill many people, and it's not a pleasant death. It also accounts for many organ transplants.<p>It would have been nice if they'd said that, taken carefully and with no over dose, paracetamol is a very safe and very effective medication. It's very cheap. (At least here in the UK, I found it bafflingly expensive in the US.)<p>Cultural note: In the UK most medication is dispensed in blister packs. You can buy paracetamol off the shelf but you can only get limited quantities. Most shops will only sell you 16 tablets (at 500 g each) or 32 if you buy it from a person. You can get 100 if you see a pharmacist and persuade them you need them, but that'll be a struggle in most places. You can get large amounts if you have a prescription. 16 tablets at 500 g each would cost around £0.20 (for budget pills). Blister packs was an effective suicide control measure, reducing the number of pills taken and the number of overdoses attempted. Reduced quantities of pills sold had an initial success in reducing suicide rates, but number have since risen. Pills in the homes of old people are especially dangerous. This is because they're not locked away, and young children visiting sometimes take the pills. And also because suicide rates among old people are depressingly high.

As usual in threads on topics like this, you can rely on HN participant carbocation's comments for some thoughtful perspective on the original article.<p>As the submitted article notes, responding to the press releases by the study authors,<p>"This all raises more questions than it answers. This study was small. The headlines are grandiose. The way people pass moral judgements is not necessarily indicative of their level of existential anxiety."<p>Indeed. This is an intriguing issue to study, and well worth some further studies by other investigators to see if the results will be replicated in other study populations, but the author of the submitted article was correct to have a headline with an open-ended question rather than a definitive statement about Tylenol. On my part, because I take different over-the-counter pain relief medications when I need any of those, I'm curious if this result would be replicated for aspirin or for ibuprofen. That the pain of stubbing a toe and the pain of rejection in love might have some of the same brain mechanisms is suggested by our use of the word "pain" for both phenomena. But that requires further study. (I'm sure there are many studies already on that issue, but I'm not deeply familiar with the research literature on that topic.) That pain (of either kind) might motivate action and thus dulling pain might reduce motivation for some actions is also plausible, and also has surely been investigated before, but perhaps there are still some very basic facts about that issue yet to be discovered. As so often happens after a new study is published, the most firm conclusion is "further research is needed."

Some obvious responses occur to a skeptical reader of science:<p>1. This study has precisely no meaning until it has been replicated, preferably with a larger set of experimental subjects.<p>2. Science is not one study making ten claims, it is ten studies making one claim. This study falls into the former category.<p>3. The study describes, it doesn't try to explain. Science requires a testable explanation, one that can be generalized and potentially falsified by independent laboratories. If the study had offered a possible, testable explanation, it would have crossed the threshold of science.<p>4. It's important to say that psychological studies are virtually never replicated. One reason is that the original studies tend to maker nebulous claims that are difficult to quantify (like this study does). Another is that psychological studies tend not to be accompanied by the original study data, to a greater extent than studies in scientific disciplines. A third reason is that psychological journals tend to reject replication papers, especially those that don't confirm the original study's findings.

Always great to see studies looking at the mental implications of non-psychoactive drugs. I suppose it's common to overlook the implications of a drug on the central nervous system with respect to consciousness, when the drug in question never causes any subjective/noticeable change.<p>I suppose it's all too intuitive, though. Even slight, unnoticeable changes in consciousness - to the point that even you don't notice - may in-fact be detectable on paper. I hope this leads to more research into the mental changes for other drugs classified as "non-psychoactive" (who doesn't love more data? :). Anyways, to end off by inserting some colloquialism into my thoughts here...<p>Trippy study, mannnnn.

Possibly a dumb question, by why is it called acetaminophen in some places and paracetamol in others? Neither of them are a brand name AFAIK.

Never mind what it is doing for your mind, in my experience, paracetamol causes pain.<p>I've suffered from what doctors call "pain syndrome" for years. Many different parts of my body are painful at any one time. It is years since I had a pain-free day.<p>I never accepted that I had pain syndrome, even when doped up simultaneously on codeine, paracetamol, tramadol and diclofenac. And still in pain. Finally I was moved onto morphine, but I still cannot sleep at night because of the pain.<p>However, I think that my pain problems were exacerbated by (at the very least) paracetamol (max dose daily for 2 years). It is well known that sulphur compounds (NAC specifically) are required for the detoxification of the byproducts of paracetamol. Long term use of paracetamol will lead to sulphur depletion in many people. And it seems this depleted sulphur is compensated by the body taking sulphur from other places (joints, cartilage), thus causing further pains.<p>Trying to get an answer from doctors and pharamacists about why taking sulphur reduces my pain more than the above concoctions of "pain-killers" got me nowhere, so the above is my explanation for why the more paracetamol I took the worse my pain problems got.

Among other things, paracetamol activates the cannabis receptors.<p><a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17227290" rel="nofollow">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17227290</a>

<i>&#62; They either watched The Simpsons or a film by surrealistic neonoir writer/director David Lynch, in which humans with rabbit heads wander an urban apartment muttering non sequiturs. They then passed judgement on people arrested in a hockey riot. Again, the people in the existential mindset imposed harsh sanctions, but the people who'd watched The Simpsons were lenient.</i><p>I shoulda stuck with psychology after all! This sounds fun! Who thinks of this stuff?

I see many post mentionning how Tylenol can be lethal in overdose due to liver damage.<p>Some studies have demonstrated liver enzymes raise significantly on a typical extra-strength dose of acetaminophen, called paracetamol in Europe. This could be indicative of low-level damage, for casual users (it's frequently prescribed for minor pain)<p>A quick and simple hack is to take it along with N-acetylcysteine, usually given for coughing.<p>Personally, to play it safe, when I have to take more than half a gram of paracetamol, or when I have to take it for more than 2 days in a row, I add n-acetylcysteine with it.<p>Cheap, and without side effets at low doses. (BTW, it's used IV in the ER as the antidote for tylenol overdosing)

It should at least be noted that an awful lot of those overdoses are because narcotic painkillers are often doped with paracetamol in a misguided attempt to keep people from using them to get high.

I'm not all that familiar with social tests like this. Is n=120 generally considered to be a large enough sample size to make any claims at all?

EXTREMELY small study. Just push for a larger study on this<p><a href="http://www.academia.edu/2057894/The_common_pain_of_surrealism_and_death_Acetaminophen_reduces_compensatory_affirmation_following_meaning_threats" rel="nofollow">http://www.academia.edu/2057894/The_common_pain_of_surrealis...</a><p>121 people<p>Search for "We recruited"

&#62; The way people pass moral judgements is not necessarily indicative of their level of existential anxiety.<p>That actually makes quite a bit of sense...<p>These days everyone has an opinion on everything, combined with a very judgmental tone - and at the same time living extremely purposeless and egocentric lifes.

Well, I for one will be taking two tylenol daily starting to day. You know, to dull the existential angst.

Why do people take Tylenol, when aspirin/asa is safer and likely even good for you?

Just legalize opiods. Do you really need a Doctor when you stub your toe?