Don’t medicate your feelings… with something that could kill your liver

If putting away all those cheery Christmas decorations has you down in the dumps, don’t worry. There’s a pill for that!

Freezing temps in your part of the world giving you cabin fever? Yep, there’s something you can take for that, too.

Some ridiculous “studies” (if you can even call them that) — done years ago by researchers with way too much time on their hands — concluded that physical pain and emotional stings should be treated the exact same way.

So, if acetaminophen (the active ingredient in Tylenol) helps a headache, why not try some for a heartache, or even the disappointment of not getting that Christmas gift you were hoping for?

While the mainstream media has been papering this gibberish all over the airwaves, there are some important things you need to know about acetaminophen that they’re not telling you.

Because not only should you not be popping a Tylenol for disappointment, rejection, or any other emotional sting, you shouldn’t be taking it for anything at all.

How not to mend a broken heart
Just how low will Big Pharma’s media cronies go?

How about dusting off some old research that should have been left in the closet gathering cobwebs and bringing it back to life as a reason to pop Tylenol?

Back almost a decade ago, a University of Kentucky professor had a eureka moment. Hmm, he wondered, might a painkiller such as acetaminophen help to dull the pain of rejection?

To put his theory into action, he dosed study volunteers with either acetaminophen or a placebo for three weeks. During that time, some were invited to play a computer game, and others were deliberately left out.

Every night, the rejected participants completed a test called the “Hurt Feelings Scale” (you really can’t make this stuff up), and low and behold — those taking the acetaminophen reported that they didn’t feel as bad as those taking the placebo!

After that landmark study, other researchers picked up the Tylenol hurt-feelings ball, reporting that they, too, found that the drug can make us less sensitive to rejection.

But here’s the flip side: It can also produce a numbing sensation when it comes to good feelings as well.

Apparently, acetaminophen can make us feel “blunted and less emotional.” And along with that, back in 2016, it was found to dull our natural feelings of empathy.

But the PR opportunity here, how all this publicity might up Tylenol sales, didn’t go unnoticed by experts.

Advertising Age, the premiere publication for the ad business, mentioned the NPR story in its marketing trends section, calling it a “new perspective on an old medicine cabinet standby.”

Where acetaminophen is concerned, however, if there’s anything we don’t need, it’s more perspectives on why supposedly we should be taking it!

As an expert on toxic drugs once said about Tylenol, if it were to be “brought to the market today, it would not be approved.”

This drug, one that’s put into hundreds of meds, including OTC products such as Midol, Nyquil, Robitussin, and Dayquil, is the leading cause of acute liver failure in the U.S.

It sends around 78,000 people to the ER every year — and most of those people end up in trouble by innocently crossing that very thin line between therapeutic doses and potentially lethal ones.

Over the years, we’ve told you numerous stories about folks of all ages who never would have believed that a drug so easy to buy (in such large quantities, no less) could bring them to the brink of death so easily.

Lethal and near-lethal acetaminophen amounts can add up quickly. One extra pill taken because you feel pain, be it physical or emotional, can be all it takes to reach the tipping point of a fatal overdose.

That’s why just last year, Canadian health authorities lowered the maximum daily dose from 4,000 mg to 2,600 mg.

Where this drug is concerned, what we need is a loud wake-up call — not some researchers trying to lull us into believing a med that can so easily hurt your liver is the answer to hurt feelings.

Or even that there’s any reason at all to have such a risky remedy in your medicine cabinet.

“Tylenol may help ease the pain of hurt feelings” Allison Aubrey, NPR, December 4, 2017, npr.org