2y ago

A study finds that acetaminophen (Tylenol) reduces positive empathy by reducing activation in brain areas thought to be related to emotional awareness and motivation.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

PMC Site is overloaded.

14 comments

1000mg is quite high for a single dose of paracetamol.
- Now that I think about it, I don’t think acetaminophen has been effective in ever curing my headaches even back when I was prescribed liver damage amounts.
  Sleep apparently > painkillers
  I wouldn't necessarily generalize; even if acetaminophen doesn't work, other painkillers like aspirin or naproxen sodium might. (Personally, I take naproxen sodium and only naproxen sodium when I have a headache.)
  
  For me, out of everything OTC, Advil Liquigels work the best for anything wrt aches & pain. Headache, muscle ache, period cramps, etc. And it’s pretty quick, too. The generic ones are fine.
  Of course, anecdotal evidence and such.
- In the US, that’s the maximum single dose. What is it for your country?
  
  600mg
(I didn't read the article) Is it the drug or is it the pain the drug is taken to alleviate? If I've got a headache or muscle soreness I'm more likely to focus on that than someones fee-fees.
- It's a controlled experiment, not a population study, so the acetaminophen sample weren't in more pain than the control group. But it's a relatively high dose, and while statistically significant the effect seems kind of small. I'm not sure there's really particularly big conclusions you can draw from it.
- Acetaminophen [...] blunts physical and social pain by reducing activation in brain areas thought to be related to emotional awareness and motivation.
Is that maybe why there been an uptick of bad people in the last couple of decades.
- Acetaminophen doesn't exactly have a long lasting effect. And this is 1/4 of the maximum recommended daily dose administered at once. I think if people were regularly taking enough tylenol that it has a mass societal effect we'd be seeing a lot more liver failures.
  
  about that https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10319370/
- Nar, probably the material systems rewarding such behaviors
  
  On the other hand, people may be more willing to allow material systems to decay because they're becoming less empathetic.

14 comments