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Comment by watwut

7 hours ago

The only issue with treating pain with paracetamol is that it does not work at all against the pain.

It works against fewer or maybe mild inflammation and what not ... but it does absolutely nothing with actual pain. It is placebo at best.

> but it does absolutely nothing with actual pain

Neither paracetamol nor ibuprofen work by blocking pain. Depending on the type of pain and your physiology it can range from really effective to not at all.

I only take paracetamol, it works better than both ibuprofen and opioids for me. I know other people who have the exact opposite experience. There’s no absolute here.

  • Yeah paracetamol does absolutely nothing to me with pain. I thought its mainly fever medicine.

    • Same here. Paracetamol also gives me pretty strong stomach aches whereas ibuprofen rarely has a gastric effect and when it does it's mild at best. I've been told by many people that the opposite should be true but oh well.

      I wish they dipyrone was sold here, but alas I can only get it when I travel abroad.

      1 reply →

  • Yeah, for me paracetamol is worse in everything - fever, pain, etc.

    For mild stuff I use ibuprofen, if it gets worse, diclofenac works every time.

Your statements are factually incorrect.

Double blind placebo controlled trials have shown that acetaminophen/paracetamol is superior to a placebo at controlling pain.

Many years ago I had 4 surgical procedures done around my nose/throat at the same time - straightening a deviated septum, turbinectomy, enlarging the openings into my sinuses and removing my tonsils. This meant I couldn't breath through my nose for about a month - and breathing through your mouth when you've just had tonsils removed is quite painful.

Soluble paracetamol literally turned the pain off like a switch - of course I was limited as to how much I could take, which I was careful to stick to but I was almost in tears waiting for the time to come where I could take more paracetamol.

So in some situations paracetamol can be an extremely effective painkiller.