Comment by iamniels
7 hours ago
In Western Europe too.
> but it does absolutely nothing with actual pain. It is placebo at best.
This is simply false.
7 hours ago
In Western Europe too.
> but it does absolutely nothing with actual pain. It is placebo at best.
This is simply false.
you responded to the wrong comment. I assume this want mean for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47860061
It is not false. It does nothing. Head hurts, you take paracetamol ... head still hurts. The belly hurts, you take paracetamol ... nothing change.
When I took ibuprofen it did actually made an actual real change.
"I took it and it didn't work so it's a fake placebo drug" - wow, your scientific method is flawless, have you considered a career at the US Department of Health?
Guideline #1 for comments-
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
That might be a good fit considering who's in charge today.
Maybe you had an inflammation-induced pain. That would explain why ibuprofen helped, and paracetamol did not.
I have a counter-study with size n=1: I did all my recovery from tonsilectomy on paracetamol and definitely noticed it working. That was however on the maximum safe dose.
(one of the major problems with paracetamol is that the effective dose is only a few multiples away from the dose which starts to cause liver damage! It is by a long way the most dangerous OTC drug)
You're partially right compared to placebo only about 5% of people are painfree over the effect of a placebo when taking paracetamol.
Paracetamol got it's start as replacing the more effective but much more dangerous and withdrawn drug Phenacetin.
Why don't people notice that it's such a small benefit over nothing? Well because placebo effect is quite good for pain and pain is usually transitory anywhere..if you have a tension headache you're probably going to aim to relax. Turn away from the screen or even have some caffeine and those are more effective than paracetamol!
Where did you pull this 5% from? There are gazillions of studies showing higher or lower efficacies for different kinds of pain. Along with the inaccuracies about Phenacetin (whose MOA is metabolising into paracetamol).
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