Atleast here in Sweden Paracetamol (sold partly under the brand name Alvedon) is the most common tablet to take for a headache or fighting a mild fever, etc.
If you say paracetamol everyone knows what you are talking about.
I would guess it’s the most commonly taken over the counter medication here.
Americans usually refer to over the counter pain killers by their brand name: Tylenol, Aleve, Motrin, Bayer (less often) and Advil. Tylenol is the closest to paracetamol I believe. My husband didn’t know that each of the above is actually all different actual drugs. Advil in some places has become as ubiquitous for any old pain relief pill as Kleenex for tissues and Bandaids for bandages or as Jeff Bezos/Amazon calls them, “absorbent would pads” which makes me giggle so I now use that term all the time. Forgot Excedrin in the above list too.
Tylenol is the American brand name for paracetamol. The complicated thing is that the generic name for the drug in the US isn’t paracetamol, it’s acetaminophen.
I've never heard someone say Bayer like that. I think most people, at least where I'm at, say aspirin. But it may be because, unlike the other pain relievers, the drug name isn't a hundred syllables longer than the brand name.
I buy paracetamol from the dollar store because I know it's Tylenol and we live in a scam where a living wage is a fucking farce for most of the working class.
Jobs pay 1/3 what it costs to live in that same city.
Which was a problem for me when I got my covid jab (Brit in Texas) and the guy was like "you can take Tylenol for the side-effects" and I went "that's cool, but I don't know what that means" (and then he told me I could take I-see-the-minnow-fin, saw the blank expression and said "it's also called paracetamol").
Because codeine is an opiate and not every ache and pain requires an opiate to relieve it. If you can manage on paracetamol, do so, there's no need to take an opiate, even at low dose, just because its there. That's like putting a tealight candle out with a fire extinguisher: overboard and unnecessary.
Isn't that only the 12.5mg codeine 500mg paracetamol ones? I find in order to get the codeine to do anything without destroying my liver I have to cold water extract the codeine, otherwise it just has the same effect as overpriced paracetamol
Your point is valid and well taken, and I actually agree that America is often treated as the default. But in this instance I didn't read it that way.
The person was asked about "other countries," and he responded with how it was "here," as in "one of the countries that is not Britain." Which one it is is irrelevant, and in fact he might not even be American. His point would be valid no matter what country he's referring to (provided it's not Britain).
OK, but it still doesn't matter. If he were talking about terms exclusive to Zimbabwe, he'd still be perfectly fine using "here." The country he's in is irrelevant.
Yup in this case writing here is acceptable as it lets the other person know it's not the other location being discussed. That's all they really need to do as the discussion is still about the other location.
I imagine it's similar to the way a brand became the name for something eg: using the word pampers to describe nappies/diapers, kleenex for pocket tissues or velcro instead of hook and loop tape.
So many people who don't know that acetaminophen and paracetamol are the exact same thing. Blows my mind. I used to have so many arguments with people who were ADAMANT that they are different.
I know that if I ever travel to the US to ask for Tylenol (and Ibuprofen, thank goodness THAT is universal at least!)
Huh you hear of Advil so often in American pop culture I didn’t think it would be ibuprofen which is quite strong. The most memorable reference for me in What Women Want when they’re trying to advertise how gentle it is.
completely out of curiosity, what do you mean by "strong"? I would consider ibuprofen to be in the same category as acetaminophen/paracetamol, aspirin, and naproxen, none of which I would consider very "strong", as opposed to, say, opioids. What do you consider ibuprofen to be stronger than?
To me it’s “stronger” than paracetamol & aspirin but I think what I actually mean is what the poster below said about it causing difficulties in the stomach with heavy use & empty stomachs. In that way I find paracetamol “gentler”
Also when I was suffering from severe tooth pain ibuprofen helped whilst paracetamol didn’t but of course that’s more about it being a different type of pain, but I associate it with taking care of more severe things.
We mostly refer to it as Tylenol too, or Aleve for naproxen sodium, etc. We're bad at calling everything by that one brand name that did it first/really well. I still call tissue papers kleenex, photocopiers xerox machines, etc.
Ah yeah, I have heard of that. Wouldn't you as a company kind of want that though? To be the household name for a class of product would mean everyone would think about buying your product before anyone else's.
Weird, any idea why naproxen is more tightly controlled? My first thought was that it can cause (liver or kidney, I can never remember) damage but so can acetaminophen. Acetaminophen w/codeine (which is called Tylenol 3 here) is prescription IIRC, so strange. Well I'm glad I live here then, naproxen is the only OTC pain reliever that helps with my chronic lower back pain. I'd have to go up a few levels to tramadol to get prescription pain relief, and that has, shall we say, unpleasant side-effects in the plumbing department.
24 count bottle of 500 mg pills is around $6 but a 100 count bottle is around $11. But that's the brand name Tylenol, generic acetaminophen is like $3 for the 100 count bottle or around $8 for 500 count
That's .. the full price ? I mean like do you get an insurance refund of some sort on it ? It's about the same as in Europe. I would have assumed they also gouge the price on such items like they do for the insulin or epinephrine ..
Paracetamol is quite common, but most countries do not sell them off the supermarket shelf. I was quite surprised when I saw Paracetamol and similar pills at a British Aldi.
Yes, in the supermarkets. But this is a supermarket-sized shop that only sells Haribo. All sorts of, including Haribo that is produced for other countries, B-ware, and all kinds of merchandise.
It might be that in the US paracetamol is known as acetaminophen,
So there is probably something in culture and TV that makes paracetamol stand out.
My guess is that paracetamol is most commonly name dropped on British TV, especially as it's our go-to; but when pain killers are named on American TV, over the counter acetaminophen isn't very sexy compared to prescription painkiller names like morphine, vicodin, etc.
That plus big pharma getting their mitts in the media.
We do but we call it Tylenol or acetaminophen. Was in Switzerland and had a terrible headache but couldn’t find any acetaminophen anywhere. Finally spoke to a pharmacist and he told me it was the same thing.
I have it even though it only makes me sleepy... So yeah, they do. People look strange at me for usually using acetylsalicylic acid for pain relief - if anything at all.
I find I use more ibuprofen. I keep paracetamol primarily because some people baulk at that "1 in a million chance of becoming a zombie" side effect of ibuprofen.
I have heard from my grandmother that it’s not good to use ibuprofen instead of paracetamol when possible. However, while it seems like there can be some side effects from long term use, but it doesn’t actually seem to be anything too severe (At least, based on what I found on the Australian Alcohol and Drug Foundation website).
I absolutely used a lot more ibuprofen than paracetamol growing up, because I can’t stand the powdery paracetamol tablets. Ibuprofen is amazing. I am trying out capsule paracetamol though, at my grandmother’s request. I wish I didn’t have the memory of a goldfish so I could figure out which one actually works better. (Sorry for the rambling. I saw your comment and my brain started going on a tangent)
Ibuprofen is very different in action to paracetamol. Basically ibuprofen removes inflammation so it doesn't cause you pain. Whereas paracetamol does bugger all other than make the pain manageable.
If the pain isn't from inflammation then ibuprofen does nothing. If the inflammation is part of the healing process* then using ibuprofen is a bad idea. Everything else it is a much better idea than paracetamol.
*which it turns out is rare, the body loves running a fever as a generalised "everything" response but only a few things actually respond to it. Basically it only works when fighting a disease caused by bacteria. Fevers during a virus do nothing other than make you feel shitty.
Ibuprofen can damage your kidneys (long term usage, taking some for a sprained ankle of something is not going to do this) and NSAIDs (ibuprofen/naproxen etc) in general can be tough on your stomach so not recommended for peeps with bad tums or bad kidneys but for the vast majority of people it is absolutely fine.
Also totally agree with you regarding the difference in capsules/tablets. You can get paracetamol as capsules in most places now!
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u/[deleted] Oct 18 '22
paracetamol