Thomas Wilberding's List: Medication

• Few drugs are more ubiquitous than acetaminophen, the pain reliever found in  numerous over-the-counter cold remedies and the headache  drug Tylenol.
• Could regular use of acetaminophen for pain relief put them at risk for  long-term liver damage?
• The new maximum dose is likely to be 2.6 to 3.25 grams, equal to 8 to 10 regular  pills.
• but over all the risk of acetaminophen to any individual is low. Far more people  are harmed by regular use of aspirin and ibuprofen
• Nearly everybody on the panel recognizes that from a public-health perspective,  ibuprofen is much more concerning than acetaminophen,” Dr. Nelson said

• Because acetaminophen is in so many products, consumers need to be vigilant  about reading labels, and they need to keep track of how much of the drug they  are ingesting daily.

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• Those runners who’d popped over-the-counter ibuprofen pills before and during  the race displayed significantly more inflammation and other markers of high  immune system response afterward than the runners who hadn’t taken  anti-inflammatories. The ibuprofen users also showed signs of mild kidney  impairment and, both before and after the race, of low-level endotoxemia, a  condition in which bacteria leak from the colon into the bloodstream.
• Athletes at all levels and in a wide variety of sports swear by their  painkillers
• They put on their uniform” or pull on their running shoes and pop a few Advil.  “It’s like candy” or Vitamin I, as some athletes refer to ibuprofen
• “pain prevention
• the latest research into the physiological effects of ibuprofen and other NSAIDs  suggests that the drugs in fact, have the opposite effect. In a number of  studies conducted both in the field and in human performance laboratories in  recent years, NSAIDs did not lessen people’s perception of pain during activity  or decrease muscle soreness later
• NSAIDs actually slowed the healing of injured muscles, tendons, ligament, and  bones
• If “you’re taking ibuprofen before every workout, you lessen this training  response,” Warden says. Your bones don’t thicken and your tissues don’t  strengthen as they should. They may be less able to withstand the next workout.  In essence, the pills athletes take to reduce the chances that they’ll feel sore  may increase the odds that they’ll wind up injured — and sore.
• “When you have inflammation and pain from an acute injury,” Warden says. “In  that situation, NSAIDs are very effective.” But to take them “before every  workout or match is a mistake.”

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