Acetaminophen
Acetaminophen, or Tylenol, is getting a lot of press these days. The FDA is considering lowering the recommended dosage and putting warnings on the labels about the potential for liver damage.
All I can say is it's about time. As an RN I transferred to my hospital's pediatric unit back in 1984, and that was when I learned how toxic too much Tylenol could be. Almost every month we would admit an adolescent who came in after attempting suicide. They were rarely actually suicidal. Most were crying out for attention, trying to get someone to take them and their problems seriously.
So they would overdose on Tylenol, not realizing that they were doing far more damage than the kids who scraped their wrists with razor blades or needed their stomachs pumped clean of their parent's sleeping pills.
After all, their moms and dads had been feeding them Tylenol, for everything from fever to headache, since they were infants. How much harm could it do?
They and their parents were always shocked to discover how serious this particular overdose could be. "But it's just Tylenol," they would insist.
We'd have to treat quickly and aggressively to avoid permanent liver damage, and we never knew what their eventual outcome was at the time of their discharge.
Adolescents weren't the only ones. Every so often a toddler would get their hands on a bottle of acetaminophen infant drops and wind up on our unit in big trouble. The drops are concentrated so that babies only need to be given a tiny amount, but it's that concentration that is so very dangerous.
One couple rushed their 18 month old baby to us in the middle of the night after finding him asleep in his car seat with an empty bottle of the infant drops. They'd been on their way home from vacation, and he'd been crying in the backseat, bored from being strapped in so long. The next time they'd looked back in the darkness, he'd reached into the diaper bag and was holding the childproof bottle of acetaminophen drops.
"Then he fell asleep. We didn't think anything of it," the mom tearfully reported. "Till we got home and saw that empty bottle."
I felt for those parents But I learned from them too. I never left the diaper bag within my babies' reach. And I was paranoid about pushing Tylenol on them for every little ache and pain.
Not that they didn't want me to. My son, especially, loved the sugary taste. "Meanies," he'd say when he didn't feel well. We never figured out how "Tylenol" became "meanies," but he would have taken it every day if we'd offered it.
I remember friends confessing to dosing their babies every four hours around the clock when they were teething, or giving them the medicine because their kids were convinced it made them "all better." They had no idea that after a few days of this, toxic levels in the liver were hard to flush out.
Parents want to make the best and safest decisions for their kids, but they can't do that without the correct information. So I'm glad the FDA might finally be about to put a warning on the acetaminophen label.
I repeat, it's about time.
All I can say is it's about time. As an RN I transferred to my hospital's pediatric unit back in 1984, and that was when I learned how toxic too much Tylenol could be. Almost every month we would admit an adolescent who came in after attempting suicide. They were rarely actually suicidal. Most were crying out for attention, trying to get someone to take them and their problems seriously.
So they would overdose on Tylenol, not realizing that they were doing far more damage than the kids who scraped their wrists with razor blades or needed their stomachs pumped clean of their parent's sleeping pills.
After all, their moms and dads had been feeding them Tylenol, for everything from fever to headache, since they were infants. How much harm could it do?
They and their parents were always shocked to discover how serious this particular overdose could be. "But it's just Tylenol," they would insist.
We'd have to treat quickly and aggressively to avoid permanent liver damage, and we never knew what their eventual outcome was at the time of their discharge.
Adolescents weren't the only ones. Every so often a toddler would get their hands on a bottle of acetaminophen infant drops and wind up on our unit in big trouble. The drops are concentrated so that babies only need to be given a tiny amount, but it's that concentration that is so very dangerous.
One couple rushed their 18 month old baby to us in the middle of the night after finding him asleep in his car seat with an empty bottle of the infant drops. They'd been on their way home from vacation, and he'd been crying in the backseat, bored from being strapped in so long. The next time they'd looked back in the darkness, he'd reached into the diaper bag and was holding the childproof bottle of acetaminophen drops.
"Then he fell asleep. We didn't think anything of it," the mom tearfully reported. "Till we got home and saw that empty bottle."
I felt for those parents But I learned from them too. I never left the diaper bag within my babies' reach. And I was paranoid about pushing Tylenol on them for every little ache and pain.
Not that they didn't want me to. My son, especially, loved the sugary taste. "Meanies," he'd say when he didn't feel well. We never figured out how "Tylenol" became "meanies," but he would have taken it every day if we'd offered it.
I remember friends confessing to dosing their babies every four hours around the clock when they were teething, or giving them the medicine because their kids were convinced it made them "all better." They had no idea that after a few days of this, toxic levels in the liver were hard to flush out.
Parents want to make the best and safest decisions for their kids, but they can't do that without the correct information. So I'm glad the FDA might finally be about to put a warning on the acetaminophen label.
I repeat, it's about time.
This whole thing was on the front page of our local newspaper yesterday. I don't read it (Beloved does), and I wondered why they saw fit to splash it all over the front page. Now I know.
I am absolutely paranoid about any drug, even over the counter drugs, and only give Tylenol or Ibuprofen to my kids (or myself, for that matter) if they're running a really high fever or are in a LOT of pain from something like stitches or a bad burn. OTC medications are still *drugs* and too much of anything, even a good thing, is not good for anyone.
Posted by: Jan | July 08, 2009 at 09:58 AM
I always give Motrin before I will give Tylenol. My best friend in middle school tried to commit suicide by ingesting Tylenol when she was about 13. She permanently messed up her liver and that is how I found out about the evils of this drug.
Oh to answer your question from my blog. The pub on my page is The Plough Inn in Icklingham, Suffolk, UK.
Posted by: Kat | July 08, 2009 at 11:00 AM
I'm going to read this to my 17 year old son. He gets headaches and takes too much pain reliever. I tell him he just needs to get more sleep.
Is it the same for Advil? That's what he takes.
Posted by: Pseudo | July 08, 2009 at 11:34 AM
Wow. Really good information to put out there.
Posted by: LPC | July 08, 2009 at 12:14 PM
Wow! Thanks for the information. I'll never look at Tylenol in the same way. Although, I'm very hesitent to give my children any medication...this is one more reason not to.
Posted by: Nothing Fancy | July 08, 2009 at 12:42 PM
I've been backing away from taking any acetaminophen for quite some time. I don't even take aspirin, unless absolutely necessary. I've had the same fears when looking at any of these bottles with the log list of warnings and side effects...
It's nice to know that my fears weren't unfounded. Thanks for the information. Great post. One everyone should read....
Posted by: Nancy McDonnell | July 08, 2009 at 12:59 PM
Wow... I say it myself "it's just Tylenol!" This was scary to read. It's all the more reason for me to insist that we try to be closer to natural remedies and nature itself. Nothing is better than fresh air for a head ache, and there are thousands of other natural remedies for all those little things we run to pills to solve.
Posted by: GiGi @ Incrementum | July 08, 2009 at 06:21 PM
I used to get bad headaches as a kid, and Tylenol never did a thing for them so I never took it... I used to be pissed about that. Now I'm kinda glad, as I probably would have eaten them like candy if they helped... I guess the drug lobbies are pretty powerful if they can bully the FDA into keeping something like liver damage quiet for so many years!
Posted by: Uppity | July 10, 2009 at 09:39 AM
Pseudo, when I saw a neurologist about my headaches, he told me to quit taking all the OTC painkillers because taking too much can cause rebound headaches. I went cold turkey on the OTC and on the imitrex for three weeks and it was not pleasant, but after that, the frequency of my HA decreased a lot.
Uppity, if you have migraine (I thought I had sinus headaches, but my doc said sinus HA no longer exist -- it is also migraine -- who knew?), regular painkillers might not help. There are some amazing painkillers out there now (thank goodness).
Maureen, I have a friend who called medicine "candy" when her kids were little. I don't have kids, but sometimes, you don't need to be a parent to know something is a bad parenting idea.
Posted by: class factotum | July 10, 2009 at 06:13 PM