Acetaminophen Reduces Both Pain and Pleasure, Study Finds

An anonymous reader writes: Researchers studying the commonly used pain reliever acetaminophen found it has a previously unknown side effect: It blunts positive emotions (abstract). Acetaminophen, the main ingredient in the over-the-counter pain reliever Tylenol, has been in use for more than 70 years in the United States, but this is the first time that this side effect has been documented.

Comments

= paracetamol

[ebcdic]

Most of the world calls this drug paracetamol.

Re:= paracetamol

[Malc]

Growing up in the UK, I'd never heard of Tylenol until I moved to Canada as an adult. You occasionally hear it on American TV shows these days, but unless you know what the characters are referring to, it will just pass most people by. Even "acetaminophen" is an unknown term in the UK, it's always just "paracetamol"

Tylenol is most definitely a N. American thing that nobody else knows about. Panadol seems to be the generic antipodean headache drug - I know this because my wife is Aussie and after six years in London she's still confusing people by saying "panadol" instead of "paracetamol" :)

Re:Zoloft is a 1000 times worse

[Shakrai]

The best anti-depressant I have found is distance running. The second best is other forms of cardio exercise. SSRIs or SNRIs? Been there, done that, they did very little to help me with depression. I don't even think they took the edge off, although it's hard to prove that negative. Tried Celexa, Zoloft, Effexor, Prozac, and a few other ones. Not only did they fail to address (or even make manageable) the depression, they all came with a lovely side effect and then six months of the other extreme when I discontinued them.