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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.
There is surely a joke about "Not tonight dear, I have a headache" here somewhere.
Perhaps this is why they are sold over the counter. If they didn't also deaden pleasure, they may otherwise be too addictive to be allowed over the counter. To be non-addictive, they may have to reduce pleasure to compensate for reduced pain. They could be (relatively) non-addictive because the overall affect averages out to neutral feelings so that a "pill=good" feedback cycle is not produced in the brain.
Table-ized A.I.
So there *isn't* a fine line between pleasure and pain. At least in this case.
I took some Tylenol this morning for a headache and when I showed up, the support tickets were still bullshit, someone still claims I didn't fix something correctly, and I still hate my job and everyone there. Now I know why :P
Most of the world calls this drug paracetamol.
I had depression in college. They put me on Zoloft. It makes your head feel like its in a cave. While I'm sure the intent is to make sure your lows are less, it also makes your highs less. How was I supposed to get undepressed if I can experience as much happiness as before? I guess its for people who experience lows way more often than they experience highs.
How long were you on Zoloft? Sometimes the first few weeks can have very strange side effects that will diminish over time but on the other hand everyone's chemistry is different and perhaps Sertraline just isn't as compatible with your body as much as other people's bodies. Sometimes Prozac will work for a person who didn't get much benefit from Zoloft or perhaps Zoloft will work for someone who didn't get much benefit from Effexor. For me, personally, Zoloft has been a life saver; it elevates my moods and helps me control my anxiety.
I also have this theory formulated from both my own personal experiences and my observations of other people is that people who have depression, or other mental disorders, are so used to such extreme emotions that taking a drug that brings them down to an emotionally nominal level feels like being turned into a zombie to them because they're only used to feeling everything to such an extreme.
The article reported a "reduction" in responses to "pleasant and disturbing photos". So I wouldn't start claiming that it's having a very negative effect, or much of an effect at all. When I'm in enough pain to necessitate a pain killer I'm not usually worried about being as happy as I could be (9 times out of 10, it's so I can get to sleep). I typically use Ibuprofen (with a bit of codeine) as most of my pain is a result of inflammation and paracetamol isn't a good anti-inflamatory.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Doctor: Oh you're feeling suicidal... and so on and so on.
I'm sorry, but I don't get it. Did they manage to kill the fly in the end?
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
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.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Aspirin isn't a sliver bullet either....
My preference is ibuprofen for head or muscle aches, followed by naproxen, and then aspirin. I'd concur with you about the liver impact of acetaminophen, I had my MD tell me once upon a time that I needed to cut back on the drinking, because of my liver results; I hadn't had a drink in over a month but had been on a regime of acetaminophen + codine following wisdom tooth surgery. That was a wake up call. :)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Doctors lack a fundamental understanding of the effect the drugs they prescribe for mental health treatment, and are effectively guessing as to what they think will work.
I came to this idea after a psychiatrist told me that the drugs were about balancing the chemicals in the brain, but I eventually realized that he had taken no measurements or anything before throwing any of them at me.
So what balance was out of whack? What effect would the medications have? Oh wait, he didn't know. These concerns were dismissed and antagonized. I was merely a patient, I needed to learn to obey the doctor. So what did I learn?
That the doctor, while purportedly concerned, was hardly treating me in a sound and reasonable manner, but was behaving in a way that worsened my problems and caused me several more issues.
Only sheer chance got me out with relatively little harm.
Maybe Zoloft, or Prozac, or whatever is serving you. There are others who are being damaged by the worst kind of treatment. One with delusions of grandeur.
I'd have been safer going to an herb shop and inhaling a potpourri.
Than they are really out of luck as they're out double. I wanted to say doubly screwed but, it just didn't seem likely.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
One of the problems is that depression isn't a single process. It's a symptom, and we lump a lot of things under that name.
The exact details vary from patient to patient. Also, the differences in the way the drugs used to treat it are metabolized in different people can be pretty significant.
I've taken Prozac for nearly as long as it's been available. It works well for me. When I've gone off of it to see if I could do without, the depression came back on a pretty predictable timeline. I tried another antidepressant, Effexor, and that didn't work so well for me. The additional effect it has on norepinephrine as well as the serotonin system (I'm guessing that's what it was based on what we know about how it works. YMMV) made me a bit too up, i.e. slightly hypomanic.
The SSRIs don't work for everyone. It's usually taken about 3 tries for most of those I know who are taking them for definitely diagnosed depression to find the right one/the right dose. For a goodly number, they just don't work that well.
The certainly aren't the only class of drugs that are like that. Blood pressure medications often have to be tailored in dose and kind before they lower the pressure enough without too many side effects.
As another anon (maybe you) mentioned, regular exercise works very well for many people. But again, not so well for all, either due to inability to exercise, or just not working as well as in other people. (In fact, regular exercise programs are an excellent thing to try first in depression, IMHO as soon as other common medical causes like hypothyroidism are ruled out).
As others have mentioned, when you're first starting a new antidepressant changing dosage, you need to be monitored by a health professional (which I'm not, thus take this as one man's views.). Mood changes and the possibility of suicidality aren't something to try to watch for by yourself as you're the one whose judgement is being impacted by them.
Well, this is Slashdot...
Required reading for internet skeptics
As someone who was prescribed acetaminophen with codeine(Tylenol 3) as a starter treatment for migraines I can say in my experience it does both. In the last 15 years I've since moved onto ultram and fiorinal c 1/2 which is it's own fucked up ball of wax. Why this is news though I have no idea, it was well known in the 1920's an 30's that both acetaminophen and codeine depressed the nervous system and they used it to treat shell shocked troops.
Om, nomnomnom...
You jest, but people with major depression don't feel happy after either. Somewhat relaxed, sure, but still mostly miserable. That is, what a clinical depression does to people - they just can't enjoy anything anymore.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
No, they are not, as all good scientists are. From the actual journal article:
"Some limitations of our work should be noted. Specifically, we cannot ascertain from the current studies whether acetaminophen might blunt individuals’ attention or motivation to process emotionally evocative stimuli instead of (or in addition to) their evaluative processing of these stimuli."
Honestly, it's a pretty weak self-critique. I wish they had talked more about how meaningful the differences they found were. Yes, the p values were low, so they were statistically significant, but their graphs aren't so impressive to me. Then again, I'm not a psychologist (although I am a MD) and I'm not familiar with their assessment tools (the IAPS picture database?). So what do I know? :)
Yea, I used to think the same thing until I dated a woman who was bipolar. There are people out there with real problems, problems that aren't easily solved by "shake it off and take a lap." You probably went to the wrong doctor, who instead of taking the time to find out what your problem was (or wasn't), put you on the pharma cure.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
...a psychiatrist told me that the drugs were about balancing the chemicals in the brain, but I eventually realized that he had taken no measurements or anything before throwing any of them at me.
So what balance was out of whack? What effect would the medications have? Oh wait, he didn't know.
He's likely even more annoyed about it than you are.
The problem is that the imbalances may be located in a small part of the brain, and may be on the order of a few dozen molecules, from any of a few thousand chemicals. Thanks to the blood-brain barrier and the localized nature, the only way to actually measure such chemicals is with very invasive (and probably-lethal) brain surgery. There just isn't a simple test where the doctor can prick your finger, put a drop of blood in a magic machine, and tell you which of your neurons are misbehaving.
For much the same reasons, there are no direct treatments. We can't just poke your amygdala until it works like everyone else - and even if we could, the rest of your brain may not accept the change, and your problems could get worse.
Psychopharmacology is not engineering. The cause-and-effect relationships are not simple or direct. Rather than study in vain all of the chemical interactions in your brain, your doctor has studied in depth all of the medications he prescribes, memorizing all of their many side effects (with incidence rates) and known relationships to other medications.
For the actual treatment, yes, it is purely educated guesswork. In your particular case, you may have showed symptoms of X but not Y, so you're a good candidate for treatment 1. That didn't work at all, so treatments 2 and 3 are ruled out, because they work on the same principles. Treatment 4 might be an option, but it only treats symptom Z, which you don't have, but in a certain percentage of cases it does absolutely nothing for Z and causes inverse symptoms to X and Y. Now, that treatment only begins to work after a three-month buildup, so let's start you on that while also trying treatment 5, which starts working immediately and doesn't interfere with treatment 4. Unfortunately the improvement from treatment 5 is very mild, but it can be improved with treatment 6 which amplifies the effects of 5, but does interact negatively with 4.
These concerns were dismissed and antagonized. I was merely a patient, I needed to learn to obey the doctor. So what did I learn?
We learned that you think you know psychopharmacology better than the person who's studied it for several years.
Only sheer chance got me out with relatively little harm.
Or your stubborn attitude provided the push to develop a coping mechanism on your own, which is also a perfectly valid (though sometimes risky) treatment. When done intentionally (usually involving the field of psychiatry, rather than psychopharmacology), it's more an attempt to change the person to fit their condition, rather than fixing the condition to fit the person.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
The anti-depressant response to endurance exercise may be genotype-dependent. Read up on the OPRM1 A118G SNP (a genetic mutation of the mu opioid receptor); it's fascinating: http://www.nature.com/npp/jour....