Ibuprofen VS Tylenol VS NeoCitran

[agoodwinsmith]

I am feeling pretty human today. My cold is mostly gone, my intestines are better, my back is not hurting and hasn't for about a week, and I have figured out how to use tylenol extra strength for my knees.

I stopped using ibuprofen[1] when I was pursuing medical help for my back because all my doctors hate it so much: "it can cause spontaneous bleeding in the brain", "it can cause water retention", "evil, pure and simple"[2], and similar. Fine. Okay. Sure. Gimme that useless Tylenol crap. I'll tape it to my forehead and it will be as much use as swallowing it.

However. I have discovered, by way of neocitran[3], that instead of taking one extra strength every six hours, if I take two just before I go to sleep then it calms the pain in my knees enough that I get a decent sleep, which, all said and done, decent sleep is the BEST therapy for bad knees. So my knees are less painful during the next day, and I don't need more tylenol until sleep. This has improved my disposition no end.

The neocitran I took for the cold symptoms had TWO TIMES as much "active ingredient" as each tylenol extra strength, and aside from calming a lot of the cold symptoms, really helped my knees. So.

I use neocitran because it works, but I don't know who they are using as a taste-tester because that's lemon in the same way as I am Lynda Carter[4].

It is amazing what a difference the lack of pain makes.


[1] - which *works*, dammit!
[2] - Buckaroo Banzai reference for those old enough
[3] - disGUSTing stuff
[4] - she played Wonder Woman back in the day, and not only is she drop dead gorgeous, svelte, and appealing, she is also tall (envy envy envy)

Comments

[julesjones]

I wondered what neoCitran was, so looked it up. It appears to be much the same thing as LemSip over here. Which I don't use because I have a deep suspicion of paracetamol and its liver-killing ways, but it would not surprise me if it too was not quite as lemon-flavoured as one might expect.

Of course, over here you can get low strength codeine mixed with ibruprofen etc. without a prescription, and doctors are perfectly willing to prescribe straight codeine if there is a clinical need for it. Which is how I came to have a prescription for straight codeine in pills the same strength as you could get over the counter, so that I could interleave the two ingredients rather than taking them at the same time, and get the benefit of one kicking in as the other was tailing off. That was for migraine, but also useful for other types of "The pain won't be as bad if I can just get some sleep, damn it" pain.

[agoodwinsmith]

I am reluctant to use codeine because it becomes morphine in the body, and morphine has dreadful constipatory effects. It was pretty dreadful for Lorne.

And I agree about the liver-killing. Why is this better than bleeding in the brain? I wonder whether our College of Surgeons has stock in tylenol. Nah.

I can get ibuprofen over the counter easy peasy, but heavens to betsy, you'd think I was consuming ground glass.

[julesjones]

The constipation is why I was prescribed it many years ago for IBS. A very tiny dose was enough to calm my gut without taking it too far the other way. But if I take it for more than a couple of days at pain relief strength, it can be not a lot of fun without a laxative.