The Differences between Ibuprofen, Acetaminophen, and Aspirin?
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They all have one thing in common: they reduce fever. After that each drug has some interesting unique effects.
Ibuprofen and other drugs with similar names are called anti-inflammatory drugs. They block a chemical in your body that leads to a whole host of symptoms including swelling or “inflammation”. Ibuprofen does not relieve pain directly, contrary to popular belief. It does however make you less sensitive to pain , because inflammation makes your nerves hypersensitive. Ibuprofen also increases the chance of bleeding, and it can cause ulcers to form in your stomach and may increase your risk of heart attacks because those chemicals it blocks do a lot of interesting random things inside your body. One of those things is to help maintain blood vessels in the heart and ibuprofen may interfere with that. It also reduces blood flow in the kidneys and cause kidney damage if used too much.
Aspirin like ibuprofen blocks inflammation so in that sense it can reduce the pain you feel, though it also is not really a pain reliever directly. It also lowers your chance of getting a blood clot by reducing the “stickiness” of your blood cells which means it helps prevent heart attacks by blocking the blood clots that cause heart attacks. However it can also cause very serious bleeding in your digestive tract including your stomach just like ibuprofen. The bleeding risk is so high to the point that it could kill you, so they no longer recommend everyone take aspirin to prevent heart attacks.
Tylenol is the weird one of the group. It does not really reduce inflammation. However, unlike the other drugs, it really does block pain directly. In fact in some trials it worked almost as well as narcotics like oxycodone. It almost seems like the perfect drug except in high doses it’s fatal as it causes liver death. And this high dose isn’t that much higher than what you might take for serious pain. So there’s no drug without risks!
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