Image description: A bottle of Ibuprofen containing 1000 tablets.
(Originally published earlier today on mastodon.social)
Do Americans need these giant packs to deal with daily life in America?
That and to deal with the symptoms of their illnesses that have gone untreated because a) too expensive and/or b) doctors here gaslight you that it’s just anxiety.
My wife just paid $150 to go to a walk-in to check what is clearly a swollen blocked gland or something under her ear. It’s killing her. She was there for an hour. The doctor was in and out in under 2 minutes. He told her to take Tylenol and come back when it gets worse.
So yeah, it’s cheaper and you waste less time buying OTC pain killers in bulk I guess.
No. This was purchased because someone thought it was a “great deal”. They will use about a quarter of the bottle before it expires and then just throw the rest out.
Not everyone is a lonely neck beard. Some folks live with families, and some of those family members might just have to take a daily pill or two daily.
If someone is having to take an Ibuprofen a day, for long enough to make a 1000 pill a worthwhile purchase, they really should be seeing a doctor to actually treat the underlying cause, because you really shouldn’t be constantly taking it long term.
Are you suggesting that anyone who doesn’t use up all of their over the counter medications before they expire is a “lonely neckbeard”?
That seems like a harsh judgement
Can confirm, I’m European and my mind cannot comprehend this.
1000 pills? I’ve never seen so many pills all at once. Do you use them to flavor your dishes or something?
Hearing Europeans mock how much we pay for health care never gets old. I mean, the stupid high bills just don’t get the point across.I would be ecstatic with a single payer system supported by taxes. A system that doesn’t rely on an insurance company whose sole purpose is to deny me the coverage I am due. My favorite part is the fake astronomical prices they put on stuff just to charge insurance companies a “negotiated” price.I get that we, as a nation, truly suck. At best we are a corporatocracy. At worst, a straight oligarchy. We’ve got a feeble minded , racist, oompa loompa running for a second term as president. And he has a legit chance of winning! There is almost no part of our society that does not suck in some way. And the vast majority of us know it but the government is so bought and paid for that no real change is possible without bullets.But please, my European brothers and sisters, can you please stop rubbing it on our faces. I assure you we hurt enough already.(edit: a word)
So how many do you take a day, for this to make sense? A dead liver is also a big medical bill, I assume, but maybe that’s a future you problem.
Ibuprofen is metabolized in the kidneys, not the liver. That’s acetaminophen.
Dosage is 2 pills every 4 hours. But prescription strength is equal to 4 of these, so it could be as many as 16 a day.
Well, they are 200mg pills so you will need to take 4 at once for them to make a difference, multiple times per day
I’m not sure where you were that the SMALLEST bottle was 100 or more but you’re either mistaken or at a Costco (or they were just out).
The small size packet for paracetamol is because you can kill yourself with it. A big enough dose will fuck your liver up, so that even if you survive you’ll need a transplant. It’s also extremely painful, apparently. So it’s best not to be able to buy a fatal dose on a whim.
Please don’t think of doing it, life is beautiful and full of possibilities, even if some days that’s hard to believe.
For when you really refuse to deal with the underlying issues causing pain, i guess.
Someone obviously doesn’t have rheumatoid arthritis, or any other one of a plethora of painful diseases. Even with my biologics, flare ups happen, and ibuprofen takes the edge off.
On the other hand, maybe Europe has cured RA, and just hasn’t shared it with the rest of the world?
Sure, NSAIDS are great, but 99.9% of RA patients still shouldn’t need 1000 tablets of half strength Ibuprofen if they are actually seeing their rheumatologist. We usually use coxibs for prolonged therapy supplementing with paracetamole or paracetamole codeine as needed. Most of the time pain control is achieved quickly via steroids and we generally recommend patients to try and avoid NSAIDS once they are started on steroids.
Nice to know I’m the 0.1% of some club. Wish it wasn’t this one.
Prednisone helped out immensely, but that’s a deal with the devil… Gonna pay for that if I stayed on it. Methotrexate was decent, but it would knock me on my butt and make me unreasonably short tempered the day after taking it (and that was splitting the dose up overnight). Biologics (Humira, Enbrel, Cimzia, Simponi Aria infusions) all worked for nine months, then I’d start flaring up after each dose. Rheum said my immune system was building up antibodies against the biologic proteins, and confirmed via one test (Enbrel, if I remember right, but I could be wrong).
On Rinvoq now. Does the job most days, but I’ll still flare up once every couple months. Ibuprofen helps on those days. After seeing painkillers blow out my aunt’s kidneys, I’m happy to stay off the ibuprofen as much as I can.
You can’t buy more than 10 at a time here unless you have a prescription… On the plus side, you can almost get them for free if you do have a prescription
Why?
I hope nobody over there has regular headaches, or works construction.
You can get them if you have a prescription so if the doctor seems a good reason, there is no problem. Note that its free to visit the doctor and free to get a prescription. Also prescribed medication is cheaper than over the counter medication even if it is the same medication. The state helps cover the cost of prescribed medications.
That said, it’s better to fight the cause of the pain instead of the pain, You can also get physiotherapy prescribed or other treatment that will help against whatever is hurting.
Also construction work is often very safe and protected both by education and insurance due to unions. Although its hard work it is often strongly regulated and controlled to follow rules that will protect workers from getting hurt or worn out
Damn, so do women get automatic prescriptions then? Period cramps are no joke! It would suck to have to keep buying those at 10 at a time endlessly. How often do you have to see the doctor to renew the script? Because that’s also a time suck.
In the UK you get them in boxes of 16 and you can buy 2 boxes at a time.
I assume the amount required to overdose and die is quite a bit higher than that.
Please do not overdose on Ibuprofen. It’ll take a week and it’s going to hurt 9/10 the whole time.
Or longer. My aunt was diagnosed with failing kidneys, but the doc’s were having difficulty understanding why. She’d never had a problem with diabetes or the usual causes. Then she explained how she’d been covering up her back pain for years using pain meds.
Now she’s having dialysis sessions a couple times a week. Doc gives her a few more years of this, unless some miracle occurs and she finds a replacement kidney. Miserable way to go.
I don’t think the concern is due to the risk of death but to prevent addiction and overuse.
Ibuprofen is not good for kidneys and can also affect bone growth and regeneration (if remember right)
No the limitation on how much you can buy is very much to prevent deliberate overdose or attempted overdose.
Ibuprofen is hard to overdose to the point of fatality, but other drugs are already limited (like Paracetamol) and if Ibuprofen wasn’t limited people could try that and end up causing huge damage to their bodies even if they don’t kill themselves.
The law limits how many packets people can buy in one transaction. There is no way to stop people going multiple stores to stockpile or to keep buying them every two weeks. It’s not effective at combating dependence.
It’s really not really aimed to preventing people overusing the medications. It’s just a way to try and prevent impulsive mass purchase with the aim of suicide attempts. And it does work on a population scale at reducing harm.
For example the classic ED attender of a young girl who impulsively take 2 packets of paracetamol as a cry for help is well served by this law.
Edit: worth emphasising too - you can get many more in one go on prescription. This is very much about over the counter purchasing.
