I have to admit I have a particular tendency to take pills anytime I am not feeling well. Don’t worry – it is nothing like an addiction, it’s just that I prefer to take the easy way out and ask the doctor for a prescription rather than suffer through an illness. Yet do you know that not all drugs are safe? I am sure you’ve heard of countless prescription drugs that have passed safety standards only to be shot down later on when adverse effects come out in patients. MSN recently published an article on the deadliest drugs there are. And the winners are:
Talk about scary! Of the drugs in the list – I only have one to worry about – acetaminophen. Tylenol, my painkiller of choice, has this as the main active ingredient. I never really thought about it but as it turns out, it can cause fatal liver damage! You may be thinking that the dosage for this kind of effect would be way beyond the normal dosage – the MSN article says no! The fatal dosage is “not much higher than the effective dose.” Ok, this is starting to concern me. I get really bad migraine headaches and I usually take two extra strength Tylenols. After a couple of hours, if the headache is still there, I take another two. Is this a fatal dose? I sure hope not!
Originally posted on March 27, 2008 @ 11:13 am