Taking Too Many Pills For Back Pain

Think popping a few extra pain pills for your back pain relief can’t hurt?

Think again.

Accidental poisonings from the nation’s most popular pain reliever seem to be rising, making acetaminophen the leading cause of acute liver failure.

It’s taken by some 100 million people a year, and liver damage occurs in only a small fraction of users.

But its damage that can kill or require a liver transplant, damage that frustrated liver specialists insist should be avoidable.

The problem comes when people don’t follow dosing instructions, or unwittingly take too much, not realizing acetaminophen is in hundreds of products, from the over-the-counter remedies Theraflu and Excedrin to the prescription narcotics Vicodin and Percocet.

Acetaminophen bottles currently recommend that adults take no more than 4,000 milligrams a day, or eight extra-strength pills, but just a doubling of the maximum daily dose can be enough to kill.

The Food and Drug Administration has long wrestled with the liver risk, warning two years ago that more than 56,000 emergency-room visits a year are due to acetaminophen overdoses and that 100 people die annually from unintentionally taking too much.

A study published this month has agency officials weighing whether to revisit the issue.

Over six years, researchers tracked 662 consecutive patients in acute liver failure who were treated at 22 transplant centers. (Acute liver failure is the most severe type, developing over days, unlike chronic liver failure that can simmer for years because of alcohol abuse or viral hepatitis.)

Almost half were acetaminophen-related. More remarkable was the steady increase: Acetaminophen was to blame for 28 percent of the liver poisonings in 1998, but caused 51 percent of cases in 2003. That makes acetaminophen the most common cause of acute liver failure, the researchers report in the journal Hepatology.

While most patients pulled through with intensive care, 74 died and 23 others received a transplant.

Some 44 percent of the cases were suicide attempts, but more, 48 percent, were unintentional overdoses.

Say you take Tylenol Cold & Flu Severe for the flu’s aches and stuffiness – 1,000 mg of acetaminophen, every six hours. A headache still nags so between doses you pop some Excedrin - 500 mg more of acetaminophen. Switch to Nyquil Cold/Flu at bedtime, another 1,000 mg.

Maybe you already use arthritis-strength acetaminophen for sore joints - average dose 1,300 mg.

Depending on how often they’re taken, the total acetaminophen can add up fast.

That’s the nonprescription realm. Surprisingly, 63 percent of unintentional overdoses involved narcotics like Vicodin and Percocet that contain from 325 mg to 750 mg of acetaminophen inside each pill.

Some were chronic pain sufferers taking more and more narcotics as their bodies adjusted to the powerful painkillers, not knowing they were getting ever-higher acetaminophen at the same time. Or they added over-the-counter products for other complaints.

Fact(s) of the week: in the four years after over-the-counter sales of acetaminophen were restricted to 16 grams in the United Kingdom, health officials noted a 30 percent reduction in patients with severe acetaminophen-induced acute liver failure admitted to specialty centers.

Related links: http://www.helpforheadaches.com/articles/acet-kellie.htm

Natural back pain relief:  Lifezyme Plus (Pain Relief)

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