There’s only a weak and now discounted statistical association that was seized upon by two disgraceful anti-science politicians to create a political controversy.
Some personal grievance against Tylenol brand?
More graft from a competitor?
Appease their conspiracy loving dumbass base?
Destroy the scientific reputation of the US?
Trump is actually that fucking stupid?
All of the above?
Acetaminophen and dementia correlation:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2877629/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01638...
Note that it's also hard on the liver. A lot fatalities due to taking after hangovers, etc: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/322813 So if you insist, maybe take some NAC.
But apparently, Ibuprofen helps counter the dementia risk:
https://www.aan.com/PressRoom/home/PressRelease/624
I am not not asserting any clever marketing here. I am merely citing public information. Noting all the above, I am confident it's perfectly safe for children and fetuses, and if posing any risk at all, applies strictly to full grown adults. No doubts about child safety have been expressed here.
Fatalities happen basically from: product stacking combination medicines people don't realize contain acetaminophen and/or multi-day accumulation exceeding max daily limit over multiple days.
Chronic drinkers have impaired acetaminophen processing so they can't handle otherwise safe doses, but fatalities still typically occur in multi-day accumulation scenarios. Their safe daily max is ~half that of a non drinker.
The effects of one round of acute drinking don't impair the liver in the same way. People are not dropping dead because they took a normal dose of acetaminophen for a hangover. Not that I'm recommending you start doing it, but it is a myth.
I find it obnoxious that NyQuil has taken over as the default brand people grab for cough syrup, for that reason. It has acetaminophen, while Robitussin or such have the other active ingredients without that risk.
The typical person doesn't read and understand active ingredients, and it's lucky if they even check dosage instructions.
Of course, one might pause for a moment to consider just how potential the alluded benefits really are with ibuprofen, and ask why doctors aren't recommending it for mental health, or as a general health product. But that might point to the peculiar fact that there is substantially more evidence suggesting risk over health benefits, and the benefits really depend on what one wants to see. There is a reason it's not marketed as a health product, but with the way it's framed, it should be, nu? I mean, potential benefits sells a lot of snake oil and lowfat yogurt. Why not advil and acetaminophen?
And by similar logic used to dismiss acetaminophen here as a health risk, eg because there's no link with autism/ADHD it's safe; why not apply the same logic to opiates? We could just say opiates do not directly cause, eg , parkinsons, or AIDS, therefore it's safe for babies. Myself, I never correlated acetaminophen with autism/ADHD, but I know it has more side-effects than listen on the bottle.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rfk-jr-cause-of-autism-research...
Which also answers your other question of why doctors don't recommend it: we don't actually know that it does this.
As for the rest of the ramble, you (or I) definitely don't know hardly anything that hasn't been established in clinical trials. Certainly can't just vibes-based assess a label and its completeness. It's really, really hard to know things.
The precise wording as far as safety is: "we have no substantive or high-quality evidence that the drug is unsafe."
"we have no substantive or high-quality evidence that the drug is unsafe." - (damn all the research showing it is)
--to
"we have no substantive or high-quality evidence that the drug is safe." - (damn all the research suggesting it isn't)
Well, that's as good a green light for an ad campaign as one could ask for. "we don't actually know that it does this." ain't never stopped a motivated pharmaceutical rep before. You have my official endorsement for feeding advil and acetaminophen to all. And protection from dementia is just what America needs. !Win / !Win
Maybe restless leg and depression too! And don't tell me fetuses don't get depressed there in that dark womb. We know damn well they get restless.
That's almost entirely generated by the highest quality evidence generation system we could possibly have, which is RCTs. And no, pharma reps actually aren't allowed to encourage (or even talk about) off-label uses of drugs.
I get the sense that you don't know much about this space.