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Acetaminophen: reduces pain but also pleasure…

many of us are familiar with acetaminophen and its powerful ability to reduce pain and fever. This over-the-counter medication has also been found to reduce painful emotions and more recently it has been suggested that it may reduce positive feeling as well.

Recent research published in Psychological Science in the journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

this research found that using Tylenol or similar products might have a further reach that had previously been understood. Geoffrey Durso, a doctoral student in social psychology at Ohio State University and the lead author of the study. “Rather than just being a pain reliever, acetaminophen can be seen as an all-purpose emotion reliever.”

The study had control subjects which were given placebo and the remainder were given 1000 mg of acetaminophen. The subjects were then asked to rate photographs as pleasant or unpleasant. The researchers followed up to test a small group of 85 people to see whether the change in judgment from acetaminophen applied just to emotion or whether the drug blunted peoples of evaluation of magnitude in general. This finding suggested that acetaminophen did not alter individual’s sense of magnitude.

Although overwhelming emotion can be very troubling in our having happy fulfilling livesemotions are critical sources of information from our body. Just as physical pain tells us something is wrong so does emotional pain. Just as taking Tylenol to make a headache go away can be problematic if the headache is from a tumor or hypertension numbing emotion can be equally risky. Dr. Charles Davenport works with patients of all ages to provide counseling and therapy services to better understand their own personal difficulties and how they can thrive.

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