#cat livers are shite at detox so they need like about 1/10 the dose of some drugs for an effective dose | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

underthehedge · 5 months ago

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Seriously, the number of people I've had to explain to that Lemsip (a popular hot lemon cold and flu remedy in the UK) contains paracetamol to is insane. It's written right there on the box, and you gotta take that into account if you're also taking paracetamol tablets. Same for many other "cold and flu" remedies and capsules.

Liver damage from paracetamol is cumulative and potentially fatal.

It also uses some of the same pathways for detoxification as alcohol which is why you should never mix them. And that includes with a hangover: If you're hanging out your arse and you need a painkiller, reach for the ibuprofen instead. Do not touch the paracetamol, you're still processing ethanol and it's downstream metabolites and combining that with paracetamol causes liver damage.

PSA:

Acetaminophen/paracetamol has a hard stop upper dose limit, above which it becomes extremely toxic.

That limit is 4g (8 “extra strength” (500mg) tablets) in 24 hours (about 2 tablets every 6 hours).

A single dose of 22 extra strength tablets can kill you.

Taking 12 or more tablets per day for more than a week can also kill you (this is about 3 tablets every 6 hours).

Symptoms of overdose take up to 24 hours to manifest, and are fairly difficult to distinguish from other problems. They include abdominal pain (especially right upper quadrant), nausea, malaise, and confusion.

The antidote (n-acetylcystine) must be given within 8hours of ingestion in order to be useful.

After 10 hours the only thing that will work is a liver transplant.

You might think “why would I ever accidentally take so much?”

Well, acetaminophen is in almost everything in the cold/flu/pain aisle. Migraine combos like Excedrin, cold and flu combos like NyQuil, basically anything that says “non-aspirin pain relief”, and anything that’s branded as a fever reducer. It’s all probably acetaminophen/paracetamol.

So the goal of this post is to get you to read the labels on your medications. Because taking taking Tylenol and NyQuil together for a week (like you might if you had the flu) could kill you.

#human health #safety #can't remember the specifics but it's something to do with ethanol and/or its metabolites sharing a common pathway for detox #and I think it's that they take precedent over paracetamol so what would be a safe dose as your body processes it #quickly becomes a dangerous dosage that shithouses your liver #or vice versa? either way the effect of the both is like you took a massive overdose of one of them #a lot of drugs are safe at the doses they are because your liver is detoxifying them rapidly and that dose is what works to keep levels #high enough to be effective before your body clears them out #if you impede the detoxification process then that dose is basically an OD #same kind of reason spot-on flea treatments for small dogs can kill cats of the same weight #cat livers are shite at detox so they need like about 1/10 the dose of some drugs for an effective dose #it's like...imagine you're filling a bucket with a hole in the bottom that causes the liquid to drain at a set rate #to fill the bucket to a certain level you need to add liquid faster than it drains #but if you plug that hole and add the same amount at the same speed the bucket will overflow

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