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Comment by paulplug | Hacker News Reader

I suffer from severe migraines. My mom does too. I get them at least 3 times a week, and it really knocks me down. This really struck a chord with me. After a couple of paragraphs I couldn't stop reading. Very encouraging.

I'm originally from Italy. Growing up my mom and I tried all sorts of medications available in Italy, but none of them made a real difference. I moved to the US a few years back and I tried a few off the counter headache medications (Acetaminophen + Caffeine + Aspirine) and much to my surprised it really helped. I'm not sure why, but these are not available in europe. I started bringing them back home to my mom. It helps with the really tough migraines, instead of being in my room, lights off, puking, I can walk around and even do some work.

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Paracetamol, aspirine and caffeine are definitely available over the counter in Europe!

Are they marketed as a single pill?

(eg https://www.excedrin.com/products/extra-strength/ )

Paracetamol and caffeine is a common combination in Europe too. I wouldn't be inclined to move countries or even to bring home medication from abroad just so I could take my medication as a single pill instead of two.

Of course moving for such generic drugs would be a strange thing, but lack of the combo pills in Europe might explain why moving to the US prompted the other poster to try the combination.

Yes: http://www.anadin.co.uk/our-products/anadin-extra-anadin-ext...

As a fellow European migraine sufferer, my go-to drug of choice is Solpadeine (marketing name, OTC available, contains paracetamol (500mg), codeine (8mg) and caffeine (30mg) in a single pill, you normally take two pills at once. Aspirine is ubiquitous as a separate pill, which I rather like, since I personally rarely benefit from it and some people (notably children, but also people with certain hematological, gastrointestinal and kidney problems) need to be more careful with its use. I also sometimes get migraines that don't seem to respond to Solpadeine, but respond well to simple ibuprofen, so between those two I'm mostly covered. YMMV, of course, I just wanted to note that there's definitely a variety of cheap OTC options available in Europe, you may just need to look around for them.

According to Wikipedia, Aspirin is a trade name for acetylsalicylic acid which is apparently marketed as Ascriptin, Aspegic, Aspidol, and Flectadol in Italy. (Switching language in Wikipedia works great as a translation tool!) Acetaminophen is just paracetamol, apparently common Italian brands are Panadol, Efferalgan and Tachipirina.

It is well known that they can be taken together for better effect, which is hopefully what your doctor would recommend trying before trying any stronger stuff. Caffeine helps contract the blood vessels which is especially helpful during migraines. You should be able to buy combination pills with acetylsalicylic acid which is a tried dosage.

Hope that helps your mother. Migraines aren't fun in the slighest.

I think something went wrong here: Acetaminophen is a trade name for acetylsalicylic acid.

Acetaminophen is the name of a drug not a trade name (trade name in the US is Tylenol), and acetylsalicylic acid is aspirin.

Oh, sorry! Wikipedia turned out a lot of interesting stuff about pain medication and their respective trade names in different countries (who knew there was an article on "Paracetamol trade names"?), but I failed the copy/paste bit.

If you have a minute I would encourage you to fix it. No need to stand by a copy paste error.

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