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Comment by 2rsf | Hacker News Reader

pseudoephedrine have serious side effects, they are rare but could be fatal

Also true of aspirin, ibuprofen, acetaminophen, dextromethorphan, melatonin, vitamins, supplements, and practically every other over-the-counter drug that is not homeopathic.

Homeopathic too - water allergy is a thing.

Homeopathic pills are usually literally sugar pills, essentially small crummy candy, so not really any water, despite the purported basis of the "technology".

Sure. Sugar allergy is a thing too.

If you give me six lines written in a material safety datasheet for the most chemically inert of materials, I will find something in them that could cause some human, in some situation, to die.

After a little bit of googling, it seems that sugar allergy from ingestion doesn't exist. Intolerance is not allergies.

I did find that there's apparently one case of anaphylaxis caused by injection of fructose, though it wasn't the normal reaction referred to as allergies.

Water allergy is a skin condition triggered by contact with water. I don't think that applies to swallowing water.

If someone's actually allergic to water, they're going to be reacting all the time since they're mostly water and have to drink regularly to stay alive.

ESPECIALLY acetaminophen aka paracetamol aka Tylenol aka Panadol. This is the single drug with the smallest ratio between the effective does and the lethal dose, and it would not be approved today because of that. Oh, and you'll be fully conscious while you're dying and there's no known antidote.

>and there's no known antidote.

Isn't NAC (N-acetyl-cysteine) used for that?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK537183/

My Googling says 7.5g-10g is a lethal (acute) dose for an adult. The extra strength Tylenol pills come in 500mg, and they recommend two of those at a time. Not saying it's wrong that the gap between "effective" and "lethal" is small, but at the same time it's hard to accidentally take 15-20 pills at a time.

I've commonly been recommended 3-4 g per day by Physicians. I take 1 gram as my standard dose.

1 gram is the standard dose for a full-sized adult with a healthy liver who is not taking the drug in conjunction with alcohol.

As to frequency I limit myself to 2 g per day but that's just me giving my liver extra time to recover.

Now consider people with memory issues such as dementia where they might have a headache, take 2 pills, then 10 minutes later think 'I have a headache...'

if we're talking about people with dementia and/or memory issues - almost everything becomes dangerous. Not an argument. Doors aren't dangerous, but now imagine a small child being hit with one.

Even doses as low as 1g taken daily for a week or two will show significant changes in liver chemistry. Consider that many other medicines, especially cold medicines, often include it as well, and it's not hard to see how someone that is suffering from a strong cold could end up taking more like 2-3g per day for extended periods of time. That will definitely cause some damage to the liver, which can be recovered from, but should probably be avoided. At least in the US though, many people have already compromised liver function due to chronic metabolic diseases, and for many, the damage might end up being permanent.

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