My husband didn't know Lemsip has paracetamol in it..

[bbcessex]

HUGE HUGE apologies to a reasonably recent OP who posted about paracetamol .

I did not think there was anyone out there who didn't know about the risks of taking too much / medicines that contained paracetamol but seems I should have looked closer to home.

IV paracetamol worked for me, but not for very long.

I've taken a fair amount of codeine this year with no problems, did speak to a pharmacist about it as I was concerned about addiction and they didn't seem to think I was at risk as I wasn't taking it for headaches.

ice i understand! I wish that dose worked for me still i'm right there with you on the large doses now.
Migraines are the work of the devil

Irrelevant if people are saying that they find Lemsip more effective for chronic pain though.

500mg of paracetamol can enhance the effects of other painkillers, so I was told by an Orthopaedic surgeon.

Weirdly I've always been like it kali, so I can't even blame getting used to the drug

I've been told the same shadow. I take paracetamol alongside nefopam for pain - it's amazingly so much more effective than either drug on its own.

XDP used to go for the lemsip when he felt unwell. It always made me feel sick, so I would make my own honey and lemon and knock back a couple of paracetamol. Like a pp said - you don't get a full adult dose of paracetamol in lemsip, so when I got him to try my way he was amazed at how much better he felt. Then got paranoid that his DM had been 'keeping' him ill as a child.

My DH refuses to accept that Sudafed plus paracetamol is going to be more effective for his man flu than bloody Lemsip. He drinks lemsip even if he feels a little unwell from anything, thinks it has super powers

Graphista I'm with you on the codeine - I actually went as an advisor to parliament when they were revising the drug strategy and as a result they added the addiction warnings on to the box. Plus they only stick them behind the counter and in Boots they always tell you 3 days max.

Shame it was too late for me but such an easy thing to get hold off. I bet some people don't realise co-codamol has paracetamol in it either...

Albadross a family member is in the grip of codeine addiction but refuses to see it - I'm the only one that has raised it as an issue yet I'm apparently 'unkind' and 'over reacting' yet this person is both prescribed co-codamol and buys regularly from various pharmacies. (So the pharmacists don't pick up on the issue)

There will always be loopholes/drug dealers (I think a lot of people are also unaware that certain medicines are sold illegally or how much this happens) but if it were prescription only it would be far better controlled.

Thankyou to the people commenting on buying more than 2 items together

I once swigged down two Benylin tablets with the dregs of a Lempsip. I really wasn't thinking straight. Felt distinctly odd for the rest of the day, cold and not with it. Never again, very scary.
That is worrying and I hope that you only felt so odd because you were ill not because of the tablets.

had no idea certain throats sweets contain paracetamol
I can't think of any throat sweets that contain paracetamol and neither can Google.

If any one else knows any that do contain paracetamol it would be good to know and I wouldn't mind being proved wrong.

It was 180-190 degrees Fahrenheit, which was significantly hotter than competitors' coffee
But still far less than the temperature of boiling water.

I once swigged down two Benylin tablets with the dregs of a Lempsip

See, this is what bothers me about brand names. Depending on which Benylin you buy, the active ingredients might be guaifenesin and levomenthol, glycerol and sucrose, or guaifenesin, paracetamol and phenylephrine. It doesn't help people to develop awareness of what they're taking.

It takes the liver 6 hours to process a dose. In the 'old days' you could take it 4hrly and, when I worked in ICU I nursed 2 patients who had taken paracetamol according to the instructions over a weekend. Both died.
I think it's potentially very dangerous. My husband takes lemsip but I'm very wary about how often he takes it.

shadowfax07 yes my doctor tells me to take paracetamol with my painkiller too as it mKes it more effective.

so the drink was 180? I was thinking it was a lot hotter! My old work used to make drinks to that temp anyway. Mind you, all coffeeshops in that area seemed to heat their drinks to around that heat.
Mouths of steel
now i've moved i have to keep asking for my drinks to be extra extra hot!

Haven't read the whole thing... But have we had a pharmacist on yet?
Do we want one?

Lemsip always makes me feel better than just paracetemol. Placebo effect I'm sure but strangely it makes OH feel better too and he had never had it before I gave him one (they don't sell it in this country, I have to stock up when I visit the UK, or get the Estonian version when I'm over there)

I had a coffee recently that was so hot it melted the lid out of shape. I didn't realise until I lifted it up and the lid dropped inside and the liquid scalded my hand. I wasn't impressed TBH. So I can understand why the case was made.

Graphista unfortunately for me my boyfriends dad was a GP and dished out 30/500 to me regularly, of course I then realised they actually helped my chronic pain and when I realised I could buy them online (this was years ago)... well let's just say that I've been dependent on them ever since. How I'm not dead I'm not sure because I used to take up to 30 of the OTC co-codamol every day.

You can actually buy Pulmo Bailey codeine liquid OTC too - used to drink bottles of that too

Now I'm on prescribed codeine phosphate and have managed to halve the dose. The GP told me she didn't want to prescribe without paracetamol because then I couldn't take too much, but obviously by then I was already doing that. I could've been spared whatever damage I probably already have if they'd just treated my pain in the first place and understood how debilitating codeine dependency is. Now I only take the combo if my pain really kicks off (resulting in a 3 day spasm up one side of my face!). Otherwise I don't touch it.

DH said he thought aspirin and paracetamol were the same thing too

Also worth note that some people's livers are just not able to cope with even a small OD on paracetamol. Others can - but there's no way to know which you are

The GP told me she didn't want to prescribe without paracetamol because then I couldn't take too much
I can see where GPs are coming from with this but if you are addicted to the codeine the fact that each 8 / 15 /30 mg (depending on what you can get hold of) also contains 500mg of paracetamol doesn't matter to you.

I actually wonder how many people who abuse co-codamol products end up with liver damage that they wouldn't have got if they had just been taken pure codeine??

You would have to take a lot of paracetamol or ibuprofen to do though, I can't remember the exact dose but it's so many tablets per kilo of body weight. The guidelines err on the side of caution.

There was a case a few years ago of a woman with flu who was taking both lemsip and paracetamol, not realising she was double-dosing. She died from the overdose.

kiki. 4g taken over a week or so can cause significant liver injury in some people. About 12g is considered a lethal dose but this can be substantially lower depending on the condition of the patient. Anyone with a liver under strain from a few glasses of wine a night, for example.
You really don't have to take much in one go to do severe harm, and there's a lot of cases of people taking paracetamol long term and damaging their livers too. there's quite a big variation in how people process such compounds (our cytochrome systems are very very ethically diverse.) so it's not accurate to say you'd need to take a lot.
The generally accepted lethal dose of ibuprofen is about 120 x 200mg tabs for an average male but again, there's significant variation and there have been deaths at a quarter of that level.

OTC painkillers are not trivial drugs. :/

4g a day, not 4g over a week :)