Pain Meds Make You Care Less?
SD – Over-the-counter pain medicine such as Ibuprofen and acetaminophen may influence how people process information, experience hurt feelings, and react to emotionally evocative images, according to recent studies.
Hold the Phone! Let me make sure I’m processing this information correctly, I just gotta remember if I took any Ibuprofen this morning….. Nope, I’m good. OK, so this study has provided preliminary evidence that taking over the counter pain medication can effect your cognitive ability, emotional state and reactions in different scenarios. You mean to say the little, bright, round pill that I take to make me think the pain go bye-bye is possibly making other things go away too?
This research pretty much came to the conclusion that after a subject took over the counter pain medications they simply gave “less shits” as compared to a control group talking a placebo (or pill with nothing in it). Take a look:
- Compared to those who took placebos, women who took a dose of ibuprofen reported less hurt feelings from emotionally painful experiences, such as being excluded from a game or writing about a time when they were betrayed.
- Compared to those taking placebos, individuals who took a dose of acetaminophen were less emotionally distressed while reading about a person experiencing physical or emotional pain and felt less regard for the person.
- Compared to those who took placebos, individuals who took a dose of acetaminophen made more errors of omission in a game where they were asked, at various times, either to perform or to not perform a task.
- Individuals who took a dose of acetaminophen rated pleasant and unpleasant photographs less extremely than those who took placebos.
- When asked to set a selling price on an object they owned, individuals who took a dose of acetaminophen set prices that were cheaper than the prices set by individuals who took placebos.
According to this research, people become “Cold as Ice” from a mental and emotional standpoint after introducing these lab-derived chemicals into the bloodstream. Yes, that may be a little extreme but there are definitely some overlooked effects of taking these medications. The question then comes to: Are these medications achieving their goals in the eyes of the consumers? Are people looking for a way to numb a physical or emotional pain thus opening up the medicine cabinet? Another topic for another time. Many American turn to daily aspirin simply as part of their routine, playing sports throughout college had me reaching for these little guys during my daily training room visits. It boils down to the very accurate and overused phrase:
“You don’t know, what you don’t know”
There’s the possibility to abuse just about anything in this world to the point that it can induce physical harm, hell, you can even drink too much water. I know it takes an extra 10 minutes but do your “Google” homework, and remember that any foreign substance you put into your body is…..FOREIGN!
One of the rather funny (and conflicting) results form the study was the different reaction between men and women on one of the tests:
Sensitivity to emotionally painful experiences: Compared to those who took placebos, women who took a dose of ibuprofen reported less hurt feelings from emotionally painful experiences, such as being excluded from a game or writing about a time when they were betrayed. Men showed the opposite pattern.
As much as a guy might say they don’t care about not being picked or being excluded from a game (sports, video game, pictionary…whatever), they truly wanna play! There’s some things pain revilers just can’t numb.
Positions to Win….What have you done today to be in one?
