Its amazing how many people eat Ibuprofen like candy. My friend ended up with holes in her stomach, despite the warnings she thought there was little risk (even took Ibuprofen for stomach pain).

It also increases the risk of stroke and heart attack[0]. After finding that out, I don't take it quite as liberally.

[0]https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/fda-strengthens-warning-...

They really need to quantify this risk. Simply saying it 'increases the risk' is just scaremongering.

Yep, I think most would agree that traveling by car significantly increases the risk of being in a fatal car accident, yet this does not deter people on a daily basis.

A lot of these “X increases the risk of Y” might be true on the whole, but there are so many variables that are not captured and can very drastically affect individual outcomes.

It's not a surprise if you look at the Ibuprofen packaging used in US supermarkets... There's a picture in the article of such a supermarket aisle. You can buy a 750- or even 1000-pack for a few dollars. WTF, how is it a good idea to sell painkillers in such quantities in supermarkets?

If you sell drugs like candy people will eat it like candy.

Or, hear me out, they are less than pennies to produce and don't expire, and I can buy that one bottle for basically many years, for multiple people

Yep. My grandchildren will inherit my Costco bottles of meds.

> If you sell drugs like candy people will eat it like candy.

Even candy shouldn't be eaten like, well, candy.

As a German it's super surreal to me. Ibuprofen are only sold in dedicated pharmacies here, behind the counter, the higher dosages ones even require a prescription from a doctor.

I don't even understand why/how somebody can take/need so many of them in such high dosages. Usually half a 400 mg pill will deal with any headache I occasionally have.

Took higher doses regularly due to problems with my teeth, which had a noticeable bad effect on my stomach. Do people just medicate that away too?

She probably has an underlying condition that's not being addressed. Autoimmune is quite common, but could be lots of things. Diet changes are sometimes enough.

Sometimes a massage gun and Bob and Brad youtube channel will fix muscle knots that are the real issues.

Definitely a better choice than paracetamol, which is metabolized by the liver...

Yeah, don't take paracetamol if your liver is already busy getting rid of the alcohol. However, both alcohol and ibuprofen increase the risk of stomach bleeding, so don't overdo it with ibuprofen either. I'm sometimes shocked how nonchalantly people mix residual alcohol with drugs without checking side effects.

PS: Paracetamol is a drug with pretty low side effects, but the dosage is really important. Even just doubling or tripling the dose can cause acute liver failure.

Paracetamol and alcohol is actually not a dangerous combination at all as far as the liver is concerned. That is why there is no warning against combining the two in the information leaflet that comes with it. Paracetamol is not toxic, but its intermediate metabolite NAPQI is. The enzyme that converts paracetamol into NAPQI is the same that breaks down alcohol, and it has a higher affinity for alcohol meaning that it will be too busy working on the alcohol to turn the paracetamol into toxic NAPQI.

Long-term alcohol abusers will develop more of this enzyme, so they are more likely to get liver damage from paracetamol though.

It's not just ulcers, you can get serious liver damage from combining alcohol and ibuprofen:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7921853/#:~:tex....

It is wildly superior to the other option (acetaminophen) which is both ineffective on hangovers and damaging to your liver which is already dealing with the alcohol. Alcoholics may have issues with the stomach lining that can be exacerbated by ibuprofen, but people who are just drinking don't typically have that problem.

The major part of hangovers is dehydration, try hydrating up, with electrolytes, before going to bed, maybe pop an aspirin if you already feeling the headache come on.

It's more a matter of not abusing it. Because it's relatively safe, many people take much, much more than the recommended dose.

How could the inventor of the drug have known at the time? That seems like something that would be discovered later.

That’s true, I was more surprised that the article didn’t have even a passing mention of “hey don’t do this”.