Summary:
Acetaminophen can be helpful, but has to be used in small amounts. The dosage has been revised to 3000mg per day for those not suffering from any health concerns with your liver.
Taking even less is recommended for people as they age, or if you suffer from liver disease or any form of hepatitis.
Taking pain killing drugs like acetaminophen shouldn’t be a daily habit if you can help it.
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Transcript: What is Acetaminophen?
Dr. Heather Tick: Acetaminophen is a pain killing drug that can be used and can be helpful, but has to be used in small amounts. It used to be that we thought that the dose per day could go to up to 4,000 milligrams (mg). Now, it’s been revised downwards to 3,000 milligrams (mg) and should be further reduced as you get older and your liver function may slow down, and if you have any liver disease, any form of hepatitis or other kind of liver disease. If you’ve been told you have fatty liver, you can’t even take that much and we don’t really know what the safe dose is.
The problem is that when you’re doing something that damages your liver, your liver has a lot of reserve capacity, to keep doing its function even when part of it is failing. So your liver is a really big organ and you can actually damage a very large portion of your liver before you’re ever going to see it in your liver function tests and that’s the danger here. So we need to use these types of drugs (like acetaminophen) to a minimum. It’s good that we have them, they do help us with pain but they shouldn’t be a daily habit if you can help it.
