If anyone reads this for medical advice (and I really hope they wouldn't be taking advice directly from HN without any filtering), you don't combine them in equal proportions.
Yes, you combine 500mg of acetaminophen and 150mg of ibuprofen. Ibuprofen only comes in 200mg pills, so if you want to be really spot on, take the liquid stuff for kids.
It still seems odd. Both Tylenol and ibuprofen are good to keep around with your basic home health care supplies. They are available in cheap generics without a prescription. They have different things they are best at, so stocking both is quite reasonable.
Unless they need to be prescribed in ratios that can't be achieved reasonably with the cheap OTC pill dose sizes, it's not clear to my why I'd want a combined bill instead of just taking separate pills.
Taking more than one pill is less convenient, but except for people who have trouble with pills in general I doubt they would want to pay more for that convenience.
Even in the case of fairly high doses, it is not too bad. A few months ago, for example, I somehow managed to get a painful rotator cuff injury while sleeping (no idea how), and my doctor told me to take 1000 mg Tylenol every 8 hours and 800 mg of ibuprofen every 8 hours. At the most common OTC strengths, that would be two Tylenol pills and 4 ibuprofen pills.
It's a damn shame that doctors often fail to tell people about cheaper and more irritating alternatives, but there's nothing wrong with giving people the option to pay more for a better experience.
You often see this in terms of number of times a drug had to be taken per day. There'll be a generic that needs to be taken say three times a day, and a newer drug that only needs to be taken once.
I highly doubt every manufacturer of Ibuprofen or Acetaminophen would decide to throw in the towel if this new drug was released.
iudqnolq|6 years ago
selectodude|6 years ago
tzs|6 years ago
Unless they need to be prescribed in ratios that can't be achieved reasonably with the cheap OTC pill dose sizes, it's not clear to my why I'd want a combined bill instead of just taking separate pills.
Taking more than one pill is less convenient, but except for people who have trouble with pills in general I doubt they would want to pay more for that convenience.
Even in the case of fairly high doses, it is not too bad. A few months ago, for example, I somehow managed to get a painful rotator cuff injury while sleeping (no idea how), and my doctor told me to take 1000 mg Tylenol every 8 hours and 800 mg of ibuprofen every 8 hours. At the most common OTC strengths, that would be two Tylenol pills and 4 ibuprofen pills.
qxnqd|6 years ago
leakybit|6 years ago
iudqnolq|6 years ago
It's a damn shame that doctors often fail to tell people about cheaper and more irritating alternatives, but there's nothing wrong with giving people the option to pay more for a better experience.
You often see this in terms of number of times a drug had to be taken per day. There'll be a generic that needs to be taken say three times a day, and a newer drug that only needs to be taken once.
I highly doubt every manufacturer of Ibuprofen or Acetaminophen would decide to throw in the towel if this new drug was released.