Jen notes that people have a tendency to over-medicate themselves:
Take headache pain, for instance. Your head is splitting. You take four of those nice Tylenol or Excedrin or Aleve, thinking that a double dose of the pain killer will kill the pain faster. But think about it Рwhether you took two pills (the normal dosage, as recommended on the bottle) or four pills, it̢۪s going to take the same length of time for those pills to dissolve and assimilate into your body. And you̢۪ve essentially wasted those other two pills, not to mention the potential long term (if not short term) health risk of the overdose.
There is a reason why pharmaceutical companies post meticulous instructions on their OTC medication bottles. Those instructions are not just something they print for fun or to clutter up the pretty labels. They are INSTRUCTIONS.
True enough. Of course, I’d take them more seriously if they didn’t tell me that I should take exactly the same dosage as a 12-year-old girl.
Considering how lawsuit averse pharmaceutical companies have to be, the “adult” dose that they recommend for anyone over 12 has to be incredibly weak. They have to figure out the weight of the tiniest 12-year-old and then factor in the reactions of the most sensitive of the sensitive. Somehow, I’m not sure that dosage is appropriate for a 190-pound man.
