All drugs are dangerous. Before a person suffering with a migraine headache takes an over-the-counter medication they should be asking the question “Is the possible benefit worth the risk of taking that drug?” William Osler, M.D. once said “The person who takes medicine must recover twice; once from the disease and once from the medicine.” Sadly, this can be all too true.
Dr. William Bennett, head of nephrology at Oregon Health Sciences University, estimates that over-the-counter painkillers are responsible for as many as 20% of the 125,000 cases of end-stage kidney disease in the United States.
Some medications have side effects that can be more serious than the painful migraine headaches themselves. Aspirin can cause internal hemorrhaging, or bleeding in the stomach. According to the Dec. 1996 issue of Health News and Views taking Tylenol once every 4 days increases the chance of liver damage by more than 400%.
The main pain-relief ingredient in Tylenol is acetaminophen which has been shown to cause liver disease. “Tylenol,” as reported in the January 1998 issue of Forbes magazine, “can be very dangerous in...