Can medicines “soften” and “mend” our hearts?

Even if you have never taken acetaminophen in your life, you have probably heard about it, haven't you? Its active ingredient is also known as acetaminophen, and the medicine is usually indicated to help alleviate cold symptoms and all sorts of mild pain such as headaches, toothache, backache, menstrual cramps etc.

For, according to Dan Lewis of the Now I Know portal, some researchers believe that acetaminophen could also be used to soften our hearts as well as treat the pain of rejection. As explained, studies have indicated that the drug seems to influence our anxiety levels and our moral judgment.

Stone hearts

To test the theory that acetaminophen may affect our judgment, scientists at the University of British Columbia conducted experiments with 120 people divided into two groups. In one test, the researchers asked members of one of the groups to write about death, and the other to write about any everyday activity.

But before the participants began their tasks, the researchers split each group into two, giving one half a member placebo and two acetaminophen pills to the other half. Then the scientists asked everyone to think about a hypothetical situation in which they had to decide how much bail each participant would be willing to pay to release a person arrested for prostitution.

The results showed that participants who wrote about the activity were less morally harsh and set much lower bail than those who wrote about death and took the placebo. Interestingly, within the “death group, ” those receiving paracetamol also set lower guarantees.

In another test, the researchers asked one of the groups to watch an episode of the Simpsons, while the other group watched a rather crazy David Lynch movie in which rabbit-headed people roam an apartment. Here also half of each group received a placebo or paracetamol dose, and then everyone had to try individuals arrested during a street fight. For the result was similar to the previous test.

Broken hearts

With respect to emotional pain, researchers at the University of Kentucky conducted research based on the fact that physical pain and anxiety caused by social rejection share the same neural process, as well as a subjective component, which we perceive in the form. of suffering. So could paracetamol be administered to "mend" broken hearts?

To do this, the scientists divided 62 volunteers into two groups, and gave them daily doses of acetaminophen. Every day, study participants had to answer questionnaires that measured their “social suffering” - based on issues such as bullying, teasing etc. - and, as the researchers predicted, anxiety levels decreased among volunteers taking the drug.

In another experiment, the scientists increased the dose of acetaminophen and, after three weeks, put participants to play a video game designed to create the feeling of social rejection. This time, the researchers did not use questionnaires, but subjected the volunteers to magnetic resonance imaging, finding that the brains of the individuals taking the medicine responded less intensely to the rejection.

Implications

It is important to keep in mind that the experiments we described above were conducted with a very small number of participants - meaning that many other tests need to be performed to prove the action of the drug. However, everything seems to indicate that acetaminophen seems to affect the way we make our judgments, making us more complacent and nice.

In addition, the drug also seems to be able to not only relieve physical pain but also the pain caused by rejection, meaning that it could pave the way for the development of new treatments for people suffering from chronic anxiety, for example. .

But furthermore, the findings about the unusual effects of acetaminophen also raise an interesting question: millions of people take this medicine regularly - and don't even realize that it can act on much more than their headache or cold.

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Note that self-medication can be very dangerous. So, if you think you are suffering from a broken heart or need to soften your heart, see a healthcare professional to discuss your case.