Tylenol Relieves Pain of Social Rejection

Not invited to the neighborhood holiday party? It’s nothing that a couple of Tylenol tablets won’t take care of. The Los Angeles Times reports on a study led by researchers at the University of Kentucky whose results suggest that at least some of the same medication that relieves physical pain can also relieve the pain of heartache. The Times’ reports that one experiment divided 62 students into two groups, and gave one a daily dose of two Tylenol and the other a daily placebo. Every evening, the students were asked to note their general level of emotion. The researchers found from day nine and for the 12 days following, the group taking Tylenol reported significantly lower daily levels of hurt
feelings than did the group taking placebo. Wait, there’s more: another experiment required 25 students to play a ball tossing game designed to induce feelings of social rejection.Ten of the subjects took two acetaminophen tablets
each morning and two at night for three weeks; 15 took placebo pills for the same period. Brain scans revealed that compared with the subjects who had
taken the dummy pills, the acetaminophen group responded to the virtual
exclusion they experienced with far less activity in the brain regions
linked to the processing of physical and emotional pain.

Read more in the Los Angeles Times.