I met a couple last week through a club we both belong to and who, I think, are going to turn out to be great friends. They’re younger than we are. In fact, the woman is young enough to be our daughter. We’ve had some interesting discussions about things new friends don’t usually talk about. One of the points I felt compelled to make to them during our getting-to-know-each-other phase is that the more you know you don’t know, the more you know you don’t know.
That’s why, perhaps, I’m so intensely curious these days. About everything. And why I don’t discount the possibility that anything I hear or see MAY be true. I can’t say with certainty anymore that something is NOT true, even when I see it with my own two eyes, so I’ve begun to practice much more open-mindedness about…well, everything. (Except maybe the flat earthers…I have a really hard time understanding the explanation for those who argue the earth is flat.)
I was at a garage sale some months ago and picked up a book called How Does Aspirin Find a Headache. I knew I’d use the information in the book in a blog post someday. Lucky for you, today’s the day. Here’s something you may not have actually ever wondered about, and I’ll bet you didn’t know.
My mom asked me the question the book is named after a few months ago…how does a pill you take know what you’re taking it for? I imagine most medications are the chicken or the egg sort of thing, You take a specific pill for a specific physical ailment because the doctor knows what you need. But there’s no doctor needed for aspirin (or Tylenol or Ibuprofen). Those over-the-counter medications are generalists on the pain scene. It is curious how an inanimate, itty-bitty tablet or capsule knows whether you have a headache. a back ache, or a wrenched knee. Mom thinks I’m the smartest person she knows (she says that often—thanks, mom!), but I didn’t know the answer to that question.
Luckily, finding that kind of information is as easy as picking up your smart phone.
The simple explanation is that when cells in your body become injured or damaged, they release a chemical called prostaglandin. Your body’s nerve endings are very sensitive to that chemical. Then, when the nerve endings sense that release, they transmit a message through the nervous system to your brain, telling it where and how much an area of the body hurts. Pain relievers work — all throughout the body — by preventing injured cells from releasing prostaglandin. When cells stop releasing prostaglandin, the nervous system stops sending pain messages to the brain. When the brain stops receiving pain messages, you stop feeling pain.
Prostaglandin is a far more complicated hormone-like substance found in every tissue in the body of both humans and other animals. But for our purposes today, all you need to know is that when you take a pain pill, the prostaglandins are the heroes in showing the way to the pain you want relieved. The pain medication only works on malfunctioning cells and tissues. It doesn’t cure disease, it only alleviates the pain symptoms.
The Greeks discovered the therapeutic value of willow bark, which provides salicylic acid, about 2,500 years ago. In 1899, Bayer was the first company to commercially market a synthetic willow bark derivative, called acetylsalicylic acid (ASA) aspirin. They named their product Aspirin. Though they knew it was a great drug to alleviate pain, they really didn’t know why or how it worked until 70 years later when researcher John Vane discovered that aspirin inhibited the production of prostaglandins.
We don’t reach for aspirin as much as we used to because it’s been linked to stomach and kidney problems, in 1955, McNeil Laboratories (now part of the Johnson & Johnson conglomerate) introduced an aspirin-free pain reliever and fever reducer called Tylenol. It was initially marketed as a fever-reducer for children and packaged like a red fire truck with the slogan, “for little hotheads.” Clever!
Ibuprofen was also invented, in 1961 in England, as an alternative to aspirin. It’s an anti-inflammatory drug, and works on inhibiting the production of prostaglandins by decreasing a certain enzyme activity. It wasn’t marketed in the US until 1974. Only available then by prescription, it didn’t have any clever marketing strategy to the general public at the time. Those were the halcyon days when the general public wasn’t inundated by TV commercials urging them to ask their doctors if a drug could help whatever ache, pain, or health annoyance they were experiencing that day.
There you go. You’re smarter now than before you read this post today. Next time someone asks, you’ll look like the smartest person in the room.
I wonder about so many things. We sure do live in an amazing time. I think back to my childhood. I loved the reference section of the library and spent a lot of time there. Between the set of encyclopedias my parents bought for us (and went out of date quickly) and the library, I had my nose stuck in big, thick, meaty books a lot to research things I didn’t know. Not anymore. We carry all the answers to all the questions in the history of the entire universe, as we know it, in our pockets.
Ain’t life grand.
P.S. There’s a major storm brewing in the southern Gulf of Mexico. We’re just a bit out of the cone of uncertainty this morning, but that doesn’t mean much. Anything could happen so we’re preparing accordingly. And praying for all those in the path. Glad our new hurricane windows are installed.
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