Tylenol, Advil, or aspirin?

[xoxoxoBruce]

What's the difference between Tylenol, Advil, and aspirin? Which is the best to take for pain?

So I was surprised when I found out there's a huge gap between how pain researchers think about this drug and how the public does. More specifically, every researcher I contacted for this piece said some variation of what Andrew Moore, a pain researcher at Oxford University, told me: Tylenol doesn't actually work that well for pain. To be more exact, "I can't imagine why anybody would take acetaminophen," he said.

Moore has done a number of systematic reviews on over-the-counter pain medications, looking at all the available evidence to figure out which ones work best for various problems. I asked him to describe the overall success rates for the most common three: acetaminophen (like Tylenol), ibuprofen (like Advil), and aspirin.

Like all good evidence-based medicine thinkers, he was able to provide a very practical answer: "If you’re talking about aspirin in doses of 500 to 1,000 mg or two tablets, 30 percent of people get relief from acute pain. For acetaminophen at doses of 500 to 1,000 mg, about 40 percent have a success. For ibuprofen, in its normal formulation at something around 400 mg or two tablets, about 50 percent have success."