Video: https://www.tiktok.com/@distilledscience/video/7556382605705366815
Transcript
Tylenol during pregnancy can be associated with a very increased risk of autism. So taking Tylenol is not good. I'll say it. It's not good. Not good ever? Absolutes are rarely scientific. Don't take it. Don't take it. There's no downside in not taking it. This implies that Tylenol only works on symptoms and never has any actual health benefit. But if you think about it, pain can impact sleep and stress levels. And over 120 studies have shown that poor sleep during pregnancy negative health impacts on both the mother and the fetus. For the mother, these include preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, and hypertension, and increased C-section risk. And for the fetus, it includes preterm and stillbirth. Another study showed that sleep disturbances during the second trimester were associated with a 53% increased risk for ADHD in the child. So if lowering pain improves sleep and stress, that's a health benefit that needs to be weighed against any potential risks. And we'll get to those. But Tylenol doesn't just help with pain. lowers fevers. I've got another video in the works about why I think most people are a bit too hasty to use Tylenol or n-sates like ibuprofen to lower their fevers, because a fever is the body's natural defense mechanism to fight infection, and anything under 105 degrees is unlikely to be a problem for you. But what if you're pregnant? Guys, just bear with me. Our immune systems evolved to prioritize the mother, but developing fetuses are more sensitive. When a mother's body temperature rises above 102 degrees Fahrenheit, 39 Celsius, it puts stress on the fetus. This meta-analysis found that is associated with a 1.5 to 3x increased risk of congenital heart defects, neural tube defects, and oral clefts. But in 8 out of 10 studies that looked at it, taking fever-lowering drugs lowered the risk. One showed that taking the drugs tripled the risk, but I looked at it, and it turned out that was a Chinese study that used a drug that is not legal in the U.S. And what about autism? This study found a 30% increased incidence of autism in mothers who had a fever and took a drug like Tylenol to try and lower it. Which sounds bad until you look closer, and didn't take medication was 2.5 times the autism incidence compared to mothers who didn't get sick at all. If you had stopped at this, you might assume that Tylenol caused the increased risk. It makes it hard to isolate the effect of Tylenol itself, because Tylenol is something that you'd take when you have something else going wrong. This is called a confounder. So even if there is a legitimate risk that Tylenol itself increases autism likelihood, that would still have to be weighed against the real risk of high fever plus disrupted sleep and stress, which is why we should not shame women into thinking they should only take it. For instance, in cases of extremely high fever, that you feel you can't tough it out, you can't do it, I guess there's that. That advice will cause harm. Talk to your doctor. Next, we'll look at the evidence for if Tylenol itself really is linked to autism.
Additional notes
It should be illegal for the president to give medical advice while not reading from a teleprompter. In his address, he does sometimes mention that there are times when Tylenol should be taken when there is a high enough fever, and that you should talk to your doctor about it. But then in the same breath, he interjects his own opinion saying that you just shouldn't take it and that instead you should just tough it out, implying that the decision to take it is some type of failure of fortitude. This is a topic that NEEDS NUANCE. And it seems like there are many aspects to how tylenol works in the human body that may never have been properly explained to him. I'm working on a much longer YouTube video and article where I'll have the space to go into all these topics in the detail that they really deserve. The juiciest tidbits might be saved for my newsletter! #science #acetaminophen #Tylenol #stem
References
- Studies on poor sleep during pregnancy, maternal/fetal outcomes, sleep disturbance and ADHD, fever in pregnancy, congenital defects, fever-lowering medication, and autism risk are discussed in transcript; DOI/PMID/source links not listed in workbook.
- Trump address / Tylenol pregnancy advice discussed in caption and transcript; direct source URL not listed in workbook.