Whichever is closest.

Acetaminophen kills your liver. Ibuprofen melts the glue holding your guts together.

What matters right now is your headache.

Somewhat in order of action:

• check if I am clenching jaw/grinding my teeth, relax shoulders and neck, center my thoughts, lower blood pressure and pulse

• thoroughly flush sinuses (like spend 20 minutes or more at least)

• drink lots of water/electrolytes and caffeine

• reduce sensory input: dark quiet room with comfortable seating

• double dose of Sudafed and Diclofenac sodium

• jump into traffic

Ibuprofen but in ideal conditions cannabis

depending on severity, advil extra strength liquigels for a quick onset headache. If it won’t go away then another advil with a Tylenol at the same time, I call it Advenol.

Ibuprofen if I’m at work, but at home I usually take a short nap and have some coffee after, which works better for me.

Naproxen is my number one go-to answer for any sort of minor aches and pains. Headache? Cured. Muscle pains? It doesn’t get rid of them, but it does make it a lot less noticeable. Hangover, stomach ache, stubbed toe, hurt feelings? Naproxen has you covered. Love that stuff.

It will, however, cause internal bleeding if you drink alcohol while on it. So maybe don’t do that. I don’t drink so I love the stuff.

acetaminophen is my go to for that.

this is the only thing i found that knocks out a persistent migraine. 1 asprin 1 tylenol 1 aleve and a cup of coffee. about a half hour later the pain and nausea finally stop.

I prefer paracetamol since ibuprofen can create secondary effects in the gastric system.

Dipyrone. It’s OTC here in Brazil, but it seems to be restricted in other places.

Well, I’m not in a situation where I can go otc for headaches. I’m already using acetaminophen (paracetamol for the brits) non stop for chronic pain, and I have to save ibuprofen for stuff that never responds to other pain control methods because I’m an old fuck and I’m not supposed to take it at all, and it causes problems when I ignore that and take it anyway.

Luckily, my headaches almost always stem from stress and/or muscle tension in my neck, so it’s very rare they don’t respond to non chemical methods, and I happen to have prescription meds that are prn for those things if I want/need.

But, for headaches, I used to find caffeine more effective than analgesics, nsaid or otherwise. Even when I wasn’t drinking caffeine regularly (which means I know that it wasn’t just caffeine withdrawal causing the headache to begin with), a cup of coffee usually got rise of a headache faster and more thoroughly than NSAIDs.

But it was usually acetaminophen that would be my first pick when I went the OTC pill route. Less likely to irritate my already irritating bowel syndrome issues.

Tbh though, none of the OTC analgesics are great at getting rid of a headache. Some of the older studies and double blind tests I saw put them about the same as placebo for headaches, though that’s been years since I looked up anything about it.

I pretty much always go ibuprofen, but aspirin is fine.

I’m pretty sure acetaminophen is snake oil though (this is a joke but I can’t recall ever having it resolve a headache for me like ibuprofen does).

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It depends on the cause, and your own biology.

Aspirin reduces pain signals but also reduces blood clotting, If your headache is from vasculature issues in and around your brain it’s extra insurance.

Acetaminophen just reduces pain signals in the nervous system. It doesn’t have any secondary advantageous effects but it is easier on your stomach.

Ibuprofen reduces pain signals and also as an anti-inflammatory. So if your headache is caused from minor swelling in the head it’s the obvious choice.

I feel like at least in the US most people tend to overtake ibuprofen when they’d probably be better suited with Tylenol or aspirin.

Aleve (naproxin sodium) is the only OTC painkiller that reliably works for me. So first I take one, and if that doesn’t work after an hour or so, I take another and a nap.