Boots Paracetamol Capsules

After a trip to my local 'out of hours' doctors surgery yesterday I was diagnosed with the flu and advised to take Paracetamol to bring my temperature down, and also to help deal with the various aches and pains I'm having. While I've always got Ibuprofen in the house, I don't tend to buy Paracetamol unless I need them as I find them pretty useless at dealing with most things. I popped into Boots on the way home and bought a box of their own brand 500mg Paracetamol Capsules, not through any type of loyalty to Boots but because I find one brand of Paracetamol is pretty much the same as any other brand so I buy the own brand version of whatever shop I happen to be in.

They're quite long capsules but easy to swallow, they slide down my throat without sticking as some plastic encased capsules do and I suspect I could take them without a drink in an emergency - although definitely not with the dry mouth I'm experiencing at the moment!

These Paracetamol work fairly speedily, they take a while to kick in like any other Paracetamol but within half an hour I was starting to feel a little bit better in myself and after an hour I took my temperature and it had come down a couple of degrees. This isn't an exact science obviously as when you have the flu your temperature will naturally fluctuate, but my achiness had also dulled down slightly which can only have been the effects of the Paracetamol as I hadn't taken anything else at that point. You're advised to take two Paracetamol every four hours, and no more than eight in a 24 hour period - this means that you'll probably need to take a top-up of something else (ensuring that this 'something else' doesn't also have Paracetamol in it) as the capsules don't provide relief for more than three hours at the most and once the effects wear off you'll quickly start feeling poorly again. For me, two of these followed by two Nurofen a couple of hours later do the trick to keep the aches at bay - the Nurofen obviously being more effective for the pain, but it's the weaker Paracetamol that deals with fever so equally important in my opinion.

I'm still taking them as my temperature is going up and down today; one minute I'm freezing cold and the next I'm literally dripping with sweat. I wanted to see if I was getting better this morning so didn't take anything other than the Paracetamol as with the copious amounts of Ibuprofen I'm taking it's hard to tell whether my aches are getting any better - they're not, and as soon as I realised the Paracetamol weren't really touching them I quaffed my beloved Nurofen (and a honey and lemon drink) and felt much better within minutes. The only thing the Paracetamol did help was a niggly headache I've had, which is down to blocked up sinuses, and also a thumping (but very minor) pain in both ears which I presume is an effect of being so generally bunged up.

I'll buy these Paracetamol again if I'm in Boots and realise I need them, at under 30p for 16 capsules I think that's average value for money when it comes to these pills as Paracetamol are always very cheap to buy. These are no more and no less effective than any other brand (well, actually they're a lot more effective than some suspected placebo Paracetamol I bought from Asda a while ago) so I'm happy to have them in my medicine cabinet in case of another flu-type episode.