Way too many people are taking way too much Tylenol — and Johnson & Johnson’s latest window-dressing maneuvers won’t fix a thing.

J&J says the changes it will make — next year, mind you, not today — will help stop the overuse that’s turned the drug’s main ingredient, acetaminophen, into the leading cause of liver failure in the United States.

But they’re not changing the drug.

They’re not even changing the dose.

They’re simply changing the maximum number of pills a patient should take each day from eight to six.

Big stinking deal — and when you consider the musty odor that’s led to a recall of some Tylenol products, I do mean “stinking.” Anyone who’s been paying attention can tell you that the real problem isn’t the instructions on the label, or even that awful smell.

It’s the drug itself — along with the fact that drug makers have put it into just about everything from painkillers like J&J’s Tylenol to cold meds like Procter & Gamble’s Nyquil… not to mention prescription drugs such as Vicodin and Percocet.

Many people overdose on acetaminophen simply because they have no idea how much they’ve taken.

Then, they find out the hard way what happens when you take too much — and liver failure is just the beginning. One study earlier this year found people who pop just four Tylenols a week have double the risk of blood cancers.

Two other recent studies found that kids given acetaminophen regularly — say, to reduce an ordinary and often harmless low-grade fever — have a higher risk of asthma, wheezing, and other breathing problems.

And let’s not forget the infamous recalls of both regular and children’s Tylenol lines due to quality control issues ranging from that musty odor I mentioned earlier to bacterial contamination and “tiny particles” — including bits of metal — in the medicine.

Throw in all the other problems linked to acetaminophen — nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain and allergic reactions, just to name a few — and it’s bad news all around, no matter how many pills you take.

Sit, speak, and play dead — dogs can learn plenty of tricks, if you’re willing to take a little time to teach them.

But the best trick of all comes naturally: Pets can chase away asthma and allergies the way a guard dog can scare off burglars — and it doesn’t take a loud bark or a lot of teeth.

In fact, even a lazy old cat has this power — because kids born to mothers who had pets during pregnancy have lower levels of the IgE antibodies linked to allergies and asthma.

Researchers at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit tested those antibody levels in 1,187 babies at birth, six months, and two years, and found that the kids who had prenatal pet exposure had up to 33 percent fewer than children from petless homes.

The biggest benefit went to children of European, Asian, or Middle Eastern descent, who got the full 33 percent drop.

For black children, the difference was only 10 percent — but still enough to put them at least a baby step ahead of asthma and allergies, and that’s nothing to sneeze at.

Babies born vaginally to women with pets also got a bigger boost, with IgE levels 16 percent lower than C-section infants.

In other words, pets don’t always cause allergies and asthma — and they might even prevent them.

But while that means Spot can “stay” in homes with a new baby, there is one threat even the roughest, toughest Rottweiler can’t chase away: mold.

Having this stuff around the house could lead to a childhood of breathing misery.

Researchers examined data on 176 children who were believed to be at high risk for asthma because of a family history of the disease. They also used a test called the environmental relative moldiness index, which measures levels of 36 different types of mold to create an overall “mold burden.”

And that mold brings some burden. Kids from homes with the highest mold burdens were three times more likely to come down with asthma during the seven-year study period than kids with little mold exposure.

The researchers wrote in Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology that parents of kids at risk for asthma should make sure they find and fix water damage and get rid of all the mold — which is pretty good advice for everyone else, too.

It’s a breath of fresh air for asthma sufferers — and yet that’s all it is: Air.

Believe it or not, plain old air delivered via an asthma inhaler can actually bring as much relief as an inhaler filled with a common asthma med.

And that’s nothing to wheeze at.

Researchers asked 39 asthma patients to make 12 visits to a medical clinic, spaced between three and seven days apart, to try one of four treatment options at each visit: an inhaler with the drug albuterol, an inhaler with plain air, sham acupuncture, or nothing at all.

By the end of the study, everyone had tried everything three times. And after each treatment (or lack of treatment), the volunteers were given tests to measure lung function and asked to rate their level of improvement on a scale of 1 to 10.

The only thing that didn’t work much was no treatment at all — and even that left some patients feeling at least a little better, with an average reported improvement of 21 percent.

The drug, empty inhaler and sham acupuncture, on the other hand, led to improvements of 50 percent, 45 percent and  6 percent, respectively — a difference the researchers say was not statistically significant.

The drug did win when it came to more objective measures — it actually did a much better job of opening the airways, boosting lung function by 20 percent versus 7 percent for everything else (including no treatment at all).

But here’s the thing: The patients didn’t actually feel the difference — and that’s what really counts, right?

It’s not the first case of fake treatments leading to real relief: Other studies have shown that placebos can work for everything from pain to depression to stomach disorders.

One groundbreaking study found that placebos can even work when people know they’re taking one.

But for a condition like asthma, a placebo alone often won’t be enough.

Asthma is often triggered or worsened by weight, allergies (including food sensitivities) and stress — and if you can get all three under control, you’ll find yourself breathing easier than ever.

You might reach the point where you won’t need an inhaler anymore — even if it’s just an empty one.

Here’s a commercial you won’t see anytime soon:

Diet soda – now with extra risk!

No, that won’t exactly get people slurping.

But unlike the usual nonsense about extra flavor and taste, it would actually be honest – because a new study finds that people who drink diet soda regularly could find a heart attack or stroke at the bottom of their next bottle.

Researchers tracked 2,564 New Yorkers for at least nine years, giving them regular surveys to check on their eating and drinking habits and regular exams.

After adjusting for risk factors found in those exams and lifestyle factors such as smoking, they found that people who pop the top on a diet soda every day were 61 percent more likely to suffer from vascular events such as heart attack and stroke than those who didn’t drink the stuff.

And here’s the part that might surprise you most: Even people who drank regular sugary soda didn’t have that risk, according to the study presented at the International Stroke Conference.

The natural implication here is that there’s a specific ingredient only in diet soda that’s causing all those extra heart attacks and strokes.

Anyone else see where this is going?

The answer is in the artificial sweeteners, the chemical replacements for sugar that are actually worse than the real thing – even if they don’t carry the calories.

Aspartame in particular – the sweetener used in most diet drinks – has been linked to headaches, insomnia, mood problems, stomach disorders, nerve damage, chest pain, asthma, seizures, tremors and so much more.

And if the new study is true, you can tack heart attack and stroke onto that list.

But in the ultimate cop-out, the researchers didn’t mention sweeteners – or even come out and say it’s time to stop drinking diet.

Instead, they said this needs further study.

Boooooooo!

There’s no reason to wait for more studies – because all the evidence points in the same direction: This junk is dangerous.

And get this: Even the most basic promise of diet soda is a lie – because studies have found that it doesn’t really help people lose weight or keep it off, and may even increase the odds of metabolic syndrome.

The reality is, there is no good reason to drink soda, diet or otherwise. All sweeteners – real and fake – are bubbling over with the potential for serious health problems.

But they’re not the only dangerous ingredients in soda. They might not even be the most dangerous ingredients.