Aspirin is bad for you ... AGAIN!

[JoeWras]

Inspired by the Egg and Statin threads, let's talk aspirin. The advice now is basically no aspirin for heart attack prevention.

I can't keep up with the changing ideas on CV health.

Next thing you know is they'll say a blood pressure of 130/80 is no good. Oh wait, they already have. Maybe we need a fourth thread.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/17/health/aspirin-heart-disease-guidelines/index.html

If you're a healthy older adult looking for ways to reduce your risk of heart attack and stroke, don't turn to that age-old standby: daily low-dose aspirin. It's no longer recommended as a preventative for older adults who don't have a high risk or existing heart disease, according to guidelines announced Sunday by the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association.

And..
https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-gu...-aspirin-to-prevent-heart-disease-11552859677

 

[Nemo2]

Avoid living - it'll kill ya.

 

[street]

I seen that a few weeks ago also. My mother took a bay aspirin every morning for years. Her Doctor told her to do so. I carry them in a vest when I hike which is a lot just in case I thought I was having a heart attack. Lol

 

[EarlyBirdly]

"On some level, everything in this Country is a Lie or a Racket."


" Believe half of what you see and nothing of what you hear."


" Follow the Money."

 

[WestUniversity]

I’ve almost given up trying to make sense of what doctors and researchers are saying anymore.

I can say now that I truly understand what they mean by the phrase, “the practice of medicine”. They still don’t have it right...

 

[GalaxyBoy]

If you are 70 or older.

 

[Dtail]

I’ve almost given up trying to make sense of what doctors and researchers are saying anymore.

I can say now that I truly understand what they mean by the phrase, “the practice of medicine”. They still don’t have it right...

One reason not crazy about doctors. It is very much "could be this, could be that" etc.
One plus one will always equal two. lol

 

[ShokWaveRider]

"On some level, everything in this Country is a Lie or a Racket."

" Believe half of what you see and nothing of what you hear."" Follow the Money."

Gotta say it is getting worse, and it is encouraged. Lying for profit seems the norm now.

 

[Nick12]

This is giving me a headache. I like to recall Mark Twain's quote

" if you tell the truth, then you don't have to remember anything".

 

[HFWR]

If you’re not high-risk, or have existing heart disease...

IOW, don’t treat what you don’t have?

 

[CRLLS]

If I live another 10 years, then aspirin and eggs and butter (and everything else) will be "good" for me again. I just have to make it thru these dark days until they change their minds again. Or maybe I'll just take my chances. Might as well make my last days enjoyable.

 

[sengsational]

Guidelines from organizations that also have a guideline for 80% of the population to be taking a statin. Hmm.

 

[ls99]

I’ve almost given up trying to make sense of what doctors and researchers are saying anymore.

I can say now that I truly understand what they mean by the phrase, “the practice of medicine”. They still don’t have it right...

Yeah, but they do need and have a license, to practice or worse...
I have been saved by a few and nearly finished off by some.


IMHO Doc's are very useful, and often very good for diagnostics... Not so sure about their treatment plans. If 25 years ago I followed CV treatment plans, I'd likely be pushing up daisies. The meds sure made feel crappy and barely able to walk. Even dropped the ASA 10 years ago.
OTOH life is a terminal dis ease.
Edit Add: maybe the trick to lessen the negative effect of ASA is to dissolve in alcohol and apply topically. Longer absorption time but more is absorbed. Let's hear from the pharmacists.

 

[NW-Bound]

This is giving me a headache. I like to recall Mark Twain's quote

" if you tell the truth, then you don't have to remember anything".

People are not lying. They just don't know what the truth is.

Perhaps people are just finding this out. That is, only very few of us will live to 100, and not in very good physical conditions at that. The rest of us will die in our 80s if we are lucky, or in the 50s or 60s if we are not. There's no medicine that can help us. All you can hope for is to die easily when your time comes, and not in pain and misery.

I am tempted to link in here a somber song, but seeing that it is just Monday I will spare y'all the sad mood.

 

[Teacher Terry]

My aunt has been very lucky and still lives alone at 93.

 

[imoldernu]

The articles are becoming more involved and less intelligible. Three or four reads of a non-headline article, can make some sense... But!!!... as most are produced by profit making businesses, getting down and dirty into the numbers can help in deciding whether or not the articles have meaningful merit.

Think of it this way... Eating two saltine crackers as day can more than double the risk of dying than eating just one.

True.... the risk of dying from eating just one saltines a day, is .0002%, while this risk is doubled when eating two. .0004%.

The second, even more questionable cause for caution in reading too much into the scare headlines, is that of sampling. Even 60 years ago, when I was studying biology and psychology.... the first caveat was to determine the means of calculating results.

Preconceived notions/expectations
Reason for the study
Term of the sampling
Pre or Post results
Control of variables.

The recent "news" on the effects of eating eggs is an example of an embarrassingly sloppy wide ranging "study" of disparate information, collected for widely different reasons, at different times, after the fact and then forced into a questionable format...

Are you old enough to remember when it was an accepted fact that frogs cause warts?

 

[Fireup2020]

Cardiologist has me taking 2 81mg tablets per day - my birth father died from a heart attack at age 34 (as did his father) and his sister had two stents put in at age 50. I'm only 48, but I'm gonna keep taking aspirin, statins, and BP meds per my doc.

There is fun to be had in the not too distant future! (retirement!!)

 

[imoldernu]

Follow up rant

Rant... Not just for aspirin or eggs, but for the health industry and in particular the pharmaceutical industry.

On my above post,i mentioned some numbers. I'd like to go a little further and get this off my chest.

I have AFIB... as do 34 million others. There have been numerous new medications said to reduce the risk of blood clots, and the meme is that doing this will go far towards protecting those who might be subject to Stroke... The inference is that two of the major drugs will lessen the chance of stroke "significantly"... though at this point, after careful searching of the internet, including medical websites, i can find no definition of "significantly".

The two drugs in question are Xarelto and Eliquis, both of which receive much TV advertising. The cost of these drugs, even with subsidies or GoodRX, comes to from $5,000 to $7500 per year.

The studies that I have read are similar, and though somewhat different, very obscure... as I would expect that taking the drug would reduce my chance of dying for a stroke (risk enhanced by AFIB)... would be like, maybe 10 to 30 percent. Not so... First... the number of AFIB associated deaths is not even mentioned. Second, as far as I could see, the overall risk factor in the expanded studies, was somewhere under 2% in the first place.

Maybe I'm just getting too old to understand this stuff anymore, but I would have hoped that somewhere along the way, there would be enough morality within the pharmaceutical companies to present information in a way that reasonable people could make their decision without be subjected to scare tactics.

end of rant

 

[HFWR]

New study links saltine crackers with increased risk of death!

 

[ejman]

New study links saltine crackers with increased risk of death!

Indeed, a well funded study by a top researcher has found that eating as many a two saltines a day will DOUBLE your risk of death. Now why is it that useful research like this is not posted earlier in the interwebs? all we get is nonsensical fake news instead of useful stuff.

 

[Independent]

Rant... Not just for aspirin or eggs, but for the health industry and in particular the pharmaceutical industry.

On my above post,i mentioned some numbers. I'd like to go a little further and get this off my chest.

I have AFIB... as do 34 million others. There have been numerous new medications said to reduce the risk of blood clots, and the meme is that doing this will go far towards protecting those who might be subject to Stroke... The inference is that two of the major drugs will lessen the chance of stroke "significantly"... though at this point, after careful searching of the internet, including medical websites, i can find no definition of "significantly".

The two drugs in question are Xarelto and Eliquis, both of which receive much TV advertising. The cost of these drugs, even with subsidies or GoodRX, comes to from $5,000 to $7500 per year.

The studies that I have read are similar, and though somewhat different, very obscure... as I would expect that taking the drug would reduce my chance of dying for a stroke (risk enhanced by AFIB)... would be like, maybe 10 to 30 percent. Not so... First... the number of AFIB associated deaths is not even mentioned. Second, as far as I could see, the overall risk factor in the expanded studies, was somewhere under 2% in the first place.

Maybe I'm just getting too old to understand this stuff anymore, but I would have hoped that somewhere along the way, there would be enough morality within the pharmaceutical companies to present information in a way that reasonable people could make their decision without be subjected to scare tactics.

end of rant

I agree that getting data with numbers is very hard. It seems to me that if the drug company is going to advertise directly to the public, they need to put "number of people [getting this benefit] per hundred taking the drug, in excess oft the number reporting the same benefit from a placebo".

i.e. if 20% of the people taking this pain medication report "significant" reductions in pain, and 13% of the people taking a placebo report significant reductions in pain, then the number above is 9.

I'm quite sure that won't happen unless the gov't requires it, because I think "morality within the pharmaceutical companies" doesn't exist.

 

[Independent]

This aspirin guideline makes me feel good. I haven't been taking aspirin because I'm concerned about stomach bleeding. In my case, I thought that was a bigger risk than the heart attack.

 

[Oz investor]

unlike the statins i have been prescribed where i MIGHT be able to persuade the medical to swap to alternative strategies

the 100mg of aspirin daily is MANDATORY until 2022 ( and probably for life ) the co-partner ( Plavix ) of this treatment strategy does have a fall-back strategy ( Warfarin ) if things starts going badly wrong .

*** " if you tell the truth, then you don't have to remember anything". ***

works for me also ( and no one believes me anyway , a double bonus )

i suppose i could always opt for suicide , but would ( the fear of ) aspirin be blamed for that as well

 

[Oz investor]

This aspirin guideline makes me feel good. I haven't been taking aspirin because I'm concerned about stomach bleeding. In my case, I thought that was a bigger risk than the heart attack.

i AM bleeding but the tests on urine ( blood ) and gastrointestinal ( bleeding ) persistently return negative results

i guess the next quest for an answer scares them ( the medical professionals )

the hemoglobin count keeps on sliding ( but not enough for a bone marrow biopsy ... yet )

 

[donheff]

This aspirin guideline makes me feel good. I haven't been taking aspirin because I'm concerned about stomach bleeding. In my case, I thought that was a bigger risk than the heart attack.

+1 I get nose bleeds a lot in the winter and dropped the aspirin years ago since I didn;t want to exacerbate them. I just turned 70 and the new guidelines suggest I don't take them anyway. Brain bleeds are the risk the daily baby aspirins present.