I'm not a fan of aspirin as you can gather from my article about the dangers of this drug [1]. However, it is still very much in fashion and large numbers of people take some evey day, urged on by their doctors. Yes, people suffer the ill effects of aspirin, some minor, some severe, but the fashion trend is undaunted.
It is getting to be a long-running fashion and some data now collected is quite interesting. For example while some evidence does suggest that men taking low-dose aspirin gain some heart attack prevention value, it appears that women do not. In fact researchers found that aspirin did not reduce heart attack risk in women, but it did increase their risk for gastric bleeding.
Dr. Hennekens and his colleagues randomly assigned 39,876 apparently healthy women age 45 and older to take a 100-mg aspirin or a placebo every other day. Over the next decade, they monitored the women for heart attack, stroke and other major cardiovascular events.
After 10 years, the findings were published in the March 31, 2005, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. They reported that:
- Women who took low-dose aspirin experienced a 17% lower risk for stroke, and a 24% lower risk for stroke due to blood clots (the most common type).
- Low-dose aspirin did not have any demonstrable effect on preventing first heart attack or cardiovascular death in women younger than 65.
- Women over 65 were 30% less likely to experience a stroke caused by a blood clot, and 34% less likely to have a heart attack.
- Gastrointestinal bleeding that required a blood transfusion occurred in 127 women taking aspirin, in contrast with 91 women taking a placebo. This common side effect of regular aspirin use has been known for many years and it's important to realize it occurs even on low-dose aspirin therapy.
- Aspirin's benefits were most apparent in those who did not smoke or had quit smoking, while hormone therapy had no effect one way or the other.
Note that ten percent of the financing for the study came from Bayer AG, the manufacturer of Bayer Aspirin.
So it is clear that this study found some, limited benefits from low-dose aspirin therapy. I don't acknowledge this grudgingly at all, but I can't become very excited by the benefits when I balance them against the costs and the risks involved. That's the side of the case that quickly becomes lost when findings such as these are basically employed to ensure more aspirin is sold to women over age 45.
With some sensible lifestyle change (such as improved diet, regular exercise, no smoking and stress relief), occasional internal cleansing [2] and some nutritional supplement [3] insurance (that won't have the downside of aspirin and will have many additional benefits) the heart attack and stroke risk can be either eliminated or reduced far more than can be achieved with aspirin.