Are you still on that one-a-day train? That’s the locomotive with an aspirin at every stop… once a day, every day… from now to eternity. Or at least until the stomach bleeding kicks in.
All aboard!
But ignore that whistle – because British researchers are urging doctors to stop giving a daily aspirin to patients who haven’t had a heart attack or stroke.
An analysis in the Drugs and Therapeutics Bulletin looked at six studies, and found that, at best, there’s only a slight reduction in the risk of heart attack and stroke in those patients when they take that daily aspirin.
That number is so small it’s debatable whether there’s any benefit at all. But if there is, the researchers say it’s clearly offset by aspirin therapy’s most famous side effect: internal bleeding.
Some 50 million Americans take a daily aspirin, many of them for purely preventative reasons. Many of these people have never had a heart attack or stroke, but pop that daily pill just to be “safe.”
That’s called “primary prevention,” but maybe we should call it something else, because as this new analysis shows, aspirin is not very good at preventing anything.
It’s time to stop. In addition to internal bleeding conditions like stomach ulcers, regular aspirin use has been linked to hemorrhagic stroke, worsening asthma and more.
But we’ve been nearly brainwashed by a series of ad campaigns that tout the daily use of aspirin as a magical pill that can cure or prevent all sorts of conditions.
That’s not science talking… that’s Big Pharma’s marketing at work. These drugs are cheap to make and easy to sell – a perfect recipe for a healthy profit margin.
Getting more people to take them every single day is just gravy at this point – and if there’s one train that Big Pharma loves to ride, it’s that Gravy Train of pointless, endless, lifelong meds.
Edward Martin is a health journalist who writes about today's most pressing health issues. He chronicles the most cutting-edge alternative methods for beating everything from diabetes to cancer and reports on the latest FDA foul-ups and Big Pharma conspiracies.
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