
The Danger of Daily Aspirin - cwan
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704511304575075701363436686.html
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biotech
It's an optimization problem:

The positive side is the decreased risk of heart problems.

The negative side is the increased risk of stomach problems.

If you are at a low risk for heart problems, the negatives generally out-weigh
the positives. If you are at a high risk for heart problems, the positives
might out-weigh the negatives, since heart problems are more likely to be
fatal than stomach problems.

According to TFA, recommendations for daily aspirin are too common.

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lg
I take ibuprofen every day, because I get a headache every day. 2 GP's and a
psychiatrist have told me this is no big deal, but stories like this always
bother me.

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jules
Have you tried stopping for a while?

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lg
I've tried just persisting through them but never lasted more than 2 weeks.
Though every few months, they'll stop for maybe a week, and then come back.
Caffeine makes them less bad, which is annoying because I don't like the
energy swings, but every time I give up caffeine the headaches get worse (not
just immediately after, but even a month after)

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jules
That's a really bad problem to have :( Do you know what's causing them?

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Aron
I have Samter's triad and would benefit from daily aspirin use (325mg+), but
the side-effects concern me and my default position is to avoid medication.

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neondiet
It would make more sense to me to just reduce the dose rather than cut it out
completely. Maybe just take one every other day or 3-4 times a week.

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scott_s
By what rationale does that make more sense? The argument presented in the
article is that for most people, the side-effects outweigh the protective
benefits. How do you know that your suggestive diminishes the side effects to
the point that even people who have a low risk for heart problems will have a
net benefit?

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giardini
For years I've taken two 325mg aspirin once or twice a week rather than take
the small 81 mg each day. Works better for me.

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natrius
... How do you know it works better?

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giardini
For some reason it doesn't bother my stomach as does the daily 81 mg dose.
Also, I usually get a headache at least once or twice a week and taking two
aspirin always helps.

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amalcon
Breaking News: Even drugs you're familiar with have side-effects. More at
eleven.

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rsheridan6
There's a comment like this for every article. Maybe someday al-Qaeda
terrorists will genetically engineer a plague virus that turns everybody into
"28 Days Later"-style zombies. Somebody will be here saying, "breaking news -
Islamists don't like us."

This is actually a little more significant than finding some side effects. It
means that the daily aspirin they've been telling us to take for decades may
actually be worse than useless.

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shpxnvz
Which "they" are you referring to who has been telling you for decades to take
aspirin? The drug companies, the media, or your own doctor?

The only one of those three that I would actually listen to, my personal
physician, has never once suggested that I take aspirin daily, surely because
I'm not a high risk for heart disease or stroke.

I'm curious if it really is common for physicians to blindly prescribe
aspirin. The article itself doesn't specifically identify any case where a
patient was prescribed daily aspirin. It sounds like the people mentioned
decided on their own to start taking it.

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rsheridan6
I actually looked this up earlier, and here's the summary: In 2002, guidelines
from some government agency said that people whose risk of heart disease
outweighed their risk of bleeds should take it. Essentially this meant most
men over 40. At the time, there was no evidence that daily aspirin decreased
total mortality. In 2009, they revised it to exclude a lot more people because
of the risk of bleeds. Now maybe they'll exclude even more people. I'm not
going to dig the sources up again, but that's what I found.

I don't know how long they've been telling people to take it, but I know my
dad was taking it in the 80s. His risk factors were being a man in his 40s and
mild hypertension.

This fits in with a pattern in which doctors jump to conclusions and tell
everybody to do something which turns out to be useless or harmful based on
scanty evidence.

