An aspirin a day won’t keep the cardiologist away

I knew this day was going to come. It was just a matter of time.

Modern medicine has built quite a house of cards with lies, deceit, half-truths, and pandering to any organization that will give them money. Needless to say, this has got to stop.

And maybe now it finally will. Because lately, a few very problematic chickens have come home to roost.

There aren’t many stories in the popular press that find me swamped with phone calls and emails. But the reaction to the latest news on aspirin has been overwhelming. So today, I’m setting the record straight, once and for all.

That daily aspirin isn’t doing your heart any favors

My patients already know how I feel about this particular topic, but it can’t be said enough: Despite the long-held dogma peddled by conventional medicine, a daily aspirin is not healthy. And now there’s research to prove it.

This latest study is called the Aspirin to Reduce Risk of Initial Vascular Events (ARRIVE) trial. It started ten years ago, with the goal of evaluating whether aspirin protects the hearts of subjects with moderate cardiovascular disease risk.

Ultimately, it found that a daily dose of 100 mg of aspirin didn’t lower long term risk of cardiovascular events. Over a mean of five years, roughly the same percentage of subjects in both the placebo and aspirin groups suffered heart disease death, heart attack, angina, stroke, or transient ischemic attack.

We’re not talking about a small study either. This trial included more than 12,000 nondiabetic adults — all with an array of cardiovascular risk factors, but no actual history of cardiovascular events. (In other words, exactly the types of patients who would be urged to start popping a daily pill.)

But it’s not that aspirin didn’t do anything. It just didn’t do anything good.

You see, the researchers found that this so-called “harmless preventative” doubled the rates of gastrointestinal bleeding.

Heart attack “prevention” that comes at a price

Aspirin will increase your risk of bleeding from any cause — which is always my main bone of contention. Simply put, if two people were hit by the same bus and one of them was on aspirin and the other wasn’t, the odds of the aspirin-taker bleeding to death are much higher.

In fact, I have a very dear friend who suffered a severe bleed into his brain and almost died. All because his doctors thought he should be on extra aspirin for his heart condition.

Needless to say, that’s not the kind of risk I want my patients taking for a treatment that delivers zero actual benefits to your health.

So if nothing else, ARRIVE’s results are a wake-up call to conventional doctors to stop making blanket recommendations where aspirin is concerned. Because this one-size-fits-all approach is exceedingly dangerous.

Here’s the bottom line. There’s no clear benefit to aspirin. And if one does exist, it’s small enough that it’s hardly worth the risks — which are crystal clear. Isn’t it time we moved on to something more useful?

If doctors really want to make a difference to their patients’ health, they can start with taking a page out of my book. Literally, any one of my books — but as always, The A-List Diet is a great place to start.

P.S. Speaking of protecting your heart without risky drugs, I’m putting the finishing touches on my Ultimate Heart-Protection Protocol. It’s an all-natural plan to prevent and reverse America’s biggest killers — high blood pressure, heart attack, and stroke. Keep an eye on your email. I’ll be officially announcing it very soon!

Source:

medscape.com/viewarticle/901208