WARNING: Daily aspirin therapy could be dangerous

I’ve said it countless times throughout my career: Aspirin would not be an approved medication if it had to go through the rigorous trials that most drugs go through nowadays before they come to market.  

And yet, doctors continue to prescribe it like candy. They even instruct patients to take one aspirin daily for heart attack prevention, despite the fact that it’s riddled with side effects.  

That’s why I’m happy to see that the very organizations that once touted its effectiveness for heart attack prevention are now discouraging people from taking a daily aspirin.  

Because unfortunately, new research has delivered yet another reason to pass on this outdated prescription… 

Heart failure risk rises by 25 percent 

This new study shows that an aspirin a day won’t keep the cardiologist away. In fact, it linked aspirin therapy with new onset heart failure (HF), completely independent of other risk factors.  

And the increase wasn’t little, either. We’re talking about a rise in risk over 25 percent—that’s more than a quarter!  

This study looked at data from more than 30,000 patients who did not have heart failure at the onset. Most patients also didn’t have heart disease at baseline. But of the ones that did, more than 80 percent had coronary artery disease. 

In addition, just shy of three percent of the total study population had a history of heart attack. A good 86 percent had high blood pressure. And 22 percent had diabetes. The average age of the patients was 67 years, and 34 percent were women.  

Overall, the rate of heart failure (per 1,000 person-years) was 14.5 in the daily aspirin group, and 5.9 in the non-aspirin group. That’s a rather dramatic difference, by any standard.  

High-risk heart “protection” 

As you can imagine, there’s plenty of controversy surrounding these findings. But in my opinion, and at the end of the day, aspirin is still a pharmaceutical medication—one that comes with risks.   

And because we have treated it as a benign and innocuous substance for so long, I think it’s safe to say that we have neglected to study its negative effects the way that we should have.  

That said, this is hardly the first time that research has exposed the lethal risks of aspirin therapy… 

In the Aspirin to Reduce Risk of Initial Vascular Events (ARRIVE) trial, researchers found that 100 mg of aspirin daily did nothing to cut long-term risk of cardiovascular events or stroke in patients with risk factors but no history of heart disease. But it did link aspirin therapy with more gastrointestinal bleeding. 

Then you have the ASCEND trial, which also showed that the risk of bleeding in diabetic patients increased almost twice as much as the risk of vascular events dropped when taking aspirin. In other words, the risks far outweighed any benefits. 

Of course, I’ve been warning about this for years—and taking my patients off aspirin therapy accordingly. But it’s nice to have the general consensus on my side for a change. Because older people with no clear medical indication for aspirin therapy simply should not be taking it.  

This falls under that old adage: If something looks too good to be true, it probably is. Not to mention that there are better ways to get the same supposed benefits, at considerably lower risk.  

In fact, my Ultimate Heart Protection Protocol outlines information on natural techniques to prevent and fight high blood pressure, heart attack, and stroke. To learn more about this comprehensive online learning tool, or to enroll today, click here now. 

Source: 

“Daily Aspirin Linked to Increased Risk of Heart Failure.” Medscape Medical News, 11/24/2021. (medscape.com/viewarticle/963641)