Daily Low-Dose Aspirin No Longer Recommended for Healthy Older People

Health Wellness

For the past few decades, doctors and health experts have recommended that older people take a low-dose aspirin every day to help prevent heart attacks and strokes. My former doctor recommended that I take one low-dose aspirin daily because of my being a type 2 diabetic, having high blood pressure and my being overweight. I’ve been taking them daily for over ten years.

According to one health website:

Daily low-dose aspirin is a blood thinning medicine. Aspirin is also known as acetylsalicylic acid.

Low-dose aspirin helps to prevent heart attacks and strokes in people at high risk of them.

Your doctor may suggest that you take a daily low dose if you have had a stroke or a heart attack to help stop you having another one.

Or, if you’re at high risk of heart attack – for example, if you have had heart surgery or if you have chest pain caused by heart disease (angina).

Only take daily low-dose aspirin if your doctor recommends it.

Low-dose aspirin comes as tablets. It’s available on prescription. You can also buy it from pharmacies, shops and supermarkets.

Children are sometimes treated with low-dose aspirin after heart surgery or to treat a rare illness called Kawasaki disease. Children should only take low-dose aspirin if their doctor prescribes it.

Taking low-dose aspirin to prevent heart attacks and strokes is not the same as taking aspirin as a painkiller.

Virtually every store that sells pain relievers and health items and supplements, you will find a display of low-dose aspirin. The dosage runs between 81-83 mg of aspirin per tablet.

A new report could change everything we’ve been told about taking low-dose aspirin:

‘For the most part, we are now much better at treating risk factors such as hypertension, diabetes and especially high cholesterol,” said North Carolina cardiologist Dr. Kevin Campbell, who wasn’t involved in the new guidelines. “This makes the biggest difference, probably negating any previously perceived aspirin benefit in primary prevention.”

Doctors may consider aspirin for certain older high-risk patients, such as those who have trouble lowering their cholesterol or managing their blood sugars, as long as there is no increased risk for internal bleeding, the guidelines say. European guidelines recommend against the use of anti-clotting therapies such as aspirin at any age.

“Clinicians should be very selective in prescribing aspirin for people without known cardiovascular disease,” John Hopkins cardiologist Dr. Roger Blumenthal, who co-chaired the new guidelines, said in a statement. “It’s much more important to optimize lifestyle habits and control blood pressure and cholesterol as opposed to recommending aspirin.”

Note that they are NOT saying to stop taking low-dose aspirin nor are they saying that they don’t have a beneficial use. What they are saying is that other treatments today replace the need to take the low-dose aspirin.

If you are one of the thousands of older people who have been taking low-dose aspirin to help prevent heart attacks or strokes, don’t stop taking them until you talk to your doctor.

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