The advice was so simple: Take a baby aspirin every day, and you will significantly reduce your chances of having a heart attack.
But that was before it became common practice to aggressively treat high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
“The calculus has changed, and the reason the calculus has changed is because there is a risk to taking aspirin,” said Dr. John Swartzberg, head of the editorial board at the UC Berkeley Wellness Letter. “While there still may be a modest benefit of taking baby aspirin on a daily basis to prevent a heart attack, there is a substantial risk of having bleeding in your intestines or stomach. And there’s also a slightly increased risk of having a stroke, the bleeding kind of stroke.”
If you’re already taking baby aspirin, talk to your doctor before stopping it.
“There may be a very good indication for you to continue it, but a lot of people just started it on their own, and are just doing that daily as part of their regimen, and that may not be a good idea for certain groups, particularly younger people who are taking it,” Dr. Swartzberg said.
For those who’ve already had a heart attack, your doctor may prescribe a daily baby aspirin.
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The UC Berkeley Wellness Letter is a subscription publication, but NW Newsradio listeners can use this special link to get free access to the article Aspirin Gets Demoted for Heart Attack and Stroke Prevention until Nov. 11, 2022.