You probably have been told by a hundred doctors, friends and foes that taking aspirin can ward off the risk of heart attacks as well as cancer, but the reality speaks volumes against it.
Upon doing a review of aspirin’s risks and benefits, the doctors would rather like to proscribe healthy people from taking aspirin at all.
There have been several debates on whether people over 50 should take low dose of aspirin every day or not. The review was conducted by the research arm of NHS and a fine balance of the dangers of bleeding in the brain as well as stomach was found.
Overall, the review warned people against the use of the drug till the time there is more evidence. Why aspirin is often recommended for people at a high risk of heart attack is because it makes the blood less sticky and thus, reduces the odds of formation of blood clots inside the body. Some studies have even put it across to people that aspirin can reduce the risk of certain types of cancers.
The downside to this function of making the blood less liable to clot is that it can cause problems in the body. As far as heart attacks and strokes are concerned, giving aspirin to at-risk people would increase the potential for bleeding and for cancer, there was not much evidence to prove that it was beneficial indeed. Prof Aileen Clarke, who led the interview, said that while it is pleasing to advice people to take aspirin every day to avoid the risk of cancer there was not much evidence to work in this favour and that people must therefore, be cautions of what they take.
Aspirin is very useful for heart patients, but not so much for healthy ones. In fact, if healthy people take aspirin every day, they are likely to experience more problems than benefits.
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