2 thoughts on “Another Reason to Take Aspirin”

  1. Rand, aspirin is a rather powerful drug, and if you are going to endorse people medicating themselves or even lobbying their doctor to take chronic doses of aspirin, people are going to need to keep their eyes open.

    I was taking aspirin (80 mg/day dose) along with engaging in a program of moderate exercise (40 minutes/session of “brisk walking”) as part of a blood-pressure/stress reduction program, where the aspirin got OK’d by my primary-care doctor.

    After a couple weeks of this, my right ankle got to be the size of a small grapefruit and I saw bruise marks going down into my heel. Didn’t notice this because I wasn’t feeling any discomfort in my foot apart from brushing my ankle bone across a chair leg and going “ouch!”

    I knew right away what was going on because I had seen an orthopedic specialist about it 24 years ago. I got back from “adult ice dance camp” of two weeks of intensive skating in Sun Valley, Idaho, and the same ankle looked just like that.

    The doctor looked at the x-ray and told me I had a smooth bone fragment in the ankle joint, could have gotten there from a sprain some years prior, and we could “take it out” “if you want” (no!). The other thing he said was that the bruise mark into the heel “was a bleed — you are going to have to lay off the aspirin.” Yeah, we were all popping aspirin for the analgesic (pain relief) and anti-inflamatory effects, and my skating partner who was also a practicing physician was one of the biggest proponents of using aspirin for this purpose.

    So 24 years later, a recurrence of the same condition from 1) ramping up the exercise, and 2) aspirin.

    So I said to the blood-pressure/stress reduction program, forget this, I am not going to go around bleeding internally and end up with a hemoragic stroke. I cut back on the walking and cut out the aspirin to let the ankle heal up, which it has, and will get back to the primary doctor.

    So no, aspirin is a more powerful drug than you think, it is not for everybody, and the decision to take aspirin chronically should not be taken lightly.

  2. I’ve been taking a daily 80mg aspirin for about 5 years now. No problems. I do agree that it should be done only on the advise of a doctor.

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