STOP Taking Daily Baby Aspirin

if you're still taking a baby aspirin every day to prevent heart attack then you probably need to watch this video Until the End the guidelines about this have changed and there's new research out very recently that shows that you probably shouldn't be doing that I'm Dr Ken Berry a family physician let's talk about this now back in 2010 the U.S preventative task force came out and said hey if you're over the age of 40 it's probably a good idea to take a baby aspirin 81 milligrams of aspirin a day this is going to inhibit platelet function decrease your ability to make clots and probably protect you from having a heart attack now many doctors immediately had questions about this me included because we know that any pharmaceutical that you put into the human body including something as innocuous and ubiquitous as 81 milligrams of aspirin has hundreds if not thousands of effects in your body Pharmaceuticals don't just do one thing and so when you take that baby aspirin every day yes you are inhibiting uh platelet function they don't they don't form clots as easily but clots are actually important they're good for you you if you cut your arm you want to form a clot uh so people notice that if I'm taking a baby aspirin every day I actually bleed Freer and in most cases like if you cut your arm that's not a big deal you just hold pressure a few minutes longer it eventually collaps in your fine but what about certain types of bleeding like if you fall and hit your head really hard and you have a bleed inside your brain inside your skull these types of things you can't hold pressure on what if you have an ulcer in your stomach would if you have uh varicin or esophagus multiple kinds of bleeding you can't hold pressure on those and so this becomes immediately a big deal in those particular situations so the guidelines broke it up and we actually had a new set of guidelines come out in 2022 that said that between the ages of 40 and 59 years of age it should be an individualized decision between you and your doctor and the reason for this being that yes of course taking a baby aspirin every day will decrease your risk of having a heart attack yeah from the formation of a clot in a coronary artery but it also increases your risk of lots of other things aspirin is very hard on your stomach it makes you bleed everywhere not just uh in the heart arteries it decreases clot formation everywhere which can be a problem in many situations and so they went from saying that everyone over the age of 40 should take a baby aspirin every day to in 40 to 59 years of age it's an individual decision depending on how many risk factors you have for heart disease and so the takeaway message for you my friend is that if you're between if you're under the age of 40 you absolutely are not going to benefit any way from taking a baby aspirin every day don't do that if you're from age 40 to 59 only if you have multiple risk factors for heart attack uh also that you're not going to do anything about these risk factors the vast majority of risk factors for heart attack come from what you eat and what you smoke and so if if you're like yeah I'm not going to quit smoking and I'm not going to quit eating junk then you probably will benefit from taking a baby aspirin at least a few days a week if you're between the ages of 40 and 59. now the the new guidelines are very clear that people over the age of 60 are not going to benefit from taking a baby aspirin at all for primary prevention of a heart attack so we need to we need to tease out what's primary prevention and what's secondary prevention so you're taking an aspirin for primary prevention if you've never had a heart attack you've never had a stent put in and you've never had a coronary artery bypass if you've had any of those things then you're taking your baby aspirin for secondary prevention this you you do not need to listen to me in this video I'll make another video for you this video is about primary prevention you've never had a heart attack you've never had a stent placed in a coronary artery and you've never had a coronary artery bypassed then you're taking that aspirin for primary prevention and the research as it continues to come out is very clear and the preventative task force change the recommendations in 2022 that over the age of 60 you're not going to benefit from taking that baby aspirin at all the risks of taking that baby aspirin outweigh the benefits of taking the baby aspirin the majority of the time if you're over the age of 60. so what do you do with this well if you're taking a baby aspirin currently just because you thought it was a good idea stop that don't do that without go and talk to your doctor and say hey do I need to be doing this or not I know there's new guidelines and that little subtle reminder will trigger your doctor to go oh yeah maybe I should look up the latest guidelines but if if you're from from 40 to 59 you need to talk to your doctor even if your doctor has told you in the past you need to take a baby aspirin do not take it for granted that that recommendation still applies to you today because the guidelines have changed these guidelines your doctor may or may not be aware of and you're asking your doctor could stimulate them to do a little reading and get up to date on the latest guidelines if you're over the age of 60 and your doctor has told you to take a baby aspirin every day for primary prevention then your doctor probably has no idea what the guidelines are they just heard that you're supposed to take a baby aspirin on CNN or something and they just decided to make that part of their medical practice if you're over the age of 60 you almost assuredly do not need to take a baby aspirin every day for primary prevention of heart attack now go talk to your doctor about this before you stop taking it especially if your doctor recommended you start it your doctor May say yes I know what Dr Berry means by this but in your specific case I still believe that the benefits outweigh the risks and there may be a very few people who fall into that category you may be one of those but won't know for sure unless you talk to your doctor you may very well be taking a baby aspirin every day and it's actually increasing your risk of other things more than it is preventing or lowering your risk of having a heart attack there's a new study that just came out in 2023 in the Journal of the American Medical Association showing that the incidence of bleeding in the brain is higher in people taking a baby aspirin every day and once again they recommend if you're any increased risk of bleeding at all you don't need to be taking a baby aspirin every day the risks outweigh the benefits so I hope this video has helped you kind of understand this I'm going to put links in the show notes to the latest guidelines and also to that study in the Journal of the American Medical Association about the brain bleeds so that if your doctor says look look I'm the doctor I don't care what some YouTube doctor said you keep taking your baby aspirin you can actually print those studies out and take them to your doctor and say look I feel like I fall into this criteria these these guidelines say this are you sure I should keep taking that baby aspirin and you may be thinking well it's just a baby aspirin it's not a big deal but a baby aspirin basically inhibits your platelets from forming clots for up to 14 days and so I think for some people who the benefits May outweigh the risks a tolerable compromise would be to say hey let's just take take a baby aspirin two or three days a week let's not take it every day of the week But be sure and go have a discussion with your doctor about this because each case is in fact unique depending on how many risk factors you have your age and other comorbidities that you might have and other medications that you might be taking so talk to your doctor I'll put the links down below this is Dr Berry see you next time

Channel: KenDBerryMD

Views: 159,348

Keywords: baby aspirin, daily aspirin, who should take aspirin, low dose aspirin, should i take aspirin, heart health, is baby aspirin good for you, baby aspirin for, baby aspirin for heart, taking baby aspirin for heart, does baby aspirin prevent heart attack, who should take a baby aspirin, should i take baby aspirin, risks of baby aspirin, baby aspirin benefits, baby aspirin recommendations, baby aspirin dangers, dr berry baby aspirin

Id: kNOTTkH5UiQ

Length: 8min 50sec (530 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 11 2023