Aspirin a Day Can Kill

Sorry to hear your friend is ill again.

A while back I took a paracetamol a day for about 2 months(for headache or fear of headache)
Ive seriously cut down alot recently.
I just wondered if taking so many will do me any harm?

not good for the liver, though perhaps one a day isn't too bad..


new biography of Aspirin hails it as miracle drug, and if you're over 50 and not on medication it's recommended you take a quarter tablet a day

I will take an Ibupropen once in a while when I've strained my already damaged shoulders. I take it for its anti-inflamation effects. But most of the time I do that with the regular consumption of ginger and tumeric. That seems to do the job quite well. And for keeping my blood slightly thinned I take a fish-oil capsule every morning (it's high in omega-3 fatty acids). I gradually come to share Edgar's wariness regarding aspirins. I also fear the manipulative power and insatiable greed of companies like Bayer and Merck.

Edgar, I too have had the privilege of knowing a phenomenal lady. She is now 97 years of age and in a "home" in Texas. She lived by herself, however, until the age of 95 in a housing complex occupied mainly by foreign students at the local university and took classes in various social science subjects--that's how I came to know her. She chose to live near the unversity, she told me, to benefit from its offerings and from the youth and cultural variability of her neighbors.

The lady whose plight sparked the genesis for this thread, has died. She was in her nineties. I would not take it so hard if she had been ready for death, but I know how fiercely she fought to keep going. I don't know the details yet. I have always been intrigued by her first name. It was Karma.

May she rest in peace, Edgar. My thoughts are with you today as you grieve her passing.

Edgar, I read through the entire thread once more in honor of Karma. We were all touched by her plight -- lasting two years -- and what a good friend you were to her. I hope that in my time I will have someone as kind nearby. I don't think you ever mentioned how old she was. It is strange that some people can be young in their seventies and others, not at all.

The saddest moments were reading about her drinking the bleached tea and also, reading of JLNobody's mother. I felt how awful each must have felt, so disappointed. Sometimes we are our own worst enemies with our personal mistakes, aren't we? I hope that your friend, Edgar felt the sweet earned pleasures of a life well-lived.

Do you remember any of the piano music that she loved?
RIP Karma

Karma had her breakfast Sunday morning. Shortly after, she took a nap. She never woke up.

She told tales of her teaching career, filling my head full of notions of classical music and the like. For Christmas once, I gave her some tapes featuring great composers and the like. She enjoyed it well enough, I think, but, later on she confided that she currently prefers songs that tell stories. So I got her more tapes, featuring Marty Robbins and several other storytellers.

Her husband was Norwiegian (sp?). She taught school in one of their classes. She was fond of telling of the stern Principal, or whatever he was called. His name was long and very difficult to decipher. She practiced it over and over til she perfected it, because she had been warned that people who could not pronounce it properly were downgraded in his eyes. She described the surprise and respect she'd earned several times over the years.
When she told her stories, one could always see the demure young lady she had been in the older version of herself.
She spent much of the day practicing such activities as walking from one end of the living room to the other without any type of aid, fighting against further loss of her abilities.
She always had a bowl of popcorn ready for the meals on wheels person.
She bemoaned her hands, too crippled with arthritus to play the piano any more.
She never wanted me to leave without drinking a glass of her apple juice.

Ahhhhhh.

Isn't that what most of us hope for... to die in our sleep?

She sounds like she had to relive the past often, maybe because the present was so limited. Oh dear, is that the way we'll be as we get older?

That arthritis is a stinker. My grandma used to say she had Art (arthritis) on one shoulder and Burt (bursitis) on the other. She laughed but it wasn't that funny.

I will think of your friend Karma as I am slowly learning to play some new music I have -- Tchiakovsky's Seasons... January through December. There is certainly a storyline to that, and it is hard enough to keep me busy a while.

Karma is a lovely name... and so unusual. Her parents must have been thoughtful and artistic to come up with that.

Her funeral was lovely. The air was moving in little gusts as we stood beneath a canopy in the hundred year old Lutheran cemetary near Huffsmith. Her sister, the last remaining of seven, and her step-son, were the only relatives in attendance. I don't think there were twenty of us out there, counting the minister and his staff. I liked him. I spent a good deal of the time looking at his shoes. They were well worn and clean, but poorly polished. This somehow made me respect him more. He was of the common people. The casket was prettily designed, with closed lid, and a beautiful covering of flowers on the top. I wore the same clothing I had always worn in her presence, thinking this would have pleased her. The notable absense, her best friend, was not there. I suspect she may have been in the hospital, for she had been in and out of it for some time. My friend and I went back to the job site, feeling that Karma was at peace.

Thank you for telling us about the lovely funeral, edgar. I hope that Karma is at peace now.

Aspirin may protect against cancer


Nov 7, 2005

Regular use of a class of drugs which includes aspirin may protect against a deadly form of skin cancer, Australian research has found.

Scientists at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research (QIMR) studied 273 people, including 86 with squamous cell carcinoma, a non-melanoma form of skin cancer.

Lead researcher David Whiteman said the case-controlled study found significant differences in the use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), particularly aspirin, between those who had the cancer and the healthy control group.

"We found that people who used aspirin for more than five years, and who used it regularly, at least twice a week, had a 63% lower risk of having the skin cancer," Dr Whiteman said in an interview.

"People who were using it very regularly, more than daily for a period of five years, they had about a 90% reduction in the risk of squamous cell carcinoma."

Dr Whiteman said when they counted the numbers of sun spots on the 187 healthy participants, who were matched for age and sex with the cancer patients, those with fewer sun spots were the people who used the most NSAIDs.

Sun spots are precursors to malignant skin cancer.

Despite the findings, Dr Whiteman said more research was needed to prove NSAIDs were protection against a person developing squamous cell carcinoma, which killed around 360 Australians each year.

Nevertheless, he said the scientists believed the results were "no fluke".

"We wondered whether the people who were regular users of aspirin might have been indoors more often because they had joint pain, so they couldn't go out in the sun and that might have been the reason why they had less skin cancer," Dr Whiteman said.

"But when we looked at that, that certainly wasn't the case. They had spent about the same amount of time out of doors."

In "Every Heart Attack Is Preventable," by Michael Mogadam, MD, assistant professor at Georgetown School of Medicine, specializing in cholesterol and nutrition, the author recommends 81 mg aspirin a day. He also says drinking 5+ 8 ounce glasses of water a day cuts incidence of heart attack drastically, as does eating fatty fish 2-3 times a week, as does regular, moderate exercise.

he's right, 81 mg is all you need and make sure the aspirin is coated, it's much easier on the stomach

I recommend Mogadam's book. He lists 22 factors that can either contribute to having a heart attack or prevent one. Chronic infection is one such factor. I got the book out of the library. Am going to visit my GP tomorrow to consult with him about certain blood tests Mogadam recommends for certain people such as myself---have dealt with chronic bronchitis for some 9 years now.

Just be aware that not everyone can take aspirin, no matter what any doctor says. Its an individual thing. Get checked out if you are about to start taking it like that.

An aspirin a day has been touted for the last 2 decades or so as the way of avoiding heart attacks and blood clots that cause strokes. Yet the toxicity issue of aspirin has been put on the back burner due to “Cost to benefit Ratios” meaning that more folks benefit from the aspirin than die from it. Looks good on paper unless you're one of the victims of aspirin

Its not that you will develop a potentially fatal bleeding condition from the fist tablet. Aspirin should also not be taken on an empty stomach or just with water. My doc recommends that you eat something , even a slice of bread to buffer the aspirin.

Thanks ...as that is valuable and meaningful info for us oldies with cardiac health issues.