Countless Americans take aspirin on a daily basis for various issues such as back pain, headaches, toothaches, sore muscles etc. But new reports show that this may not be such a good idea.
Fox news reports on the detrimental effects of aspirin.
Healthy adults who take daily aspirin to stave off heart disease may be inviting more harm than benefit, according to a new review of studies,” according to Fox.
Aspirins often do not list all of the potential negative side effects that consumers could face. Fox reports, “Adults face a crush of conflicting health messages about aspirin and the role it plays as a preventive medicine. In an attempt to bring clarity to the topic, UK researchers sifted through the most recent evidence from nine randomized controlled trials – which are considered medicine's gold standard – and other systematic reviews of such trials. They found a total of 27 studies between 2008 and 2012 that fell within their criteria.”
One expert told Fox, “Too many healthy people think that aspirin will prevent heart attacks and cancer. This shows that if you are healthy, with no symptoms of cardiovascular disease, then it's not sensible to take regular aspirin. It won't improve your health. Sometimes we need to remind people of good health messages like this one. If you are healthy, the harms of daily aspirin cancel out the benefits."
Another expert said, “There is a plethora of evidence in this area but nobody has drawn together the advantages and disadvantages of aspirin in a systematic way. We need to be extremely careful about promoting the daily use without fully understanding all the evidence.”
But one physician told Fox, “The question of the balance of risk and benefit of aspirin is important. But superficial meta-analyses of very limited published data are not, unfortunately, able to cast any useful light."
