Low-Dose Aspirin & Anemia

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Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• Many people take low-dose aspirin, hoping to reduce cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk.

  • Today’s main feature brings attention to some new science clarifying the extra risks of daily aspirin use (beyond the obvious risk of bleeding disorders; anemia is also a serious concern, especially because of its potential knock-on effects).

• Being unable to easily participate in spoken conversations is not just an inconvenience; it’s also a [causal, fixable] risk factor for age-related cognitive decline.

  • Today’s sponsor, Hear.com, are offering the most cutting-edge dual-processing technology in hearing aids that isolate and separate speech from background noise, now with their latest most advanced device yet!

• Today’s featured book is about putting to rest the parts of your personality that perhaps had a role in your past, but are no longer serving you.

Read on to learn more about these things, or click here to visit our archive

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Wildcard Wednesday

Low-Dose Aspirin & Anemia

We recently wrote about…

How To Survive A Heart Attack When You’re Alone

…and one of the items was “if you have aspirin readily available, then after calling an ambulance is the time to take it—but don’t exert yourself trying to find some”.

But what of aspirin as a preventative?

Many people take low-dose aspirin daily as a way to reduce the risk of atherothrombosis specifically (and thus, indirectly, they hope to reduce the risk of heart attacks).

The science of how helpful this is both clear and complicated—that is to say, the stats are not ambiguous*, but there are complicating factors of which many people are unaware.

*it will reduce the overall risk of cardiovascular events, but will not affect CVD mortality; in other words, it may improve your recovery from minor cardiac events, but is not likely to save you from major ones.

And also, it has unwanted side effects that can constitute a more relevant threat for many people. We’ll share more on that at the end of today’s article, but first…

A newly identified threat from daily aspirin use

A large (n=313,508) study of older adults (median age 73) were sorted into those who used low-dose aspirin as a preventative, and those who did not.

The primary outcome was incidence of anemia sufficient to require treatment, and the secondary outcome was major bleeding. And, at least 1 in 5 of those who experienced anemia also experienced bleeding.

The bleeding issue was not “newly identified” and will not surprise many people; after all, the very reason that aspirin is taken as a CVD preventative is for its anti-clotting property of allowing blood to flow more freely.

The anemia, however, has been getting increasing scientific scrutiny lately, after long going unnoticed in the wild. Given that anemia also gives the symptom “dizziness”, this is also a significant threat for increasing the incidence of falls in the older population, too, which can of course lead to serious complications and ultimately death.

Here’s the paper itself:

Low-Dose Aspirin and Risk of Anaemia in Older Adults: Insights from a Danish Register-based Cohort Study

Want to know more?

As promised, here’s what we wrote previously about some of aspirin’s other risks:

Aspirin, CVD Risk, & Potential Counter-Risks

Take care!

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Bonus (Sponsored) Recommendation

If you’re interested in healthy aging—as most of our readers are!—then you might also like Midlife & Beyond; it’s a free newsletter focused on getting the most out of exactly that. Check them out!

One-Minute Book Review

No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma & Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model – by Dr. Richard Schwartz

We’ve previously reviewed Dr. Schwartz’s “You Are The One You’ve Been Waiting For” and whereas that book doesn’t require having read this one, this one would be an excellent place to start, as it focuses on perhaps the most important core issues of IFS therapy.

We all have different aspects that have developed within us for different reasons, and can generally “become as though a different person when…” and some condition that is met. Those are our “parts”, per IFS.

This book makes the case that even the worst of our parts arose for reasons, that they often looked after us when no other part could or would, and at the very least, they tried. Rather than arguing for “so, everything’s just great”, though, Dr. Schwartz talks the reader through making peace with those parts, and then, where appropriate, giving them the retirement they deserve—of if that’s not entirely practical, arranging for them to at least take a seat and wait until called on, rather than causing problems in areas of life to which they are not well-suited.

Throughout, there is a good balance of compassion and no-bullshit, both of which are really necessary in order to make this work.

Bottom line: if there are parts of you you’re not necessarily proud of, this book can help you to put them peacefully to rest.

Click here to check out No Bad Parts, and take care of yours!

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Wishing you a wonderful Wednesday full of wellness,

The 10almonds Team