Saw an episode of Dr. Oz's new show where he was speaking on women’s health. He recommended aspirin daily – 162 mg (two baby aspirins) taken at breakfast with a half glass of warm water before and a half glass of warm water afterwards. Finally! Something I can actually fit into my existing routine!
Old Advice Didn’t Work
Due to my age and slightly elevated blood pressure, I’ve been trying to develop the daily aspirin habit for years. Quite a long time ago, I saw another Oprah where Dr. Oz indicated that to do any good for blood pressure, the aspirin had to be taken at bedtime. Well, that didn’t work for me. Not only was there no easy and logical place to slip aspirin taking into my regular evening routine, when I did remember to take it, it upset my stomach and disturbed my sleep. Not good.
New Advice to the Rescue!
The beauty of the new advice is how easy it is to implement. I’m a total creature of habit. I do exactly the same thing every morning that I’m home. I have a glass of water while my tea water heats. Then I have tea, breakfast and more tea - and all while at my computer. So now I have the baby aspirin on my computer desk where I can’t forget if I try and I take two aspirin right in the middle of the second round of tea. How cool is that?
But Will It Lower My Blood Pressure?
Good question. Maybe I misunderstood or am misremembering Dr. Oz’s previous advice. Maybe there’s been new research. Maybe the aspirin in the morning is for some other health reason, not blood pressure. Who knows? But at this point it doesn’t matter. I’ll just keep taking it and see what impact it has on my blood pressure readings, if any. At least now I finally have a way to easily incorporate it into my day.
Actually many doctors are taking their patients off of daily asprin does because of the increased bleeding risks involved due to the use of such product over the long term.
ReplyDeleteAsprin side effects are one of those things you don't hear about but I had to face directly a few months ago. My head started hurting really badly and my right side started going number and I was loosing strength in it.
After going to the hospital I was diagnosed with an unknown brain bleeding incident in which they could find no other reason other than the fact it might have been caused by asprin.
I'm not a doctor, nor am I advising you to take or not take asprin. But personally I take something called Resveratrol because of its health benefits and lack of side effects.
The proper use of asprin is up in the air right now and respectfully to Dr. Oz, I think he is full ofr crap and may lead at the very least a few women into having strokes that could quite possibly kill them in the end.
Wow! How scary for you! Wouldn't it be nice if they could just figure out once and for all what was good and what wasn't? Thanks so much for sharing your experience. Were you taking baby aspirin or the regular strength? I tried regular for a short while and couldn't tolerate it but the baby aspirin seems ok so far. I'll surely be watching for problems now, though. Thanks again for taking the time to clue me in!
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