AceNik's Portal

There are a lot of drugs we take so reflexively we don’t even know they’re drugs.

One such drug is aspirin.

The natural substance from which it was first derived was known to Hippocrates. The first aspirin tabletswere sold in 1900. An aspirin is part of the shield for the Bayer Leverkusen soccer club in Germany, founded in 1904.

But aspirin is a drug. I take a little one every night to cut my risk of a heart attack. The Journal of the American Medical Association this month linksaspirin use and colon cancer survival.

This doesn’t make aspirin harmless. Aspirin can cause bleeding in your gut or in your brain. Even half a “baby aspirin” (the 83 mg. dose I take) caused a 40% higher risk of digestive tract bleeding requiring transfusion in one study.

Part of the problem, I think, may lie in how we package aspirin and other pain relievers. As with many other substances, it has been super-sized. Until aspirin it was common to see bottles with 1,000 aspirin at a very low price.

Aspirin is relatively safe, and effective for many conditions, some of which we are just learning about. It is, as Bayer advertises, a wonder drug. But aspirin, like many drugs, can also kill you and needs to be treated with respect.

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