Aspirin: Take 8 and call me in the morning

[Carson Dyle]

I went to take a couple aspirin this afternoon before heading out grocery shopping and happened to notice that the expiration on the bottle was dated 2014. That always happens, no big deal. I don't take them very often, so they always expire.

So I'm in Walmart, find the generic ("Equate") aspirin, figure that I'll buy the smallest, cheapest container they have, since I know they won't all be used anyway. 98 cents, good. I get them home and as I'm throwing away the old ones I notice they're 325mg tables. The new bottle contains 81mg tablets. Huh? Was there a revolution in medical knowledge recently regarding aspirin? I used to pop two of the 325s. Now I'm going to swallow 8 of them??

 

[shortylickens]

mash them, and stick the powder in a yogurt.

 

[Carson Dyle]

Ah... I googled "81mg aspirin" and see that these are being billed as "low dose" ... the sort of thing you take every day to ward off all sorts of ailments based on all sorts of dubious medical studies.

Might have to go back and get the real shit.

 

[Red Squirrel]

mash them, and stick the powder in a yogurt.

I've done that with Sudafed, they crush nicely. Just stick them in water and chug it. Did not really do much. I hate colds, I throw everything I can at it in hopes it helps.


Speaking of expiry, should I worry about expired vitamin C tablets? When I got laser eye surgery out of town we went to Costco and I bought lot of stuff including those, not realizing the ludicrous amount of tablets in there, and the fact that I'll never use them all by the expiry date - probably not even my life time. Do they actually go bad or stop being effective? I wonder if I'm fine to go a few years over the expiry.

 

[BoomerD]

Ah... I googled "81mg aspirin" and see that these are being billed as "low dose" ... the sort of thing you take every day to ward off all sorts of ailments based on all sorts of dubious medical studies.

Might have to go back and get the real shit.

Meh...they're mostly aimed at people who have had heart attacks or strokes:

http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-...e/in-depth/daily-aspirin-therapy/art-20046797

 

[Carson Dyle]

Meh...they're mostly aimed at people who have had heart attacks or strokes

To ward off a repeat. Or, for those at risk, a first incident. Lots of other claims as well. Colon cancer?

 

[superstition]

Aspirin is fairly nasty stuff. It's not as benign as most think. There are new guidelines that dissuade people from taking even preventative low-dose aspirin as a preventative for heart attack and such because of all the gastrointestinal side-effects.

Tart cherry juice does a pretty good job of reducing aches and seems to be less corrosive on the stomach. The thing you have to watch for with it, though, is acid corrosion of your larynx/throat/mouth. I gargle a bit of milk before drinking the cherry juice and then gargle with milk again after. Milk is slightly basic and helps to counteract the acidity. It also coats things some.

The best NSAID is likely celecoxib, now that it has been shown not to have a higher heart attack risk than ibuprofen and such. On the contrary, the most recent research has shown it to be safer. The big question is whether not not the research is tainted since it was funded by big pharma. The analyses I've read claim the research had enough independent checks and safeguards but one never knows for sure. A "reputable" doctor at Johns Hopkins was, for instance, clearly an industry stooge who sided against coal miners in black lung cases.

Another even nastier medication is acetaminophen, the liver destroyer par excellence.

 

[lxskllr]

Aspirin doesn't really expire. That date is the 'our shareholders want dividends' date. The longer the expiration from date of manufacture, the more fanciful it is. If the delta between date of manufacture and expiration is > 1 year, you can add 100% to it without thought.

tl;dr
fish your old aspirin out of the trash

 

[Meghan54]

Ah... I googled "81mg aspirin" and see that these are being billed as "low dose" ... the sort of thing you take every day to ward off all sorts of ailments based on all sorts of dubious medical studies.

Might have to go back and get the real shit.

First, you have to pay close attention to what you buy...the 81mb tabs are much more prevalent than the "full sized" 325mg tabs.

Why? Aspirin has many properties, as do most meds, one of which is it increases clot time...in simple terms, it makes the platelets less "sticky" and less prone to clump or clot. The benefit is it makes it harder to form a clot within an artery/vein, thereby decreasing the chance of a clot forming and blocking off one of the small arteries that feed the heart or brain. Clot formation within the vasculature of the body is especially prevalent in the most distal vessels, such as the veins in the feet/legs, where the blood flow is the slowest.

That's why someone presenting to the ER or wherever with chest pain will be given an aspirin immediately...it's been shown to actually work darned well in "slowing down" a heart attack caused by a clot.

The downside is also from it increasing clot time, which means it'll take a bit longer to stop bleeding from a cut, for instance. Not hugely, but it's there.

Another thing aspirin does better than tylenol or advil (ibuprofen) is reduce swelling. Much more effective than either of those.

Of course, aspirin has its downsides/side effects. It is to never be given to young children due to it causing Reye's Syndrome. This is why the proliferation of chewable orange flavored children's aspirin has largely disappeared.

The second is the caustic nature of aspirin on mucus membranes which can cause esphageal/gastric upset/erosion. This is easily mitigated/eliminated by buying only enteric coated aspirin (almost all aspirin is coated these days, btw) and by ensuring you drink more than one small swallow of water when taking the aspirin.

As for the expiry date...true, some expiry dates on meds are "ultra conservative", although there are some meds that do have definite expiry dates. Aspirin isn't one of those, though. My rule of thumb is aspirin is "gone" by its smell. Aspiring typically has very little odor. If you sniff the aspirin and get a shapr, almost vinegary smell, it's going bad....esp. if the aspirin is changing color (I've seen yellowish colors on very old aspirin.) Otherwise, it's probably good.

Aspirin is an excellent med...and damned near as good as the newer NSAIDS out there, esp. in relation to swelling reduction and reducing clot formation.

 

[superstition]

The second is the caustic nature of aspirin on mucus membranes which can cause esphageal/gastric upset/erosion. This is easily mitigated/eliminated by buying only enteric coated aspirin (almost all aspirin is coated these days, btw) and by ensuring you drink more than one small swallow of water when taking the aspirin.

Nope.

Dr. Matt Fendrick, associate professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor says:

"When you take aspirin, the level of stomach protection is decreased and you're more likely to bleed. Thus, people who take aspirin regularly -- even in a buffered or coated form -- will have roughly double the likelihood of having a perforated ulcer or bleeding in the GI tract," explains Fendrick. "Relatively little attention is paid to this problem that kills more people in the U.S. each year than asthma or cervical cancer. What we need to do is focus less attention on finding more things that make aspirin look good, we have plenty of those, and think more about focusing on how to minimize risk."

"The benefits of aspirin for preventing colon cancer, dementia, and heart attacks need to be carefully weighed by a medical professional against the potential for serious complications," says Dr. Fendrick.

 

[superstition]

the old ones I notice they're 325mg tables. The new bottle contains 81mg tablets. Huh? Was there a revolution in medical knowledge recently regarding aspirin? I used to pop two of the 325s. Now I'm going to swallow 8 of them??

Low dose aspirin is often better than higher dosage aspirin:

"Low-dose aspirin, a 'baby aspirin' dose of 81 milligrams, is safer and just as effective as the standard adult dose of 325 milligrams," says Dr. Fendrick. "When a drug has serious side effects, as aspirin does, you want to give the lowest effective dose. We know now that you don't need 325 milligrams in a great majority of circumstances."

A patient who's having a heart attack right now, for example, should be given a full 325-milligram dose of aspirin, but the person at elevated risk for a heart attack, who's taking daily aspirin as a preventive measure, should stick with the smaller 81-milligram dose.

This is similar to how the FDA discovered that anything over 325 mg of acetaminophen is useless and just more harmful to the liver. More is not always better. For aspirin there are some cases where more than low dose is useful. For acetaminophen that's not the case because they work differently. Acetaminophen blocks pain signals to the brain.

I would consider using a safer NSAID for the gastrointestinal tract (i.e. celecoxib) to help with pain, potentially in conjunction with low dose aspirin — rather than relying on a large dosage of aspirin.

 

[Anubis]

Aspirin doesn't really expire. That date is the 'our shareholders want dividends' date. The longer the expiration from date of manufacture, the more fanciful it is. If the delta between date of manufacture and expiration is > 1 year, you can add 100% to it without thought.

tl;dr
fish your old aspirin out of the trash

this is true for almost all medications

 

[PottedMeat]

my 16 year old zyrtec still works lol