>10 Biggest Nutrition Myths—Ever
I am a big fan of having people eat a healthy diet. The best of all possible worlds, doctors would know more about diet and have the time to talk with/educate their patients about this. Additionally everyone would have access to a nutritionist/Registered dietitian and access to healthy foods. Lastly, people would not buy into fad diets or believe all of the mis information out there. Here is a list of some things to keep in mind.
For this post I thought I would write about staying healthy, but in a slightly different manner than I’ve done in previous blogs. In older blogs I’ve written about screening, vaccinations, etc. In this one I thought I’d talk about using a medication to stay healthy, and in this case talk about aspirin.
Aspirin has been around for more than 100 years, and perhaps is a bit under appreciated since it is an over the counter medication (meaning one can buy it without a prescription). It is also something that is derived from a natural product. Willow bark had been used to treat fevers and it was eventually found that salicylic acid was the active ingredient. Salicylic acid was then derived from this. I won’t go into the chemistry of this (I figure if you’re a bit of science nerd like I am you probably already know, and if not I don’t want to bore you).
Most people probably think of it as a pain killer or a headache medication. It is much more than that. Aspirin plays an important role in treatment of patients who’ve had heart attacks – it helps treatment and also helps decrease the death rate from heart attacks. It is used in primary prevention heart disease as well. In the past high dose aspirin was used in the treatment of Rheumatoid Arthritis. It’s use in this latter population (at least for treatment of Rheumatoid Arthritis) has been eclipsed by other medications. However it still should be used to treat/prevent heart disease in this group of patients.
Use of aspirin in ischemic stroke patients is advised as well.
Though less studied at this point, aspirin use to prevent recurrent deep venous thrombosis, is a consideration (this is after someone has been treated with coumadin for an acceptable length of time). A link to a review on this subject can be found here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24745726
There is some evidence linking aspirin intake to a decreased chance of developing colon cancer. At the moment there is not enough evidence to routinely suggest people take aspirin solely to prevent colon cancer. There is also some evidence that it only helps prevent colon cancer in certain groups of people – those that have a particular form of a particular gene. The only recommendation is for aspirin to help reduce the risk of heart disease.
Aspirin, like any other medication, has its downside as well. It can cause stomach ulcers. If the ulcers are large enough they can cause a lot of bleeding. It should not be used in children, except in rare circumstances and even then only then under the guidance of a pediatrician or other health care provider who provides a lot of treatment to children (EG pediatric rheumatologists, family practice physicians, etc).
In my last post I talked about vaccination, which is a form of primary prevention: it is the prevention of disease. There is also the concept of secondary prevention. In the case of secondary prevention, one has already has a disorder and doesn’t know it. Secondary prevention prevents the disease from getting to the point where it causes symptoms or complications (this is paraphrasing the definition on the CDC website). The example the CDC website uses is excising/taking a biopsy of a suspicious skin lesion before it becomes cancerous. Colonoscopy could also be put in the category of secondary prevention if pre cancerous polyps are found and removed before they become cancerous.
Sometimes it can be difficult to convince people to do some secondary prevention. Colonoscopy is one such item it is sometimes challenging to convince people to do. It is inconvenient as one needs to take a day off from work (if one is of working age and is working), has to have someone who’s willing to drive them home and requires taking things to clean their colon out so the colonoscopy can be done. When someone has a problem that can only be diagnosed by colonoscopy (eg: weight loss, fevers, and blood in the stool which could be a sign of inflammatory bowel disease, for example) people are worried enough about their health to get it.
Tertiary prevention is when one is trying to prevent complications or side effects of a disease which is already present. Examples of this are anticoagulation in people with atrial fibrillation, use of ACE inhibitors to prevent or slow kidney disease in diabetics.
In my next post I’ll take more about prevention and why it’s important.
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