My mother has Alzheimer’s, as did both her parents. She also has a vascular condition called FMD, fibromuscular dysplasia.
I read with interest this news bulletin from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, “Pain Relievers May Prevent Alzheimer’s.”
Excerpt: “Long-term use of aspirin and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs could prevent Alzheimer’s disease if taken before symptoms of dementia occur, according to a study conducted by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The findings are published in the September 2002 issue of the journal Neurology.”
Should I start taking a daily baby aspirin?
The effects of blood-thinners such as aspirin on Alzheimer’s are especially interesting to me because I have been researching whether scale—such as the scale of my blood vs. the scale of the rest of me—may play a role in disease.
I was excited about this study, and mentioned it to a friend who also has a parent with Alzheimer’s, explaining that there have been subsequent studies that showed conflicting results, or no protective effect, so the issue may be more nuanced than it seems.
“Or,” he said, “the other studies could be funded by drug companies who do not want Alzheimer’s to be preventable with a generic baby aspirin or garlic capsule. No big payday for them.”
This is what has happened. There has been a profound loss of public trust. I see evidence of it everywhere, but especially in the medical sphere.
Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, chairman of a commission for the medical journal Lancet and economist at Columbia University, speaks eloquently in this short video (11 minutes) that I find extremely compelling.
Postscript: I tried aspirin. It didn’t help. In fact—the following day—it made me feel worse.
Like many, I have recently become a much more savvy consumer of news. For instance, I recently read the following in a NY Post story about Ozempic:
“Meanwhile, another diabetic Ozempic user recently told Healthline that she was also prescribed the drug in 2018 to help manage the disease.
“She went on to suffer a very different — and very severe — side effect.
“Dawn Gentle said she started to experience severe abdominal pain, which led to her being rushed to the emergency room. Doctors later diagnosed her with pancreatitis — swelling of the pancreas — and discovered a tumorous cancer on the organ.
“She was using Ozempic for three years before doctors made their diagnosis in 2021.
“When I asked the doctor if it was also caused by taking Ozempic, he was nice enough to inform me that it was strongly possible,” Gentle stated.
In the same article, there is a doctor who defends the drug:
“Dr. Rebkha B. Kumar, associate professor of medicine at Cornell, is skeptical that the drug directly caused Gentle to develop pancreatitis or cancer.
“It is rare and more common in patients with other risk factors for pancreatitis, [including] prior history of pancreatitis, high triglycerides, high alcohol intake, or other genetic predispositions to pancreatitis,” Kumar told Healthline, claiming the side effect was “correlation and not a causation.”
I no longer take such statements at face value. Instead, I take the doctor’s name over to Pro Publica’s “Dollars for Docs” database where you can enter a doctor’s name, and see if he or she is receiving compensation from drug companies.
https://projects.propublica.org/docdollars/query?utf8=✓&query=Dr.+Rekha+Kumar&state=&commit=Search
In this case, there is a Dr. Rekha Kumar whose field is Endocrinology, Diabetes & Metabolism who received $22,583 in 2018.
This is not about shame or blame. Everyone should be free to take whatever measures they need or want in order to feel good in their bodies. To be honest, what you do with your body is none of my business. I watched Oprah’s “Shame, Blame, and the Weight Loss Revolution” last night and was very moved by the womens’ stories.
What I am against is censorship, withholding information—e.g. keeping the results of safety studies sealed for 75 years—or anything other than complete transparency when it comes to safety and human health.
Wall Street Journal Opinion: Covid Censorship Proved to Be Deadly.
