Things That Have Been Happening

[poliphilo]

The day before yesterday we got about an inch of snow. It didn't hang around.

Yesterday we had sleety rain. In the morning I went for my yearly medical check-up. The nurse took my blood pressure and a couple of blood samples and we talked about my general state of health. I get the impression she thinks I'm in reasonably good shape. I've been taking aspirin once a day and she told me the doctor's advice is to drop it; she wasn't sure why. I walked to the medical centre and walked back- which is the most exercise I've had in a couple of months. In the evening I took down the Christmas tree.

The electricity had been flickering all afternoon. At around 10.30 we had a power cut, so I lit a candle and went to bed. The cuts continued through the night- and every time the power went off or came on again it triggered a couple of nearby house alarms. 

Comments

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

The pros and cons of taking aspirin are terribly complicated. I've taken it for some years and then there was a scare and I stopped for a bit. But then there was a programme on Radio 4 that looked at the risks in detail and after thinking about it, I started taking it again. But it depends on your other risk factors, like whether you have high blood pressure or not and so on and so forth.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I started taking it on the doctor's recommendation and I'm stopping again for the same reason. I'm aware of aspirin popping in and out of the news. One minute its a miracle cure, the next it carries unacceptable risks. Weren't they touting it the other day as a cure for altzheimer's- or am I thinking of something else?

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

It reduces inflammation, which is important in the development of heart disease, and, it seems, in the development of certain cancers too. However it also disrupts platelet activity and therefore reduces the ability of blood to clot, so use of aspirin may lead to bleeding under the skin, or more importantly, in the brain i.e. it may promote strokes.

Whether you need to take it or not I suppose depends on whether you are more likely to get cancer, heart disease, or a stroke, but I don't know how a GP might judge that for an individual patient.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Ah, that explains why the nurse asked me if I had a history of heart disease in the family. I said I hadn't.

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

I'm not allowed to take aspirin, because of threatened ulcer in the past, and because of recent nosebleeds
The positive is that it reduces clotting, the negative is that it encourages bleeding

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It wasn't so long ago they were recommending that everyone over a certain age should take an aspirin a day. Clearly that advice has been withdrawn.

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

I take baby aspirin. And I still clot.:)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

But does it reduce it?

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

If I'm going to have invasive surgery, they'd tell me to stop it ahead of time, just to be safe, but I haven't noticed any difference, like when I cut myself.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I haven't noticed any difference either.

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

Manolo stopped the daily aspirin as well on the advice of the doctor who had, at first, encouraged him to take it. It's a complicated issue.

I need to start putting away Christmas.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I guess medical knowledge is constantly advancing.

I grew up believing it was unlucky to keep Christmas decorations up beyond Twelfth Night.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

I think it is often the way that the media portray medical advances that leads to the confusion.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Too true. The TV news is the source of most of my medical "knowledge".

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

What a nuisance that must be! We had a similar problem with the electricity at work last year when the weather was bad.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping they've fixed the problem. We haven't had any flickering today.