/oss/taxonomy/term/202/all en /oss/article/medical-critical-thinking/bare-facts-about-coated-aspirin <hr /> <p><em>This article was originally posted in the</em> <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/opinion/columnists/christopher-labos-the-bare-facts-about-coated-aspirin"><em>Montreal Gazette.</em></a></p> Fri, 27 Oct 2023 10:00:00 +0000 Christopher Labos MD, MSc 9702 at /oss /oss/article/health-and-nutrition/taking-daily-aspirin-good-idea <hr /> <p>This article was originally published in the <a href="https://montrealgazette.com/opinion/christopher-labos-is-taking-a-daily-aspirin-a-good-idea">Montreal Gazette</a></p> Thu, 28 Oct 2021 19:15:15 +0000 Christopher Labos MD, MSc 8909 at /oss /oss/article/history-you-asked/why-are-people-addicted-heroin-called-junkies <p>By the first decade of the twentieth century heroin addiction had become a huge problem in major American cities such as New York. The drug was not cheap and some people experiencing addiction resorted to supporting their habit by rifling through junkyards for scrap metal that they could sell. Interestingly, heroin was introduced by the Bayer Company in 1897 as a non-habit forming version of morphine. It was originally synthesized in 1874 by C.R. Wright, an English chemist who hoped to improve the properties of morphine by altering its molecular structure.</p> Sat, 11 Sep 2021 08:00:00 +0000 Joe Schwarcz PhD 8838 at /oss /oss/article/history-did-you-know/even-aspirin-doesnt-grow-trees <p>It is a common misconception that aspirin is found in the bark of the willow tree. A related compound called salicin does indeed occur in willow bark, thereby explaining the use of the bark as a medication since the time of Hippocrates. But salicin is very irritating to the stomach, a problem that prompted the Bayer company to look for an alternative. One of its chemists, Felix Hoffmann, synthesized acetylsalicylic acid in 1898 and found it to be a great improvement over other salicylates. A triumph of chemistry over nature!</p> Fri, 04 Jun 2021 20:27:32 +0000 Joe Schwarcz PhD 8756 at /oss /oss/article/health/aspirin-take-or-not-take-question <p class="note"><strong>Take-home message:</strong><br /> - One in four adults over 40 take a daily aspirin to prevent heart disease, despite guidelines suggesting not to.<br /> - Contrary to popular belief, in patients with no history of heart attack of stroke the benefit from aspirin is quite small and largely offset by bleeding risk.<br /> - The most recent 2019 guidelines from the American College of Cardiology recommend against routine aspirin use in patients over the age of 70 without heart disease or those at increased risk of bleeding.</p> Fri, 06 Sep 2019 10:00:00 +0000 Christopher Labos MD, MSc 7845 at /oss /oss/article/did-you-know/aspirin-can-do-more-just-alleviate-pain <p>It is a common misconception that aspirin is a naturally occurring substance that was discovered in the bark of the willow tree. A related compound called salicin does indeed occur in white willow bark (not the “weeping willow,” thereby explaining the use of the bark as a medication since the time of Hippocrates. But salicin is very irritating to the stomach, a problem that prompted the Bayer company to look for an alternative. One of its chemists, Felix Hoffmann, synthesized acetylsalicylic acid in 1898 and found it to be a great improvement over salicin.</p> Thu, 08 Nov 2018 19:31:12 +0000 Joe Schwarcz PhD 7440 at /oss /oss/article/can-aspirin-help-remove-stains-and-keep-your-whites-white <p><span>The internet is </span><a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/remove-sweat-stains_n_1452258">full of</a><span> suggestions that Aspirin can be used to </span><a href="https://www.wikihow.com/Get-White-Clothes-White-Again">remove stains</a><span> and get </span><a href="https://www.rd.com/home/cleaning-organizing/6-secret-laundry-ingredients/">whiter whites</a><span>. These sites don’t offer any mechanism of this bleaching of course, so I had to try it myself.</span></p> Thu, 14 Jun 2018 17:00:00 +0000 Ada McVean B.Sc. 7134 at /oss /oss/article/cancer-controversial-science-drugs-health-news/aspirin-and-breast-cancer <p>An article that poses the alluring question “Cancer Treatment in Your Medicine Cabinet?” by Michelle Holmes and Wendy Chen, both Harvard physicians, has been getting a lot of traction. That’s understandable because of their premise that the common drug aspirin may be effective in reducing the death rate from breast cancer. Several observational studies, including one of their own, document that women who take aspirin for various reasons are about 50% less likely to die of breast cancer. Observational studies are notoriously difficult to interpret because other factors may be involved.</p> Tue, 10 Jun 2014 06:26:06 +0000 Joe Schwarcz PhD 2153 at /oss /oss/article/health-news/number-needed-treat <p>We all want to be healthy and live as long as possible. So we think about popping vitamin pills, a daily dose of aspirin, eating foods with probiotics and taking statin drugs. And we puzzle over dietary regimes that claim to result in weight loss, lower blood cholesterol and reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease. All of these are supported by some evidence. But the chances of significant benefit are in general much less than what people think.</p> Wed, 04 Feb 2015 01:08:46 +0000 Joe Schwarcz PhD 2234 at /oss /oss/article/drugs-health/aspirin-and-heart-disease <p>A time-honoured medical maxim states, “primum non nocere.” That’s the way, “first do no harm” used to be taught in medical school when Latin was still part of the curriculum. Basically it means that for any medical intervention the possible benefits should outweigh any potential harm. And that goes for the most popular drug in the world. That drug is aspirin.</p> Fri, 23 Mar 2012 23:21:18 +0000 Joe Schwarcz 1672 at /oss /oss/article/health-you-asked/does-taking-high-dose-aspirin-actually-help-when-you-are-currently-having-heart-attack <p>There is consensus in the medical community that chewing a 325 mg tablet of regular aspirin can help reduce the severity of a heart attack. A heart attack, or myocardial infarction (MI), is usually initiated when a cholesterol-laden deposit that has formed inside the lining of a coronary artery bursts. The coronary arteries, so-named because they cover the heart much like a crown, deliver oxygenated blood to the heart muscle. Should one of these arteries get blocked, the heart tissue it feeds experiences oxygen starvation and if this continues, the cells die.</p> Thu, 08 Nov 2012 03:09:52 +0000 Joe Schwarcz PhD 1778 at /oss /oss/article/health/chemistry-lesson-food-babe-and-everyone-else-8-aspirin <p>I wonder if Ms. Hari would ever consider taking aspirin. If she found out that it is made from petroleum, probably not. For some reason she considers petroleum to be a substance that comes from hell. It is a common misconception that aspirin is produced from the bark of the willow tree. In fact, the starting material for the chemical synthesis of aspirin is benzene, derived from petroleum. This is then converted to phenol which in turn is converted to salicylic acid which is then converted to acetylsalicylic acid or ASA, which we know as aspirin.</p> Wed, 15 Feb 2017 21:46:38 +0000 Joe Schwarcz PhD 1460 at /oss