Two weeks ago, Science Magazine featured a special section on Disease Prevention. Two articles featured cheap, easy and widely effective measures that lower risks of all major diseases of old age: they talked about daily aspirin and increasing blood levels of vitamin D.
Daily baby aspirin is associated with lower risk of heart disease, stroke, dementia and several kinds of cancer. Even better, ibuprofen does all this and also lowers risk of Parkinson’s disease.
Blood levels of vitamin D are associated with lower incidence of most cancers, heart disease, and dementia. Vitamin D protects against brittle bones and auto-immune diseases and dramatically lowers the incidence of cold and flu. Also “asthma, diabetes, stroke, multiple sclerosis, and cognitive decline.” In one study, children whose daily milk was fortified with vitamin D caught half as many colds as children without supplementation.
Side effects for aspirin are limited to a small segment of the population that experiences stomach problems – non-fatal and temporary; for vitamin D, the downside is largely hypothetical. Still, the medical community is not ready to recommend either D or aspirin as a prophylactic for an aging population. Why not?
Is it because of the Hippocratic commitment to “do no harm”? I think not. After all, America is awash in expensive drugs we don’t need and millions of unnecessary surgeries are performed each year. Is it because there’s no capitalist lobbying engine to support these cheap, unpatentable supplements? Yes, that’s some of it.
But there’s also a source of medical conservatism that’s built into the culture of “natural”. We’re reluctant to tamper with nature because “mother knows best”. The body is a finely-tuned machine, and it is much easier to do harm than good if we tamper with our natural metabolism – so the story goes.
It’s only since the 1960s that the culture of “natural” has been dominant. Before that was an age when modern science was held in reverence, when tonsils were removed routinely because doctors saw no use for them, and when scientifically-designed infant formula was prescribed in preference to breastfeeding.
Now, I’m as crunchy as the next guy. Organic foods are tastier and more nutritious, don’t expose us to pesticides, and contribute to sustainable agriculture as a bonus. I’m all for it. But the point that most people (and most doctors) still don’t realize is that a natural diet is useless against diseases of old age.
That’s because aging itself is “natural”. Providing a natural life style can help prevent many things from going wrong with our bodies. But aging isn’t something that goes wrong. Aging is something the body is designed to do. The body is self-destructing on a schedule. If we want to slow down aging, we can’t do that by being good to our bodies and supporting them to do their best. We’re going to have to disrupt the body’s program, to thwart the pathways of self-destruction.
The paradigm that brought us natural foods is this: Modern man lives in an environment full of stresses and toxins to which our hunter-gatherer ancestors were never exposed. We are not evolved to deal with a diet of high fructose corn syrup and GM soy and beef laden with growth hormone.
Absolutely. I avoid eating all these, and hope that you do as well. But these toxins have nothing to do with the reason we get heart disease or dementia, and they’re only weakly related to cancer risk. The reason that we get heart disease and cancer is that, after a certain age, self-destruction is programmed into our genes. Our bodies’ immune systems begin to shut down. Inflammation is dialed up and begins to attack healthy tissue in our joints, our arteries, and our brains.
The insults suffered from environmental toxins of modern life are like a drop in the ocean compared to the damage that the body suffers from its own programmed self-destruction.
Doctors are loathe to prescribe asprin and vitamin D to the aging public because they’re not part of our “natural” heritage. This thinking is deeply flawed, because it derives from a fundamental misunderstanding of what aging is.
I don’t know whether super-high levels of vitamin D are “natural” to our evolutionary past, and I don’t think it matters much. And there’s nothing at all “natural” about aspirin. But there’s a huge body of epidemiology that points to multiple benefits from both vitamin D and aspirin, particularly in the diseases of old age. My counsel is to go for it.
My bottom line recommendation is this: If you’re over 50, take a daily baby aspirin or ibuprofen, unless it gives your stomach trouble. And ask to have your vit D levels assayed the next time your doctor draws blood. Our bodies vary widely in the ability to absorb vitamin D, and to process it into the di-hydroxy form in which it circulates in the blood. Conservative doctors are recommending blood levels of 50, while advocates say that we might benefit from levels over 100. Most American are under 50, and a quarter or more are under 25. You may be in range just from spending time outdoors and eating fish, but you won’t know until you get results of a blood test. Personally, I have increased my daily intake to 15,000 IU just to get my blood levels into the recommended range*.
* An IU of vitamin D is tiny. The standard dose of 400 IU is only 10 micrograms, which is a barely-visible speck. Even mega-doses come in small pills.
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Does it harm to the body, if I’d take a daily baby aspirin and am only 30 years old?
Inflammation serves a beneficial function in all people, but in older people the negative outweighs the positive. I don’t know about your individual circumstance, but for most people, it makes sense to wait until age 50 before taking daily aspirin.
As an objective visitor, with your advice and opinions on a long life, you jump on a trend the exact same way like the trends you consider wrong. The trend is now anti – antioxidants – so you write about the positive effects of anti-inflammation, forgetting about the also proven negative effects of e.g. fish-oil and ginger;
You advise vitamin d and ass and forget about stone-formation with vitamn d doses above 5000IU (as discussed on international congresses of internal medicine) and the big risks of ASS of gastro-intestinal bleeding. There is a reason that instead of the proven benefits of low dose ASS against colon cancer ( and only FEW others) no counsil recommends taking ASS to everyone.
Same with studies of aortic plaque formation under high fish-oil ( the thing you want to prevent). Or the fact that fish-oil doesn’t lower stroke risk but fish does……
Selenium…….
So all in all, you just cite the studies you believe in, that confirm your opinion on the subject. We still just don’t know what amount of what is best. Right know, noone can give evidence based recommendations to the extent that you do. You might even harm people by doing so.
The benefit of antioxidants and antiinflammatories will hopefully clear up in the future, right now we still don’t know enough.
> also proven negative effects of e.g. fish-oil and ginger
I’ve seen very little on risks of fish oil or ginger, so I would be eager to read whatever you can point me to on the subject.
> big risks of ASS of gastro-intestinal bleeding
It’s a big risk for a very small number of people. Most people tolerate low dose aspirin or ibuprofen very well.
> The benefit of antioxidants and antiinflammatories will hopefully clear up in the future, right now we still don’t know enough.
Of course, we would all like more information and, most important, better data. There are so many contradictory studies that it is difficult to make sense of it all.
In the mean time, there are many of us trying to make reasonable decisions for our health based on partial data.
The general advice in this column will not be right for everyone. Metabolism varies widely from one person to the next, and we all need to experiment on ourselves to know what works best. The science of individual-based medicine is in its infancy.
> Or the fact that fish-oil doesn’t lower stroke risk but fish does……
I’ve read studies that support lower stroke risk from fish oil. For example
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=193470
“There is little doubt that long-chain omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (LCn-3PUFAs) in fish are the key nutrients responsible for the benefits and are important for CVD prevention.” http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/19732603
But you have a good point, that most studies do not separate whole fish from fish oil so that a direct comparison of the benefits can be made.
Tell me more about selenium, if you would…
Yes, but I believe Dr. Davis has written about the ingestion of Vitamin D3 causing a buildup of calcium in the aortic valve and other places other than bones and teeth where it can do damage… any info on that? Great blog, by the way, glad I (just) found it.
I don’t know Dr Davis – can you send me a link to his/her work on vit D?
Vitamin D will cause you to absorb more calcium. The calcium may go into bones or arteries. Taking vitamin K2 will cause it to go into bones and actually reverse arterial calcification. This, according to Kate’s book:
http://www.amazon.com/Vitamin-K2-Calcium-Paradox-Little-Known/dp/0062320041
Just wondering if you also recommend Vit A and Vit K2 to go along with the Vit D. Supplementing, i raised my Vit D blood levels to 63 but i’m also taking A and K2. My understanding of K2 is that it helps the body use calcium correctly, which is important when boosting Vit D levels. That may help address diamonddave’s concern.
You know more about this than I do. My recommendations are based on statistics and epidemiology. I’m neither a doctor nor a biochemist.
For me, vitamin D is one of the important vitamins for our body. Nowadays it is hard to get vitamin D from the Sun because when it is 7am it is already hot.
If you take vitamin D and calcium take vitamin K2 also, or your aortic heart valve will calcify and not open enough. You will get chest pains when you exercise, get excited or get cold (any time your heartbeat gets over 100 per second). Then they will have to cut your chest open and replace the valve with a pig or cow valve.
I know this is an old post, but I have read in several places that it is better to take vitamin D3 in a large bolus a few times a week rather than the recommended daily dose. I first learned this from famous strength coach Charles Poliquin. Here is another article regarding this:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18991184
When you understand what is going on it becomes obvious that daily dosing is the way to go.
Dr. Bruce Hollis – Vitamin D Dosing Interval
https://youtu.be/FbheaULwRAk
I have such painful tendonitis in both arms from shoulders to elbows .I wanted to know if taking Vit d would help the pain , now still don’t know . I’m on low dose aspirin a day
I don’t know of a direct connection between vit D and tendonitis.
Viv, tendons are primarily made up of collagen. Collagen gets depleted as we age as part of the body’s self destruction mechanism. Eg. as adults, we lose about 1% of skin collagen every year. There is no stopping this process, as far as I know. However, damaged collagen in tendons is repaired by the body, but at a much slower pace, as we age. Vitamin C is required for the production of collagen. Also, there are some drugs, which are known to cause the destruction of collagen, including fluoroquinolone antibiotics. This is no medical advice, but you could try a collagen peptide supplement combined with vitamin c. Good luck!
Yes, Vitamin C! Go read the article “Why animals don’t have heart attacks”, available for free on the Internet.
yes Jerry, in fact collagen is what binds us together. I’m not sure, if there has been made any studies, if the collagen degradation is systemic e.g. if collagen surrounding our inner organs degrade as we age, but I see no reason, why collagen loss would be limited to just tendons and skin.
Yes Ole, Collagen is a long stringy molecule. After it is made, 3 molecules of collagen are twisted together and cross-linked from one end to the other in a secondary process which requires vitamin C as a co-enzyme and produces a strand of collagen that is as strong as steel for its weight; but if there is not enough C available, the collagen does not get completely cross-linked before it is released from the cell. It is therefore weak, and eventually breaks. The broken pieces are removed, leaving the tissue weak, unless there is enough vitamin C to replace the broken collagen with new and stronger collagen. Everyone needs to get their vitamin C up to 1,000 mgs (one gram) per day; because unlike most animals, the gene for making C is mutated in humans. C is not poisonous. The worst too much C can do is cause diarrhea; but just skip a dose for one day, and it will clear up. Even if you already have heart disease, vitamin C will clean out your arteries, slowly over a year’s time. Go read Why animals don’t get heart attacks. Available for free on the Internet!
Interesting that some recent research points to an increased mortality rate from too much Vitamin D. Seems to be not too much and not too little http://press.endocrine.org/doi/10.1210/jc.2014-4551
Josh, for the past 4 -5 years I have been taking aspirin each day.. Approximately 70mlgs ..
I recently had chest pains during a long walk. I had a checkup with my GP and he discovered in blood tests that I was severely anemic..And prescribed blood transfusion and iron tablets.. Stool tests also showed up occult blood..I stopped taking the aspirin and then retested for blood in stool. This time the results were negative.
All very interesting !
But I also know that low dose aspirin is good for many reasons. So I am perplexed as to what to do. I am now considering Ibuprufen. Any thoughts on this.
Hi, Bill.
I think that there’s always a chance of minor bleeding from taking aspirin (I read it somewhere). This might be a good thing if trying to lower ferritin levels for cardiovascular reasons (blood donation or phlebotomy are also advised). But in your case maybe you took it too far and from trying to prevent blood clots it brought about other complications.
Yes this is the issue with aspirin.
Aspirin is clearly a winner in a number of ways but in instances such as yours it has done more harm than good, there’s little point taking a longevity supp or drug if occult bleeding leaves you anaemic which is clearly more net harm than the benefit gained from the aspirin.
The literature I’ve read on ibuprofen v aspirin seems to suggest similar bleeding risk, not surprisingly given close similarity in their mechs of action.
One possible option, EOD low dose aspirin has been found to be of similar benefit to daily regimes in a number of trials (a large study of nurses in the US if I remember correctly?) or maybe even three days a week given your bleeding risk?
Or not at all?
If you decide to get back on the horse at the lower dose stay in close touch with doc for bloods keep an eye out for a repeat.
Thanks for the the info !
Someone else suggested baby aspirin cut in quarters taken a oouple of times a wek would be useful as an anti-aging supplement but not be strong enough to cause intestinal bleeding
Only take an aspirin when you have to because you are hurting to much. People take aspirin to thin their blood to prevent heart attacks. Instead, take a 1,000 mgs of vitamin C, and a couple of grams of the amino acid Lysine each day; and you can quit worrying about your heart.
Josh : 70-80% of the immune system is in the stomach!!!The gut lining and the homeostasis effects are eroded by cox-1 inhibition and damage.Cox 1 is always active unless inhibited by NSAID,s.Cox -2 is not activated unless called upon through an inflammation response.Big pharma has been looking for years to find non -NSAID,s that bypass cox-1 to sell such as celebrex and other dangerous drugs.Inflammation leads to mutations and cancer.Boswellia and turmeric together have been shown in studies to kill advanced glioma cancer and most others in vivo and most other cancers as has rhodiola and even bromelain without affecting healthy tissue.It has been shown that chemotherapy damage has been muted by boswellia.Also cancer will hide with chemo alone.With boswellia it cannot.Aspirin will also affect the brain in consequence of ongoing stomach alterations,not just superficial bleeding.See David Perlmutter,M.D.,”Gut inflammation and your brain,” by googling.Also see Ray Sahelian M.D. on dangers of NSAID,s, ibuprofen studies about kidney and heart dangers by googling.Also see “Life extension” on N-acetyl cysteine and myriad benefits including avoiding cox-1 and targeting cox-2 and 5-lox to stop inflammatory cytokines and leukotrienes being uncontrolled as they are with any synthetic pain killer which exacerbates the process.Also see Dr. Axe, The danger of NSAID,s and also sources of glutathione precursors.Also Dr Axe information on “How to use boswellia to fight cancer.”All have references to studies.Thanks
I am 38, with high blood pressure under new guidelines, I have thick blood am morbidly obese have CMT and have been sedentary and bedbound for the last year. Nurse and docs recommended fish oil and aspirin to help with blood thickness and am adding vit k, D, calcium and magnesium do you think it is safe?
I learned something today about aging and aspirin and vitamin D. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom.
Go read “Why animals don’t get heart attacks,” Free on Internet.
Mindy – whatever gets you moving is good for you. The name of the game is to get comfortable enough in your body that you can start to walk, eventually swim and bicycle, add yoga.
You’ll measure what’s working for you by how comfortable you feel gradually adding to your exercise program.
Sounds good and agree…other than the ibuprofen thing.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/behindtheheadlines/news/2017-05-10-ibuprofen-linked-to-increased-risk-of-heart-attacks-/
Thanks for your blog.
Low Dose Aspirin therapy linked to Macular Degeneration
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/1558450
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1517/14740338.2014.915939
LEF recommends DHEA to prevent macular degeneration:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1517/14740338.2014.915939http://www.lifeextension.com/Magazine/2008/12/Preventing-Macular-Degeneration/Page-01