The publications I read regularly, besides our local newspaper, are "The Wall Street Journal," the "New York Times,", the "Annals of Internal Medicine" (and its every-other-month "Journal Club") and "The Economist." I frequently get blog topics from the WSJ and then try to trace their source back into the medical literature, often going through the National Library of Medicine's website. The NYT somewhat less frequently has provided leads, the "Annals" is a great source, but this week I actually found two articles in "The Economist" that were well worth blogging about.
The first was titled Fish and No Chips with a subtitle of "The Wonders of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA)." There apparently was a scientific meeting in London recently which focused on DHA. We're both taking fish oil, 1,000 mg a day, one capsule with each meal, as a source of Omega-3 fatty acids. Each softgel capsule contains 300 mg of Omega-3s, coming from anchovy and sardines.
I'm having back surgery this week and the pre-op-clinic nurse going trough my list of meds noted I had stopped taking my prophylactic 81 mg of baby aspirin a day (there are pros and cons to taking even this dose and I keep watching the debates in the medical literature; don't take it without talking to your own doc.). What I hadn't realized, was the fish oil capsules, according to the nurse, also have some form of anticoagulant effect and should be stopped before surgery. Now that she mentioned this, I reread the bottles label and noted it said to consult your doctor if you're planning any sort of medical procedure.
The medical literature on this is sparse at the levels recommended: The average US total intake is about 1.6 gm/day and the suggested dose is 2.85 gm/day. There appears to be little anticoagulant effect at doses under 3 gm/day, although a prospective study, published in 2009 in the "British Medical Journal" was enrolling hemodialysis patients in a low-dose aspirin vs. fish oil trial in an attempt to see how best to keep arterio-venous fistulas from clotting.
But the new article in "The Economist" is worth returning to and I'll do that in my next blog. In the meantime, fish oil sounds reasonable to me, so I'll restart it after my surgery. Oh and the brand we take says, "purified to remove mercury."
aspirin is a good anti-inflammatory still in use today. ```
Of course it is and I take aspirin in the usual dosage when needed. I've also chosen, with my own physician's knowledge, to take a baby aspirin a day. I did so after carefully thinking my way through the pros and cons of such based on my own medical knowledge. Not everyone should do so and there are risks to regular aspirin use and considerable debate in the medical literature as to prophylactic dosage.
aspirin is one of the safest anti-inflammatories that you can use for lots of things`:;
Even low-dose aspirin can be a problem for some people. By and large most of us can use it occasionally, but if you're going to take it regularly, I'd suggest asking your physician.
aspirin has been time tested to relieve minor pains and inflammation and it is cheap too `"'