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Health Check: Bedtime Aspirin

Aspirin

27/11/2013

Bedtime Aspirin

BBC World Service - Health Check, Bedtime Aspirin

How taking aspirin at night may reduce the risk of a heart attack in the morning

Why taking aspirin at night could reduce the risk of a heart attack in the morning; stories of the hazards of sex; the online tool to help people forgive.

Around the world millions of people are prescribed a daily low dose of aspirin after they have had a heart attack or a stroke, to help prevent them from having another. The aspirin prevents the platelets in the blood from attaching to each other to form a clot. Most patients take their aspirin in the morning, but Dr Tobias Bonten, Clinical Epidemiologist at Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands, wondered if taking it at night might reduce the risk of a morning heart attack. He has just presented his research at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions. 

Sexual Activity-Related Emergency Room Admissions
After a gentleman of a similar age walked into Professor Aristomenis Exadaktylos’s emergency department complaining of chest pain after having had sex, it prompted him to start an analysis of sexual activity-related emergency department admissions to the University Hospital Bern. Professor Exadaktylos, director of the Department of Emergency Medicine, and his team looked at 11 years of data which involved around 450 patients. They found that half of admissions were due to infectious diseases, and the other half were due to cardiovascular, trauma and neurological emergencies and about one third of all cases were severe and needed admission to the hospital. The results have just been published in Emergency Medical Journal.

Forgiveness Toolbox
We know that forgiveness can benefit your health and your well-being, but how easy is it to forgive when someone has done something truly appalling to you or even murdered a member of your family? At Canterbury Christchurch University in Britain, researchers are looking not to religion or spirituality as you might expect, but to psychological research. And to equip people with the skills to allow them to forgive they have developed an online resource called the Forgiveness Toolbox. Dr Masi Moor, a senior lecturer in social psychology, politics and sociology is the brains behind the project, which also uses individual stories collected by a conflict resolution organisation called The Forgiveness Project.

Photo: Aspirin tablets. Credit:1998 EyeWire Inc.

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