14 DAY TRIAL // Aspirin is the universal panacea against headache. Others sustain that aspirin is beneficial for men and women over 50 prone to heart attack due to smoking, hypertension, diabetes, high cholesterol level, low level of HDL (good) cholesterol, severe obesity, alcoholism, genetic predisposition to early heart attack or stroke, sedentary life style.
The acetylsalicylic acid (chemical name of the aspirin) is present in a lot of drugs sold without prescription and its use is increasingly growing as an analgesic employed against pain (including inflammatory ones) and fever.
But there is a problem: some people take aspirin like multivitamin pills while others get stomach problems, from low-grade stomach pain to ulcer and gastrointestinal bleeding severe enough to require a transfusion.
And if you think that coated (buffered) aspirin would be the solution, give it up: a special Harvard report shows that this one has the same effect as uncoated aspirin. Coated aspirin is developed with the intention of decreasing the drug's effect on the stomach. The coating of the buffered aspirin withstands stomach acids so it goes through the stomach unchanged and dissolves in the more neutral small intestine. This way it was believed that aspirin won't harm the lining of the stomach.
But the new study shows that buffered aspirin has virtually the same effect on the stomach as uncoated aspirin because aspirin doesn't have to be in contact with stomach cells to harm them.
Even when the buffered aspirin dissolves in the gut, it enters the bloodstream and reaches all parts of the body, including the stomach wall where it blocks the COX-1 enzyme.
COX-1 has the role of breaking down powerful acids that digest food and which can also harm the stomach cells. Because we all have different genetics, COX-1 of any individual is more or less sensitive to aspirin and reacts differently. That's why coating is not equivalent to problem-free aspirin use.