[pct-l] Ibuprofen use increases the risk of heart attack

[Charles Doersch]

Regarding ibuprofen use -- and increased risk factors.

Just a word of caution in overestimating risks. That ibuprofen use increased
the risk of myocardial events (like a heart attack) by [let's say] 30%
(depending on dose, and length of use and health of the individual), may be
less dramatic than it sounds.

If you are concerned at what your risk is, I recommend plugging your
personal health statistics into the American Heart Association risk
calculator.
https://www.americanheart.org/gglRisk/locale/en_US/index.html?gtype=health

If you have a moderate risk for heart attack -- say, you score at the 6%
level on the Framingham Heart Study analysis -- that translates as
following: out of 100 people with your medical profile, over the next ten
years 6 will have a heart attack [94 out of 100 won't]. Increasing exercise,
lowering weight, etc. [all PCT-related outcomes] decreases that risk, which
is already very low. If your risk through the use of ibuprofen were to rise
as much as 33% -- that actually means your risk factor might have risen to
as much as 8%. Again, 8 people out of 100 over ten years using ibuprofen
with your health profile will have a heart attack. That of course means 92
people out of 100 with your health profile using ibuprofen won't have a
heart attack over ten years.

Whenever it comes to reported statistics about "increased safety" or
"increased risk" of anything from the use of bike helmets, or ski helmets,
to that of taking ibuprofen -- I try to always check what the actual
base-line incidence of the problem is. Some great studies have been coming
out over the past ten years from Harvard University's department of
psychology on how inaccurate we all tend to be at assessing actual risk and
making rational choices based on those.

Cheers,

Charles Doersch

On Sat, Jun 11, 2011 at 11:23 PM, <mkwart at gci.net> wrote:

> I had been taking Advil at the end of the day on the trail as a matter
> of course until I started feeling mild twinges of pain in my heart after
> I took it. Then I saw the warning on the label two summers ago about the
> increase in heart attack risk.  Here is an article explaining what my
> body had been telling me for
> years------
> http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2010-06-11-nsaids-heart_N.htm.
> Danish researchers found that NSAID pain medications not only increased
> the risk of heart attack for those with heart disease but for healthy
> people. They even mentioned people who are physically active and take
> these drugs routinely for pain.
>
> Naproxen (Aleve) doesn't seem to have the same risk, according to the
> article.
>
> Fireweed
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