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

[mkwart at gci.net]

  Charles:

Thanks for the info--I stopped taking Advil because it caused me heart 
pain when I took it on the trail, miles from nowhere. I have a very low 
risk for heart attack--I am at a good weight, eat healthy, exercise and 
have low blood pressure and low cholesterol. The fact of having heart 
pain at rest only after taking Advil  at the end of the day was just 
corroborated by the research findings. The bottom line is to listen to 
your body.

--Fireweed

On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 7:38 AM , Charles Doersch wrote:

  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 
<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 
<mailto: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 
<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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