Aspirin for Your Heart

One baby aspirin a day can lower your risk of heart attack or stroke

Do you take an aspirin a day for heart health? If aspirin therapy isn’t part of your daily routine, you’re not alone: Nearly half of U.S. adults with diabetes don’t take aspirin to lower their risk of heart attack or stroke.

“Heart disease is the number-one cause of illness and death among people with diabetes,” says cardiologist David B. Goldner, M.D., of Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network. “Aspirin works by preventing clots and lowering your risk of heart attack and stroke.”

In addition to eating a healthy diet, exercising regularly and taking medications as prescribed by your doctor, everyone with diabetes should take one 81-milligram (mg.) aspirin a day, says Goldner’s colleague, endocrinologist Donald Barilla, M.D. “That’s all it takes to lower risk.” Only a small number of people can’t take aspirin, either because the drug gives them ulcers or they’re allergic to it, he says. “If it bothers your stomach, try the enteric-coated type.”

Aspirin is inexpensive, too - one 81-mg. tablet costs about five cents - and may be just what you need to live a longer, healthier life.

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