Here’s how to protect yourself if you must take them, and other alternatives
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These painkillers can cause cardiac arrest
Cardiac arrest is when the heart suddenly stops beating, breathing stops and the person loses consciousness.
It’s usually a problem with the electrical system of the heart.
It’s quite different from a heart attack where the issue is usually due to a blockage preventing blood flow.
Many things can influence the likelihood of suffering from cardiac arrest, some of those are painkillers which many people wrongly believe are totally harmless.
One commonly used painkiller was associated with a 50% increased risk of sudden cardiac arrest.
The human research was carried out at Copenhagen University Hospital Gentofte in Denmark. This paper was published in European Heart Journal Cardiovascular Pharmacotherapy.
Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory treatments are a large class of painkillers, some of which are very widely and commonly used.
Many of these have a large number of serious side-effects – including increased risk of cardiovascular disease cardiovascular events.
Much of this is widely reported in the scientific literature – though it hasn’t been covered as much in the newspapers…
“Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are widely used and have been associated with increased cardiovascular risk.”
The authors of this study were to know if any of these were linked to cardiac arrest specifically.
And they only looked at cardiac arrests which happened outside of the hospital setting.
“Nonetheless, it remains unknown whether use of NSAIDs is associated with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.
The data was taken from the Danish cardiac arrest Registry – nationwide records kept by the government of Denmark.
The researchers analyzed data collected by the Danish government over a 10 year period.
“All persons with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest during 2001-10 were identified.”
They looked to see whether there was any relationship between the use of certain painkilling treatments in the month before cardiac arrest and the likelihood of suffering the condition.
“NSAID use 30 days before out-of-hospital cardiac arrest was categorized as follows: diclofenac, naproxen, ibuprofen, rofecoxib, and celecoxib.”
Two of these, ibuprofen and diclofenac are pretty widely used for pain.
“Risk of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest associated with use of NSAIDs was analysed by conditional logistic regression in case-time-control models matching four controls on sex and age per case to account for variation in drug utilization over time.”
About one in eight people who suffered cardiac arrest over that 10 yr time period had taken one of these medications in the previous month.
“We identified 28 947 persons with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest of whom 3376 were treated with an NSAID up to 30 days before out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.”
The vast majority of those taking NSAIDS were taking one of two of these painkillers.
“Ibuprofen and diclofenac were the most commonly used NSAIDs and represented 51% and 22% of total NSAID use.”
When the researchers crunch the numbers they found that these two were associated with a significantly increased risk of cardiac arrest.
Ibuprofen was associated with a 30% increased risk of cardiac arrest.
Diclofenac seemed to increase the risk of cardiac arrest by 50%.
“Use of diclofenac (odds ratio 1.50) and ibuprofen (OR, 1.3) were associated with a significantly increased risk of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.”
The other drugs were associated with an increased risk of cardiac arrest – but this was not deemed to be statistically significant in the analysis.
This may be due to not very many people taking them.
“Use of naproxen (OR, 1.29), celecoxib (OR, 1.13), and rofecoxib (OR, 1.28 ) were not significantly associated with increased risk of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.”
Diclofenac and ibuprofen seem to significantly increase the risk of suffering a cardiac arrest outside of a hospital setting.
“Use of non-selective NSAIDs was associated with an increased early risk of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.”
The other two widely used treatments in this class are acetaminophen and aspirin.
Acetaminophen generally presents with similar systemic risks to the NSAIDS tested here.
Aspirin in moderate doses seems to be much, much safer.
“The result was driven by an increased risk of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in ibuprofen and diclofenac users.”
You should always consult your healthcare practitioner for guidance on medical diagnosis and treatment.
—-Important Message—-
The nitric oxide hoax — what all men need to know
Unfortunately, I’ve heard from thousands of men who have suffered heart attacks…
…and they all had one thing in common.
They were all taking heart meds and cholesterol-lowering treatments that were supposed to keep that from happening.
Turns out, those treatments can make heart problems WORSE.
Unfortunately, many men have to discover this the hard way… but you don’t have to…
———-
