Does The ‘Wonder Drug’ Aspirin Secretly Create Harm?

Written by Sayer Ji on September 8, 2025. Posted in Current News

For decades, an aspirin a day was virtually synonymous with heart attack prevention. This tiny pill was lauded as a near-miraculous shield against cardiovascular disease — a “wonder drug” taken by millions in hopes of an easy insurance policy

Yet in a stunning turn of events, the medical establishment has largely reversed its stance on routine aspirin use for healthy individuals.

How did a cornerstone of preventive medicine crumble, and why are health authorities now warning that aspirin’s risks may outweigh its benefits?

The paradox came into sharp focus in 2019 when leading experts explicitly advised against daily low-dose aspirin for most people without heart disease¹,².

New joint guidelines from the American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association bluntly stated:

“Aspirin should be used infrequently in the routine primary prevention of ASCVD because of lack of net benefit.”³

This was a whiplash-inducing pivot from decades of standard practice. It followed on the heels of multiple landmark studies (published in the New England Journal of Medicine) that found daily aspirin in healthy older adults often causes more harm than good⁴.

The medical consensus had quietly flipped: far from being a benign preventive, aspirin can be dangerous when used prophylactically in the wrong patients.

What changed? In truth, aspirin’s dark side was never a secret — but like so many pharmaceutical products, it was severely underappreciated. Aspirin’s blood-thinning ability that can prevent clots also makes it a double-edged sword: it raises the risk of bleeding in the gastrointestinal tract and brain, sometimes catastrophically⁵,⁶.

One new analysis in 2019 quantified the trade-off: in people with no prior heart disease, daily aspirin increased the risk of major internal bleeding by 43 percent, without significantly reducing deaths from heart attacks or strokes⁶,⁷.

In other words, many were enduring the dangers for little to no life-saving benefit. Another large trial in adults over 70 found no longevity or health span benefit from daily aspirin, but did find a higher rate of major hemorrhage — and even a slight increase in overall mortality in the aspirin group⁸,⁹.

These revelations have upended the cost-benefit equation that once so heavily favored aspirin. Yet, habits die hard.

A 2023 poll published in JAMA revealed that more than half of American adults over 50 are still taking daily aspirin, most without a history of cardiovascular disease¹⁰.

Shockingly, 57 percent of aspirin users in the survey had no prior heart attack or stroke, meaning millions could be self-medicating based on outdated advice¹⁰. Nearly half of people over 70 with no heart disease were needlessly taking aspirin each day¹⁰ — despite guidance specifically warning that in this age group the harms likely outweigh benefits¹¹.

Many of these individuals have never even discussed it with their doctor¹². The result? Possibly tens of thousands of preventable bleeding incidents. One recent study estimated that stopping aspirin in patients over 70 who have no cardiovascular indication could prevent over 100,000 major bleeding events in the coming years¹³.

That’s not a trivial trade-off — that’s a public health priority.

Note: GreenMedInfo.com has been indexing and reporting on the unintended, adverse effects of aspirin therapy for nearly 20 years. View the database on documented harms across 80+ conditions here.

Today, we are witnessing a remarkable medical U-turn, one that prompts tough questions: How did a drug once sold as “heart insurance” become a liability? Why did it take so long for guidelines to catch up to the data?

Part of the story is cultural — aspirin’s halo was burnished by over a century of use and aggressive marketing. (Its origins as a folk remedy from willow bark gave it a natural aura, and Bayer’s promotional campaigns entrenched the idea of the “aspirin a day” as a virtuous habit.)

Indeed, even after the new evidence came out, aspirin’s manufacturers were slow to change their tune. As late as 2019, Bayer’s website still dubiously proclaimed aspirin a “life-saving” wonder drug that “supports heart health” and “prevents stroke”¹⁴, without mentioning the newly recognized deadly risks.

This dissonance between evolving science and stagnant marketing is a scandal hiding in plain sight — a case study in how commercial interests and old dogmas can overstay their welcome in medicine.

Meanwhile, many doctors and patients have been left confused or unaware of the reversal. The cognitive dissonance is understandable: for years, aspirin was virtually synonymous with prudent prevention — as ordinary as a daily vitamin.

Now they’re told it might be doing more harm than good, unless you have an established heart condition.

It’s as if the foundation cracked beneath a long-standing public health mantra, leaving only a shaky question: If not aspirin, then what?

Hemorrhaging Trust: Uncovering Aspirin’s Hidden Risks

The reversal of aspirin guidelines was driven by a sober reckoning with the drug’s hazards. Aspirin is often thought of as harmless — it’s sold over-the-counter, after all — but research has unveiled a startling array of side effects beyond the familiar stomach upset.

Regular use of even “baby aspirin” (81 mg) can lead to gastric ulcers, gastrointestinal bleeding, and cerebral hemorrhages¹⁵,¹⁶. Aspirin’s anti-platelet effect, the very property that can prevent a clot, primes the body to bleed more profusely from any source.

For an older person, a tiny gastric ulcer or small vessel in the brain can turn into a life-threatening bleed when the blood’s clotting ability is dulled. It’s estimated that aspirin causes significant bleeding in a notable fraction of those who take it long-term, especially at higher ages or in combination with other medications.

Beyond bleeding, aspirin has been linked in studies to surprisingly diverse adverse outcomes: increased risk of peptic ulcers, exacerbation of Crohn’s disease, even associations with hearing loss (tinnitus) and macular degeneration in some reports¹⁵,¹⁷.

Aspirin is also infamous for the rare but deadly Reye’s syndrome in children (hence it’s contraindicated under age 18). Perhaps most ironically, taking aspirin during a viral infection like the flu was once common to reduce fever — but retrospective analyses suggest aspirin use may have contributed to higher death rates in the 1918 flu pandemic by dampening immune response¹⁶.

In short, the “wonder drug” carries a baggage of toxicities that were long underplayed.

One reason aspirin’s risks flew under the radar for so long is that medicine, like any field, can develop tunnel vision. We focus on the intended effect (preventing heart attacks) and may discount the collateral damage (like bleeding) until it becomes too obvious to ignore.

It didn’t help that aspirin is cheap and unsexy — there was little financial incentive for large clinical trials to reevaluate a generic drug, until independent academics and public health agencies took up the cause in recent years.

When those trials were finally done, the results were sobering. To recap a few of the dramatic findings:

• In the ASPREE trial (2018), over 19,000 healthy adults over 70 were randomized to aspirin or placebo. Aspirin did not lower heart attack or stroke rates, but led to significantly more major hemorrhages and a higher rate of death (mainly due to an unexpected increase in cancers)⁸,⁹. This stunned researchers and made headlines — a reminder that altering fundamental bodily processes (like clotting) is never risk-free.
• A 2019 meta-analysis of multiple trials (the one noted earlier) confirmed no overall mortality benefit in primary prevention, but a clear 43 percent increase in serious bleeding events⁶,⁷. In plain English: if 1,000 people take daily aspirin for a year, several will suffer a major bleeding who otherwise would not have — and there would be no corresponding reduction in deaths to offset that harm.
• In the case of women under 65, a long-term follow-up of tens of thousands of participants found no significant protective effect of aspirin on heart disease or cancer, but a notable increase in gastrointestinal bleeding. The authors concluded the cons outweighed the pros for aspirin in middle-aged women¹⁸. Only women over 65 showed any net benefit, and even then it was marginal and came with bleeding trade-offs¹⁹.

To be clear, the conventional medical community largely believes that aspirin still has an important role in secondary prevention — they will say, if you’ve already had a heart attack, stroke, stent, or have known heart disease, the balance of benefit vs. risk is different.

For those patients, aspirin can be a lifesaver by preventing clot-related events from recurring (especially if alternative approaches via dietary and lifestyle modification and supplementation is not pursued).

But what we’ve learned is that giving it out prophylactically to everyone above a certain age or risk level is too blunt an approach. The new mantra is “personalize it”: only those with a calculated high cardiovascular risk and low bleeding risk might consider aspirin, and always under medical guidance²⁰.

One cardiologist involved in the 2023 poll summed it up:

“Those without a history of cardiovascular disease should talk with their clinician to understand their personal risks and benefits before deciding to use aspirin”²⁰.

Unfortunately, that nuanced message hasn’t reached everyone taking a daily aspirin out of habit.

All this sets the stage for a pressing question: If not daily aspirin, then what can we do to protect our hearts and keep our blood flowing smoothly? Modern medicine, in its zeal for silver-bullet solutions, often forgets that nature might already have provided some answers.

In fact, while aspirin was busy reaping global accolades, a quiet body of research was growing in the shadows — research on a natural substance that just might be everything aspirin is not.

It is here that our story takes a surprising turn into the realm of botanical medicine, where an extract from pine trees is challenging the pharmaceutical status quo.

A Cure That Grows on Trees: Discovering Pycnogenol

Picture a towering pine tree, evergreen and resilient through the seasons. Within its bark, this hardy survivor produces a complex of protective compounds — a natural arsenal honed by evolution to ward off pests, heal injuries, and endure harsh environments.

Now imagine harnessing those very compounds for human health. Pycnogenol, an extract from the French maritime pine (Pinus pinaster) bark, is exactly that: a concentrated gift from the pine’s protective chemistry.

For over 40 years, scientists have been studying Pycnogenol, and what they’ve found reads like a wish-list for an ideal cardiovascular remedy²¹. It’s as if the pine tree distilled its essence of resilience and healing into a supplement that can fortify our bodies from the inside out.

Unlike aspirin — a single synthetic molecule (acetylsalicylic acid) — Pycnogenol is a broad-spectrum natural mixtureof bioflavonoids, proanthocyanidins, and phenolic acids. These are potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory constituents that work in synergy.

Importantly, Pycnogenol doesn’t come with the same blunt-force mechanism as aspirin (which irreversibly blocks platelet clotting enzymes everywhere). Instead, it appears to gently modulate the cardiovascular system on multiple fronts, enhancing function and guarding against pathological processes without causing chaos in the body’s balance.

Over the decades, over 500 published studies and reviews, and 99 human clinical trials, have documented Pycnogenol’s effects across an array of health conditions, from chronic inflammation to metabolic disorders.

But its most compelling benefits lie in the cardiovascular realm — exactly where aspirin was supposed to shine. By the late 1990s, researchers began to wonder: Could Pycnogenol be a natural alternative to aspirin for keeping blood flowing and preventing clots, without the bleeding risks?

The answer came in 1999, with a clinical study that ought to be legendary in the annals of integrative medicine (even though few people have heard of it).

Head-to-Head: Pine Bark Extract Puts Aspirin to Shame

The year was 1999, and a team of researchers in Germany and the U.S. decided to pit Pycnogenol directly against aspirin in a real-world test. They recruited healthy smokers — a group prone to sticky blood and clotting — to see how each substance affected platelet aggregation (the clumping of blood cells that leads to clots).

The results, published in the journal Thrombosis Research, were nothing short of remarkable. In every metric that mattered, Pycnogenol matched or outperformed aspirin — with a far cleaner safety profile.

Here’s what they found: when smokers lit up a cigarette, their blood platelet activity surged (smoking is notorious for spiking clot risk). A single dose of 500 mg aspirin prevented the abnormal clotting after a cigarette, as expected.

But so did a much lower dose of Pycnogenol (100–125 mg)²²,²³. In fact, 100 mg of Pycnogenol was as effective as 500 mg of aspirin at curbing platelet aggregation for hours after smoking²²,²⁴.

When the Pycnogenol dose was raised to 200 mg, its effects lasted over 6 days — indicating a sustained benefit long after the extract was taken²⁴. Aspirin’s effect, by contrast, wears off as new platelets are made in a couple of days.

This is taken from a long document. Read the rest here substack.com

Header image: London Drugs

Please Donate Below To Support Our Ongoing Work To Defend The Scientific Method

PRINCIPIA SCIENTIFIC INTERNATIONAL, legally registered in the UK as a company incorporated for charitable purposes. Head Office: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX. 

Trackback from your site.