This report, commented on by our friends at American Council on Science and Health, reminds that a little bit of aspirin daily is heart attack prevention.
However aspirin effects on platelets aren’t 12 hour effects. Besides, Aspirin is a peak within 1 hour, 4 hour gone completely, drug.
Platelet last about a 9 days. Typical Platelet count is 200,000 per cc and they react to injury, changing shape and becoming sticky to form a plug. Cool. One of the great challenges for medical students is to recall the clotting cascades for tests. Very complicated, involving very important reactions and feedback loops that keep us in equilibrium between bleeding and clotting to death. Amazing stuff to think about. Clots are a factor in heart attacks, called myocardial infarction, which means heart muscle loss of circulation.
Myocardial infarctions occur most often in the morning, probably because of the daily Circadian rhythm of energy and enzymes.
Aspirin is a wonderful drug and it reduces inflammation by inhibiting inflammatory mediators like prostaglandins and thromboxanes and cyclooxygenase and related inflammatory mediators–COX 1 and 2 are what you have heard about. That’s why it works for arthritis and it is related to all the arthritis non steroidals. The steroidals like prednisone are anti-inflammatory too.
Aspirin works by irreversibly inhibiting the thromboxane mediated stickiness of platelets, so when a live platelet is exposed once, that’s enough, you only take aspirin daily because the body is constantly making new platelets.
But one exposure is all that’s necessary. No question aspirin does what is advertized, however this study doesn’t convince me that people who take their aspirin in the morning are at risk compared to night time aspirin takers.
http://acsh.org/2013/11/aspirin-day-may-keep-heart-trouble-bay-better-still-aspirin-night/