Once you start taking aspirin and statins, do you need to take them for life?

This is a question that many people ask me during my clinic visits. I will share with you today.

I'm sorry to say that only a few people can take it for a while. Most people need to take it for life.

This starts with the symptoms that these two drugs respond to. The main function of aspirin is to prevent the formation of blood clots in the arteries, thereby reducing the risk of cerebral infarction/myocardial infarction. It should be noted that for patients who have already developed symptoms, the risk of another infarction is very high, so we have to carry out secondary prevention. Many people here have misunderstandings and ask, I took medication after I had a cerebral infarction, but why did I have another cerebral infarction several years later? Wasn’t it prevented? But prevention does not mean that it will not happen at all, it just reduces the probability of its occurrence. But if you don’t take it, the probability of the disease is still very high. Then some patients are relatively young, and they have an acute thrombosis. After thrombectomy or thrombolysis, they only need to take aspirin for a period of time to stabilize the condition. But this is a very small number. Most patients with cerebral infarction and myocardial infarction are older.

The same is true for statins. The purpose of statins is to lower cholesterol levels, which can reduce the formation of plaques and control plaques. If plaques are not controlled, they will rupture or continue to grow, which will lead to only two results, thrombosis or chronic occlusion, both of which will lead to cerebral infarction or myocardial infarction. In this case, you must take the medication for a long time to effectively control the plaques. Once the medication is stopped, the cholesterol value will soon continue to rise, and the disease will continue to develop. For patients who do not need to take the medication for a long time, except for the acute high cholesterol value mentioned above, or very mild plaques, they can take the medication for a period of time and selectively stop the medication after reexamination.

At present, most of the causes of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, such as hypertension, diabetes, and atherosclerosis, require lifelong medication. Scientific research has only reached this stage. The so-called cure is false propaganda. I hope everyone can distinguish right from wrong.