[ryanoelke]

Not looking for medical advice here, but more of personal experience.

I’m on the borderline of the standard recommendation to take a daily aspirin based on risks, doc wasn’t adamant, but encouraging and said it’s low risk (as did a good md friend of mine). I decided to start taking the daily baby aspirin a few weeks ago. I’d rather not, but doing so to limit my risk.

Anyways, did some research in running forums and seems like the folks who take one for the same reasons don’t notice any difference, but curious if anyone here is doing a daily baby aspirin, even more interested if you started after having trained a while, see if you notice any differences, or if you find a particular time of day is better to take it relative to your training. I train in the mornings, take the aspirin mid-afternoon.

Mainly, I can’t help but think there would be some even minimal negative impact relative to recovery, but couldn’t find any research to say that, and the only things I did discover were in reference to people taking the normal dose vs. baby aspirin to deal with aches/pains, which I find folks usually discourage due to negative impacts on the necessary inflammation process in muscle recovery. Not sure that applies or to the same degree with the baby aspirin.

[Charles]

My doctor had me on it for years, but the science changed. It is no longer recommended except for individuals with some serious heart condition.

When I was using it I had to be very careful; any slight abrasion led to some ugly bleeding. For example, I do some trail running, and would occasionally get a scratch from thorns and have blood everywhere. I no longer use baby aspirin on my doctor’s recommendation.

I don’t think I had any impact with my physical performance before or after using baby aspirin. When initially prescribed I was predominately a power lifter, and later gave that up for running. As a runner I really did not see any difference without and with baby aspirin.

I do use full aspirin for muscle injury to control inflammation. It does minimize swelling, and “I think” speed recovery. I had a recent fall that caused back spasms, and aspirin seems to help. But, I only use it as necessary as necessary, meaning rarely.

[ryanoelke]

Thanks for the reply, Charles! Yeah, I had seen the science change on this, and sounded like one of the main reasons to limit it was the bleeding for some folks, especially over 60.

I had a calcium scan done last year, scored 100 and put me just into the moderate risk category, but didn’t start the aspirin since I don’t have anything else going on except cholesterol (and had an echo done to check something from the scan, everything was normal).

Last month I had some palpitations that lasted a while, more than a short skip of a beat, though with a normal bpm, and the geek in me realized I could test the EKG on my Apple Watch and it detected it as Afib. Doc mentioned there’s been one study done comparing the Apple Watch with standard cardio gear in a hospital, and it scored high in accuracy, maybe 80%. So, not conclusive for me or the doc, but added another point in the potential risk column.

Anyways, I’m still not overly convinced, but decided to try and see how it feels. I had a salivary stone removed under my tongue this week, but it was only day 4 of the baby aspirin. Didn’t really bleed much, but I’m curious to see how I do with that.

Happy to hear that you didn’t notice any difference on/off! I wouldn’t want to trade too much off in that department for theoretical risk.

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