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Aspirin Or Grapeseed For Blood Thinning?

Written by Wellness Club on April 20, 2010 – 5:28 pm -

Aspirin Or Grapeseed For Blood Thinning?

 

By Dr. Myatt with Commentary by Nurse Mark

 

Modern medicine is awfully quick to whip out the ol’ prescription pad and alter someone’s ability to clot their blood. Coumadin (AKA warfarin – rat poison – it’s other use) is perhaps the most popular of the prescription anticoagulants with a relative newcomer Plavix nipping at Coumadin’s heels in popularity among doctors. Since Coumadin is such an old drug and the patents have long expired and generic versions of the drug all fight for profits. Plavix on the other hand is still under patent meaning that drug giants Bristol-Myers Squibb and Sanofi-Aventis still get all those lovely profits.

For non-prescription “blood thinners” – most doctors will recommend “an aspirin a day” for just about anything – despite recent findings that this is not only outdated but is actually downright dangerous according to a recent article in the British Medical Journal.

Fortunately, many folks are catching on to this “you gotta take a blood-thinner” scam that conventional medicine and Big Pharma pushes on us – but the subject is still fraught with confusion and misinformation. After all, if your conventional doctor paints pictures of doom and gloom for you if you don’t follow his advice and just take that little aspirin each day… well, most folks just take it. “After all, my doctor must know what he’s doing, right?”

Personally, as a Nurse I really dislike the term “blood thinner” – because that is not really what we are trying to do. The term “blood clotting inhibitor” would be more accurate, and what we really need to accomplish is normalization of the clotting pathways so that our blood can clot when it should and not clot when it shouldn’t.

Here is a recent letter that is an example of the confusion and uncertainty that we see about this subject.

Wendy writes:

I recently went to emergency diagnosed with a transient ischemic attack. The doctor prescribed one full strength aspirin per day, which from what I have found seems a large dose. They found no reason for the TIA in all their tests. Heart & arteries are good, no brain damage they were able to detect, cholesterol levels are all below normal, no high blood pressure, blood sugar okay. I am a smoker and I have been under a great deal of personal stress. I have been taking 100 mg of CoQ10, 600 mg of L-Carnitine, Vitamin E, and I started taking grape seed extract, but got concerned when a small shallow cut bled copiously. I picked up some low dose aspirin and need to know if it is safe to take the aspirin and grape seed together. Any other recommendations would be appreciated.

Wendy is on the right track – and here is Dr. Myatt’s reply:

Hi Wendy:

Here’s the full scoop on preventing TIA and blood viscosity problems: http://www.drmyattswellnessclub.com/stroke.htm

The whole purpose of taking aspirin (or grape seed) is to thin the blood, so if you noticed that you were bleeding more easily with grape seed, that what it is SUPPOSED to do! You are at far less risk of excess bleeding using herbs like grape seed, bromelain, or ginkgo than with something nasty like rat poison… uh, I mean coumadin (or even aspirin).

As you will see on the stroke info. page, smoking is a HUGE risk factor for such an event. If you’ve ever though of quitting, now would be the time.

You will also note the long list of imbalances than can cause such an “event.” Conventional medicine does not evaluate for all of these risk factors. I am available for consultation by phone if you would like to examine why this happened to you and how to prevent any future such events.

Hope this helps and I hope you Kick Butt!

In Health,
Dr. Myatt

Finally, the whole aim of the game really shouldn’t be to just “thin the blood” to somehow prevent it from clotting – it should be to normalize the blood’s ability to clot and to prevent it from clotting inappropriately. There are many herbs that will accomplish this very safely and effectively. High-dose Fish Oil like Dr. Myatt’s Maxi Marine O3 can also contribute to healthy normal blood viscosity as well as providing a host of other health benefits.

Another supplement recently developed by Dr. Myatt is Maxi Flavone -  a superior broad-spectrum blend of antioxidant flavonoid herbs that is highly protective against a wide variety of radical oxygen species (ROS) and will also serve to normalize blood viscosity and clotting pathways.

All this without the risk of hemorrhaging from the slightest cut or injury – just imagine what might happen if you were taking a drug like Coumadin or Plavix or aspirin- and you were involved in, say, an automobile accident…

With that in mind, remember that Vitamin K – the “clotting factor” is essential to keeping our blood clotting mechanisms normal and healthy. Vitamin K does not make blood clot – it makes it possible for blood to clot when it needs to. Vitamin K is also important to healthy bones and deficiencies are associated with osteoporosis as well as with blood that clots poorly.

As always, please feel free to follow the links within this article to find further information and references regarding those items.

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