Humans have been using a form of aspirin for pain relief since at least the Sumerians. But in recent years we’ve come to learn the wonder drug is indeed awe-inspiring, from preventing heart attacks to possibly protecting humans from cancer.
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Welcome to Stuff you should know. A production of I Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and there's Jerry out there coated in powder. Um, and this is the stuff you should know, the aspirin edition. Why don't you pick this one? I've been reading a giant book on aspirin and yeah, yeah, biography and you know, behind the scenes, backstage that aspirin, all the ups and downs, like a behind the music basically. Yeah, I don't remember why I picked this. I just don't remember, but um, I did, and I'm going to stand by it. Remember when aspirin o'deed on itself? Yeah, yeah, June's family. That's some nasty stuff to od onto, it turns out, I would think, so. I mean not only the result, but just the taste. I don't like the taste either. But haven't you said that you're like a good eas headache powder dude? Yeah, good eas er BC. I will, um, you know, that's a lot of aspirin. It's like, you know, if you will, and we'll get to this. But if you have like a hard issue, they recommend you take something like eighty five milligrams and in a good eason a BC is like eight and fifty Holy cow, is it really? Yeah? Plus caffeine. It's a it's a big dose of aspirin plus the sea menafin two. It's it's um, it's powdered excetern it's what is the same same formula? Well, they're both different, but yeah, one of them is. I can't remember which one. I think good eas is powdered, etcetera. Yeah, I think BC does not have the SA menafin and just has caffeine and maybe more caffeine. Wow, it's like the jolt coal of headache powder. But point is, I don't take that a lot anymore. And h it uh, I don't mind the taste. I though it grows. There's a lot of people out, but I don't love it. And I'm I don't just like let it sit on my tongue and does allve forever, Like I wash it down very quickly, right, But I'm not like I got you. It's just pretty better. You have no problem with the drain. You're okay, funny guy. So um, we are talking aspirin today and it is uh kind of tough. I've realized to overstate the importance of aspirin as far as like the world's medicine cabinet goes like, there is no other drug that has been sold more than aspirin in the history of humanity. Did you know that? Sure? Okay, I mean you know it's it's it's the go to or was for many, many, many many years, until other inseids started making the scene. For you know, decades and decades, aspirin was sort of the go to for a lot of stuff. That's true. All right, Let's see if I and impress you with this. One of the great things about aspirin is it's synthesized from nature that it's actually a perfected version of something that you would find in a number of plants salasilic acid um. But specifically it was Willow that yielded up her secrets for mankind humankind to use as a medicine to make things better. Yeah, I mean, that's a that's a lot of medicines, and that's uh. You know, Emily has gotten really into herbalism here in the last few years, and that's kind of one of her beefs is that the medical inform of industries have synthesized things and gotten rid of a lot of the great parts of the plant. Sure she feels like are of great use to human beings to make the synthetic versions. Okay, fair enough in this case though with aspirin, I would argue that it is the improved version of nature's version. Oh yeah, I think so, and we'll we'll talk about why. But like I said, it was the willow plant that people realized pretty far back, chuck. Um. I believe it was at least as as Um, as late as the Sumerians. Um who I think there are clay tablets found that basically said, are your joint sachy, Try a little willow leaf tea. It'll fix you right up. Yeah, it was um, you know they I don't think they had the name for it at the time, but it was sala Cylene was the ingredient, and you could boil it down into a tea. Like you said, you could dry dry it out and powder that bark up and pound it down and work it through a sieve and get you know, I guess an early version of goodies, and you would, I mean everything from the Egyptians. There's the Ebers Papyrus, which is a kind of a fun little cookbook textbook, medical journal kind of thing that has recipes for myrtle and willow leaf tea for joint pa. Great chili recipe in there too, great chili. Uh, they too bad. They didn't know about Freedo's back then. But um and by the way, speaking of Friedo's, Yeah, you know, there's actually a chapter in our book about freedom tows on dogs. There is, I know, MoMA is in it. I think that we don't talk enough about the fun chapters of our book. There's a lot of like, kind of heavy stuff, but there's also a chapter about freedom tows, which, if you don't have a dog, it is it is the smell of corn chips that a dog's paws can admit. Yeah, that was kind of one of the more fun chapters. I think it was a good chapter for sure, because we talked not just about that, but about not just about how humans perceived the smell of dogs paws, but how dogs perceived the world with smell. Different bacteria can make different smells, and it's pretty It was a good one. I like that one, although I like our whole book, to be honest. I finally got it two days ago. Who ray, what do you think? Well, First of all, it was very happy about how many they sent. Yeah, I thought they were gonna send me a couple of books. They sent me a big old box of books like they did you. And it was just really great to hold in my hand. And and it's it's it's awesome. It looks great, it's the size we wanted, it looks it looks like a real book. It is. It's a legit book, like, which is weird, real book? I know. Did they put your name on the box? No, your name was on my box? Is that right? They put my name on my box too. They just said, what do you mean? It just said the book titled Then by Josh Clark. Yeah, yeah that's what it said. I think they just didn't print the whole thing. Okay. Well, I like my idea that they were going to personalize each of our box nice touch flat. This just sounds like lazy box printing. But I got you okay. Well, yeah, I wasn't like trying to rub it in thinking that they would have personalized your box too. But you're like, I'm going to save that box, but whatever. Yeah, actually, can you send me your box? Okay, I'll send you the box with a big old load of poop in it. Yeah, there's like a foothole where where it used to see Josh Clark. Uh. So anyway, you can pre order that book stuff you should know, an incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things. But back to aspirin Um. This book was I don't even know where I was talking about. Oh, people like plenty of the Elder and Hippocrates had written about aspirin, or it wasn't aspirin yet, but sell us Eileen. As you know, basically early on it was all about reducing fever and reducing joint like arthritis, joint pain inflammation. And it's still really good for that too. Aspirin it turns out as a non steroidal anti inflammatory drug and insid um and it like people realize that it was useful, like you said, for for joint inflammation, for a fever reduction, which makes it an anti pyretic um, which I think is a great word um. And we knew about this for centuries and apparently Europe introduced to China for once rather than vice versa. But then it just kind of fell away, It fell to the wayside um kind of out of human knowledge, although like it was still there just nobody was thinking about willow any longer until malaria became a big thing. When UM the Age of Discovery began and Europeans started to uh colonize other parts of the world, including South America, malaria became a bit of a problem UM. And one of the remedies for malaria we figured out was sin chona sinchona, right. I always said chinchona, but I think it is cinchona. I always say chinchona too, but I'm looking right at it, and I don't see that first age unless it's a weird pronunciation thing. I think I've probably just been saying it wrong. Okay, well let's let's say sin chona. Then we'll pronounce it correctly for once in our lives. And that's a different kind of tree whose bark works really well to treat malaria, and not just treat malaria, but also reduced fevers as well. Um. But the problem is is getting it from South America can be very very expensive, or it certainly was in the UM sixteen, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. So it caused this one guy European um doctor I believe, or at least a researcher named Reverend Edward Stone to look for an alternative for it, and he came upon willow. He rediscovered willow again for the treatment of fevers in inflammation. And by the way, I think we mispronounced is it shinchona? I just know it's neither. That's so us. I just looked up real quick. It says it's sun chona. Okay, I like that one. It almost sounds like it almost sounds like Quimby saying chowder. It's so weird, So sun shona. Yeah. Edward Stone goes looking for an alternative, and he starts looking at the willow bark in its properties and does a pretty decent study for back then UH in seventeen sixty three and found that a four hour administration of willow bark powder um would reduce fever pretty consistently. And like I said, it was a good study for back then UM. There were some other Europeans who were also extracting um, the active ingredient, from willow, and it was kind of happening all around the same time. I think it guy named LaRue did the best job of it in the early eight and what they got was the substance salacene, right, So um. That's basically the they isolated the active ingredient in willow bark, and not just willow bark um salacene or salacelic acid, which probably sounds familiar um if you've ever used some sort of skincare treatment, say to combat acne, because it actually goes in and dissolves the stuff in your pores, so it comes in handy like that. UM. When they when they isolated it, they they found out that oh, actually this this pops up elsewhere in nature. It's actually UM a kind of hormone that plants use for their own immune response. And you can find it and everything from willow or myrtle or meadow sweet to jasmine peas clover. It pops up very It's a pretty common plant hormone. And it was isolated finally in the early nineteenth century. Yeah, and there were a couple of other kind of important uh side roads on the way to aspirin. That happened one in eighteen fifty three when a French chemist name Gerhardt, he invented aspirin by accident, but he wasn't very refined in how he did it. It was not a very good quality, was pretty impure. Not very effective, so it was not paid very much attention to, but we have to mention him. And then in the eighteens, fifties and sixties, some German chemists figured out how to produce it synthetically. They learned the chemical structure of salicylate, which is just kind of crazy to think that they could do stuff like that back then. Um, that they were that advanced and learning chemical structures of something like that, I was impressed by that. But yeah, and they figured out how to produce it synthetically, made it very much available, very inexpensive, and that was all of a sudden. It was a very popular fever reducer and pain reliever, despite its side effects, which are mainly stomach problems and tenatus. Yes, but the thing is is with that um, with especially tenitis and nausea like, it can be really bad if you take too much. It's temporary, but it can be a real problem. And over time they also found out that it can produce long term chronic effects because it's so hard on your stomach because again, you're using the same sub sense um that you used to clean out the ports, does all the stuff in your and your pores that has a big effect on your stomach, and in fact, we would find later on that it erodes your gastric mucosa, your stomach lining, and that can produce all sorts of problems on its own. In the short term, it makes you want to just throw up and die if you take too much aspirin. And that's what we figured out with salasilic acid. And that was the point of aspirin, was to figure out how to create how to take this really useful, important drug that had been known for millennia by this time, and make it so it was it didn't have any of these unpleasant side effects. And that's where aspirin came from. Yeah, so maybe we can take a break and come back and talk about very sort of legendary company out of Germany called Buyer right after this. All right, if you heard me say Buyer and you're thinking, dude, it's bear aspirin. What are you German? No, I'm not German, but that's how you pronounced it over there, It's Buyer. We pronounced a bear over here. They were originally a die making company, but like so many other companies involved in chemistry, um, they could pivot very easily and you start discovering things when you're working in chemistry that might make you more money, and that was sort of the case with Buyer, and they set up a pharmaceutical wing and said, hey, you know, we're discovering these other things and you can make a ton of money in pharmaceuticals. And this is just sort of at the beginning of that. They had no idea what they were onto, but they started a pharmaceutical wing and said, one of our first things we want to try and do is to create a version of salasylate that doesn't have all these nasty side effects. Yeah, and there's a there's a long standing story in the chemistry community UM that a guy named Felix Hoffman, a German chemist who worked for bear Um, was trying to figure out a way to make salasilic acid UH more easy on his father's stomach. His father had rheumatism um, which is a chronic inflammation of the joints, and he had to take salasilic acid a lot. So Felix Hoffman was trying to figure out how to help his dad out when he stumbled upon the recipe that or what would become the recipe for aspirin that's right, So, uh, all of this lad to one of the most popular drugs in the history of the world. Um, there is some debate. Like with everything like this, it seems like sometimes it's hard to tell who exactly has given credit because history is written by the victors, and um, in this case, well, there's a there's three men. There's a fourth dude named Carl Duisberg, who is included as being a big person in the development because he was a marketer and his marketing skills were a big, big reason why aspirin was so successful. But a lot of people point to Felix Hoffman as the quote unquote inventor of aspirin because on August ten, in his notebook entry, he described adding UH ascetic and hydrate and hydride to UH salasylate and created aspirin. I'm gonna say it if you won't say it. It's it's called aspirin. A setle silic man, a setle salacilic acid. Yeah, it's it's kind of fun to say. It has like a setle seal a salic acid. It's the ascid that you love. But Chuck calls it aspirin because it's easier and he can call it that legally because Aspurn's our proprietary epin m as we'll see in that. Wow, that was something. Should we leave that in? Sure? All right? I think that's our gift to the listeners. That's some end of the year's aningus right there. That means our our brains are entering the December mush phase. Yeah, boy, is it. I'm looking forward to that break. I New York can't wait. Yeah, everyone, I think we've said this before. We take a few weeks off at the end of the year, and it's just do not have to research stuff for three weeks? Is really nice? You guys don't notice because we make sure we record extra episodes in advance, but we actually do. We we bulk up the kitty as we say. That's right, So, um, just just real quick to put a button in this. Felix Hoffman is is um said to be the guy who created this a guy named Arthur Ike and Gruen said later on he actually wrote a letter to Bear from a concentration camp during the Nazi um the Third Reich, because he was Jewish, and he said, I was the one who came up with this um, but my my records were expunged by the Nazis. Other people are like, I'm not sure if that's true or not. And a guy named Heinrich Dresser, he said, it doesn't matter if it's true, because I rediscovered this stuff. I told both of these guys not to mess with this. They did anyway. I took their research published, it didn't give them credit, and now I am the one officially who is listed as the inventor of asperin, even though it was really Felix Hoffman and possibly Arthur Ike and Gruen who did Yeah, And I guess you could do that if there isn't any patents being filed. You could literally just sort of publish something and steal someone's work. Yeah, which is I don't know, it's kind of weird to think about, but I guess the law was the law. But they did file patents, and I mean Bear realized pretty quickly. This is at the same time they were coming out with heroin too, so Bear had to really big hits, like right right with from what I read, within a couple of weeks of each other, and Felix Hoffman was central to both of them. But with aspirin, they were like, this is kind of a big deal. Everybody loves salasilic acid and the effects that it has, but they hate the side effects and we just got rid of them. So they patented it, and they came up with the name aspirin. So the A is a nod to the ascetic and hydride the acetal part. The spur is a reference to the botanical names Spiria old Maria, which is the name for meadows sweet. Another source of um salasilic acid, right, yeah, so that would be Asperia. And then they added the I N at the end because that was just sort of one of the naming conventions for medicines, just like we have cane like cocaine and cylin for antibiotics, they would add an I N. So Aspoia became aspirin. Yeah. So if you picked up the box and you're like, asper what is the So you get to the end and see the I N and be like, oh, it's a medicine, that's right. So Germany patents this in the nineteen hundred in the United States. After patenting it in Germany and everywhere they could they would try and get a patent and it's been sort of an interesting story since then because after World War One, Uh, and this is I didn't even know this kind of stuff happened. But um, Germany had to surrender their patents two countries that had defeated them, and one of them was Aspirin, so they couldn't prevent competitors all over the world from making their own version. They did retain the trademark in a few different countries. But that is, like you said earlier, that is why you won't see aspirin or you don't have to listpit list bit list it with a capital A, because it is it's just one of those what do you call it, proprietary epinem Yes, I love those. Yeah, those are great. Yeah, you don't have to list it, you don't have to say aspens correct. But um, some historians actually make the case, Chuck, that World War Two happened because Germany was treated so harshly after World War One that it led to such traconian um basically revenge on Germany and the German people, that it allowed a guy like Hitler to rise as this populist and gain control. So yeah, I didn't know about the patents either, But that kind of jibes and dovetails with that whole view. It's like give us all your art and patents, right, what else you can ask for? Land? Sure, I guess, but that's sure. And they did do that. Remember the the uh, the Nazi gold episode. We didn't so Um. There's another side story to all this that came out of World War One as well, um, and that there was an embargo on phenol um by England. England said, hey, we make a lot of feene all over here. It's an active ingredient and a lot of stuff including aspirin, but not just aspirin explosives to which is one big reason why we want to keep a lid on this thing. And we're going to make sure that Germany doesn't get any And there wasn't anything official in the United States banning anyone from selling to fhen Aal the Germany, but it was definitely looked like as you were aiding people who were at the very least the enemy of our enemy, if not our enemy yet because we had an inner World War One yet. Um. But that didn't stop Thomas Edison from selling Feenal to the Germans during World War One? Did it? No? He was Germany was looking at a losing one of their most profitable drugs and said all right, we're gonna send a spy over there, uh to secretly buy fhenal from Thomas Edison because he's guy loves to blow stuff up. He's allows you with it. And I think that was just exposed when one of the conspirators accidentally left his briefcase on the train, and it was a real black eye on not only Baia but Edison as well. Yeah, and I mean like a lot of people are like, oh wow, you know they were they were trying to keep the Germans from having aspirin during World War One again he could use phenal to create T and T and other explosives. So that seems to be the reason why, which makes Thomas Edison, he actually created the phenal himself and then selling it to the Germans all the more shady, you know, totally. So it was definitely a blemish on on Edison for sure. Um. And he eventually stopped selling it to them and then donated the rest of the U. S. Army, I believe. Right, So Bayer is selling a lot of aspirin as a powder at first, um kind of like you know what we were talking about earlier, But they figured out that people and this is kind of how most a lot of medicaments were powders at this point. And I think aspirin from Bayer was one of the first ones to be made into a tablet, and they said, hey, if we can compress this stuff to a little tube, uh people, it won't make people like wretch with disgust from how bitter it is. You can just pop it into your mouth, wash it down with some uh, with some liquor or absent or something, some schnops peach peach knops and um, and people will take it more readily or at least not want to not take it. And it really really worked and that really popularized the use of tablets kind of from that point on. Yeah, not just with aspirin, but with all medicines. Introduced the public to it, and Bear was actually with their aspirin. They were also I think we talked about this in the U Tile and All Poisoning episodes that they were the ones who introduced the cotton ball to pill bottles and they didn't to keep the aspirin from breaking because they were worried that somebody would take a broken tablet and it would be too little of a dose. Or they would take a bunch of broken tablets and it would be too much of a dose, so they put the cotton in there to keep them from breaking. And with the advent of gel caps and coated cap soles and all that stuff, there's never been a need for the cotton ball any longer. But we've all gotten so used to it, we um would we would be suspicious of opening a bottle of pills without it, even though it's totally unnecessary. Now, I love that little cotton ball. That's a great, great, great um. It's at least one of the better um cotton ball facts out there. Well. I like anything that can be repurposed, like a twist six on a loaf of bread that ties that up. Or you know, you gotta use that cotton ball. You got a great like you don't do you? You don't stick it back in your pill bottle, do you? Or do you? Yes? Okay, I actually go to the trouble of taking it out out and then putting it back in like a total schmuck. That's right. I try to use those things. What I do is that is rapid toothpick with this cotton, and I use that as a ear swab. That's not bad, not bad at all. Yeah, the toothpick that came with uh what what comes with the toothpick? I guess from the from the pig in the blanket or something when you went and use the bathroom for free at a show, niece, but refused to eat there as I still have all these things left over from being a a kid from the lower middle class. You know, like it feels weird to throw away a twist six or or those rubber bands that come around asparagus. Yeah, yeah, who throws that stuff away? No, buddy, you got to use that stuff, no sensible human being. I don't know about using the cotton from a pill bottles a q tip with a toothpick. It's actually very dangerous, chuck, But I like the spirit behind it, you know what I mean? Yeah, you should not do that because a qute tip or a toothpick is way too stabby to be putting into your ear. Yeah, for sure. And you should be using those ear swabs anyway, right from what I understand. And one more fact when we're cotton based fact, remember qute tips were originally called baby gaze. Oh that's right, yea little baby gaze what was that from the ear wax episode? Maybe or ear candling? Maybe maybe I can't remember. Don't do it. Don't ear candle everyone, no, at least got that shirt now. Friends don't let friends ear candle? Right, teenage ear candle in, don't do it. So buyer is selling a ton of aspirin. They've always sold a ton of aspirin. I think the most recent stat that ED was able to dig up was from about nine years ago in Um, where worldwide there was about forty thou tons of aspirin produced, and in the US Americans were taking ten billion aspirin tablets a year. Billion aspirin In nineteen fifty UM it was the world's most purchased drug, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. I also read that in Argentina, in part because they have a change shortage, like a legit one going on there. Um. One of the things you might get is change at the grocery store, gas station or whatever, is a couple of tabs of aspirin. Oh nice, sure, if you makes sense? Why not? Apparently they love their aspirin there for so. Aspirin is one of those drugs where, for many, many, many decades, they had no idea how it worked. It was prescribed a lot. It eventually made its way too over the counter in the nineteen twenties. It was one of these things where they knew it worked because they they did tons and tons of studies where like, this stuff is really effective and it's the side effects aren't terrible. As long as you're not using a ton of it, it's pretty safe. But it's really complex when you try and figure out how exactly chemically any drug works in the human body, because of what happens when it gets in your body. It's just it's it's really hard even still to pinpoint the exact path something takes. When it's a lot easier to say, well, hey, who cares, We've got a thousand studies that show it works. Who cares what chemical processes it work. Yeah, we just know that it does work and in this way, and we also know from all these studies that it has this side effect and it might affect this group more or in this way than other groups. UM. Apparently aspirin has the largest chemical database of any compound anywhere. UM. I don't know if that's true or not. I read it in the Croatian brand profile of aspirin um. But it's a great knock your socks off kind of fact if you ask me. Yeah. But they they eventually did learn, didn't they. Um, they definitely did learn that it does work. Um, and exactly how I guess. Yeah, that is kind of one of those rare examples of how we did figure it out, isn't it. I think so? In the late sixties and early seventies. Uh, And they were using building off the work of Harry Collier, John Vanen, Priscilla piper Um, they figured out that the there was a substance in the body. It's weird. They kind of figured it out in a roundabout way because they figured out what the substance was that actually causes inflammation then in the body, which is uh, the release of prostaglandin. And they figured out that insets actually stopped this from happening, and aspirin is an inset, like we said, And so in a roundabout way they ended up figuring out how it worked. Yeah. Um. And so prostaglandings are like a whole class of hormones that are produced at the site of like an injury or an illness to help your immune response like inflammation, pain, all sorts of stuff that basically says like this needs to be taken care of and the we need to get some some immune response here as fast as possible. And so aspirin blocks prostag landings from being released UM by enzymes called cyclo oxygen AISE which kind of kick off the production of prostag landings. And they figured this outly, So this is how it works. This is how the um anti inflammatory process works. And it's kind of a It was a big enough deal that John Vayne received the Nobel Prize for in two for medicine. Yeah, and they also figured out and this is kind of key with aspirin. Uh, not only does it um does that enzyme inhibit that release, but it kind of can do it permanently, which is what separates aspirin from uh, what's what's the one? The other one, the big famous one, Uh Adville Advill. Yes, I'm blanking because I never take any of that stuff. Really, I'm an Adville guy. I try not to take it because I don't want my kidneys to blow up inside of my body. But um, like when will you take it? Like headaches? Basically it's a headache if my headache is bad enough, I will I will take an advil. It's pretty rare that I actually do, but um, yeah, I mean that's what that's that's my go to because the other stuff doesn't work, like Thailand all doesn't work. I mean, it doesn't do anything for me. It's weird. You get headaches like regular Uh no, it's pretty pretty infrequent. I have to say I have been like the last couple of weeks. Um, But yeah, I probably have more advil the last couple of weeks, and I have in the last couple of years, and they run up to the election. That's pretty funny. Yeah. I don't never get headaches. I mean the the rare hangover headache. But I don't get just like regular headaches for no reason. Uh yeah, no, I normally don't either. So what do you take? You take? Wait we established this BC right, Yeah, and that's again just for hangover cures. I hate that that's the only time I use that stuff, but because I don't want to come across as a drunk. But it's the rare, the rare hangover remedy. Got Okay, Yeah, I think that's what most people use that stuff for. It too Yeah, it's it's the caffeine and there it really gives you a little boost. Sure, but you know, all you gotta do when you get into it when you're approaching fifty isn't learn when to stop drinking, right. But the problem is, as you're approaching fifty, it takes like one drink to get a hangover. Oh no, really, sure that doesn't happen to you know, I'm good, okay ki um. So there was one other thing that happened to when when people were studying aspirin, like so like the this is the point so many people are taking aspirin that an average doctor conduct like basically a straw pole or some sort of study on his patients or her patients um to to investigate the effects of aspirin. That's exactly what happened with one doctor and I believe the fifties named Lawrence Craven, who basically said, I've noticed that there's some sort of weird connection between more blood loss um and ton selectomies that I'm performing on my patients. It seems like the people who take aspirin regularly bleed more. And he figured out that aspirin is a blood thinner from this, Yes, and uh, I guess let's take a break. Now. It's gonna say to save something for a surprise. But that was the surprise. But we'll talk more about that right after this. All right, So we've spoiled the big surprise, which we Josh spoiled the big surprise, which is the value of aspirin um more and more over the years has been especially once other insects came on the scene and took a lot of the market share has been less fever reducer, less pain reliever, and more anticoagulant and more. Hey, this can really help you out if you have potential heart condition. Yeah, because they've figured out there's another prost to land and throw on boxing A two that forms platelets in the blood. Like if you have a cut or something like that and your blood eventually clots. You can thank through on boxing A two for forming that the plate lists are joining the plate lists together UM and aspirin specifically keeps that from happening. And like you said, the other in SAIDs don't do that. It's just aspirin. And from that discovery, aspirin was saved from probably obscurity. Yeah, there was a point in the I think the seventies, eighties, nineties, maybe even where aspirin didn't even make the list of top ten over the counter pain relievers. It had fallen so far out of favor. Yeah, it was like, that's your parents pain reliever. It's not cool. That was not hip. Aspirin was going the way of the dodo and then they discovered this anti coagulant, uh sort of, I mean not a side effect. I guess it just became a a cross use or something, and then it became the main use. And there are a few different reasons why you might take something like um, it's usually like a baby aspirin, but it sort of depends. But um, it's always very low dose, but primary prevention if you've if you've never had a stroke, you've never had out a heart attack, but you may be at risk for something like that. Your doctor might say you want to get on a daily baby aspirin. Not always because the benefits are somewhat uncertain, and there you know, there are other risks like again, it thins the blood, so if you if you get cut or something, you're gonna bleed a lot more. And they don't exactly know why. But it affects. It helps prevent heart attacks better for men, strokes better for women. It is very weird, but that all falls into the banner of of of preventative aspirin taking. Yeah, and because it can cause bleeding and it can also cause potentially gastro intestinal bleeding from messing with your stomach so bad even a low dose, but a chronic low dose. Um that they say, unless you have a high risk, you probably don't want to start that regiment every day. So um, basically, don't start taking aspirin without talking to your doctor first. Like that's definitely one of those caveats that you want to you want to say too. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um. Secondary prevention is the next one. Uh, if you have actually had a vascular event, if you've had a stroke or a heart attack, then you will probably almost assuredly be prescribed to take that daily low dose aspirin because it is statistically significant, um that they have found there are large, large reductions in subsequent heart attacks and strokes if you've already had one and then you start that low dose and that nuts. Yeah, it's amazing. Um. Like they they there was a study in the estimated I think it was a British study that was published in the British Medical journal UM that aspirin probably saves a hundred thousand lives a year. I guess the back in the mid nineties at least just from that secondary prevention. It's amazing. And then there's a cute vascular events e g. You're having a heart attack or a stroke right now, they say go take an aspirin, at least one aspirin, maybe two, and it will actually possibly saved your life. Yeah. I mean they've done study after study and it has significant increase in survival rates. So chuck. There's some other weird stuff that they're like, we don't really know how this works. It's just typical aspirin stuff. We just know that it works. UM. That are starting to become like a pretty substantial body of medical literature about other benefits that aspirin provides, not the least of which is it seems to prevent some forms of cancer. Yeah, cancer is a big one. Uh. It might slow or even prevent dementira on set um. They've shown there's there's some evidence that it reduces mortality for women that are high risk for preclampsia, which is a sort of a high blood pressure thing that happens to pregnant women. UM. So yeah, they're just now. And like you said that, there's been more studies about aspirin like any other medicine, and they haven't stopped because they're still discovering things like this. Yeah. They so with specific kinds of cancer. It seems like colorectal cancer is the one that that people benefit from the most, at least as far as we know right now. There's one study that found a thirty eight percent decrease. This is a fourteen thousand person population study. Um or Yeah, population sample. Thirty eight percent reduction in the chances of getting colorectal cancer if you took a daily aspirin regimen. It's amazing. Uh. It's not all great though, like we said, they're they're the regular side effects like the bleeding and the stomach issues and potentially stomach bleeding. Uh. They've also found that it suppresses immune response, and they don't fully get that, um, but they do think that. I think it's the low dose aspirin over Uh. I think the lo dos aspirin is not hindering the ammune response. It's really just the higher doses. But they figured out, well, actually we can use this unlike graft operations or organ transplants. You can give somebody aspirin and it will keep help keep the body from rejecting it. Yeah, that pretty amazing. Historically, they have sort of looked back now and said, I think all this heavy aspirin use might have heard us in the past with things like the nineteen eighteen flu pandemic, the mortality rate could have increased because they were just like shoveling aspirin down those their throats. Yeah. What else, There's a couple of other things. Um Again, there's that g I bleedings that they found that, um, if you already have a blood clotting disorder, you probably don't want to take aspirin. And I read somewhere that um Restputant actually gained favor from the Romanovs from saving one of the romanovs kids lives who had hemophilia by saying like they needed to stop using any kind of modern medicine, which included aspirin, which probably saved the kid's life because it kept it from being UM kept the blood from thinning of in a kid that already had hemophilia, And they thought reciput and was a magical healer for that. Uh. And then another thing we should mention in the eighties and nineties, they discovered that giving aspirin to kids really increase their chances of something called race syndrome or race syndrome R E y E, which causes brain swelling, brain damage, very often least to death. And there were This was a big discovery and a lot of guidelines UM went in place where they all of a sudden, like kids using aspirin went down by which at the time was along with the increase of other insects, really really put a hurt and on aspirin's market share. Yeah. No, they found that if you cut the use of aspirin UM, the rates of race syndrome and kids went down. I was like, yeah, so they were like stop using get stopped giving your kids aspirin. Yeah, basically, And it was already like you're saying, I mean the ends other end sets they cut into their market shore and that one almost killed aspirin. It was just that the heart protectiveness that brought it back. Yeah. Another thing that almost killed aspirin and buyer was UM. After World War One, they were bought out by IG Farben and um if you know anything about I G Farb in that company, they manufactured zyclon b, very scary stuff. Um, but bear survived all that. The dissolution of I G Farben eventually happened and they were able to kind of just say, hey, that wasn't us. We weren't doing that. We're the good old fashioned aspirin and heroin people, right exactly. So um, over the years they figured out like, Okay, there's still problems with aspirin that we we could stand to still keep going, Like the whole G I bleeding thing seems to be a problem. So they've come with different formulations and h ed who helps us with this? One turned up that there was at least one mentioned that they tried to chocolate coating of aspirin, which sounds delicious, but he couldn't find any other place that had that. No, but they did make the just easier to swallow and less bitter coded versions they did. And let's not forget buffer and remember buffering. What was buffering, even buffering was an aspirin with a UM and UH and acid attached to it, and that's that was It kept your your stomach from getting upset, and apparently Bear also came up with a version that had a coating so strong it survives your stomach and and it dissolves in the gut where it's needed. Where it's it's absorbed, you just poop it. Eyeah's totally useless. It's called bear useless aspirin. It's called corn. All right, that's how they coded. Dude, Uh, you got anything else? I got nothing else? Okay, Well, since Chuck said he's got nothing else and I said I got nothing else, and we're just both presuming that Jerry's got nothing else, it's time for listener mail. Uh. This is from Alex Ramos about the Bay of Pigs movie. And by the way, uh, we should issue a quick correction. I had one too, but I know that you very much misspoke when you said Roberto Clemente was dishonorably discharged. Oh thank you. Yes, that was just a mouth error. We knew that it was honorable, and I didn't catch it at the time either. So thanks for those h for yends pittsburgh Ians who wrote in yes, and then there was one I did oh, I think, Oh yeah, rabbits aren't rodents. I got that. But rodents are rabbits? Right? What? Alright? Greetings from State College, Pennsylvania. I love your show. Guys. Started listening in a couple of years ago to East of Pain and Monotony of scraping off old wallpaper in the house my wife and I had just bought and have been a devoted listener ever since. Listening to Bay of Pigs right now. I haven't finished yet, so I may be jumping the gun. You're not, but you were musing about making a movie one day about the Bay of Pigs opera ration. I want to let you know that they're sort of is. There's a Coleman Francis movie called Red Zone, Cuba that is partially about the Bay of Pigs operation and also, for some reason, about a tungsten mine with hidden treasure. It's a real snooze fest, plotting and confusing, which is why it was picked up by Mystery Science Theater three thousand back in the day. It's a film for derision. I may have actually watched it then. If that's the case, I don't remember it. Though I don't remember that one either say in their commentary is great, makes it watchable? I love the show. Keep it up. Also and the off chance you read this on the air, wouldn't mind you plugging my artwork? Of course, Alex will plug your artwork. I'm a self taught painter, mostly painting realistic still life pieces and acrylic and my work can be found at Alex dot Ramos Studio dot com. That is our a m O S. Very nice, nice plug, Chuck, that was beautiful. It's good. We don't plug stuff a lot, but we love we love artists, and people are out there trying to scrape by here in this weird time and I'm not seeing it right now. When I just clicked it, though, I think I clicked them the wrong ding. Okay, God, did you just fall for a phishing scam? I don't think so. I think I just went to Ramos Studio and x Alex dot Ramis Studios. Yeah, we're going with Ramos there either, Famous Ramos Is Alex from now on. UM, Well, if you want to send us a confusing email or at least confusing with a confusing U r L. We love those because Chuck loves to try him on air and then hilarity ensues. You can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart radiovisit the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.