This is how to take aspirin safely and
why bicarbonate and glycine could help.
If you're taking aspirin or you're
taking other anti-inflammatory drugs
this episode is for you.
Hi. I'm Dr. Chris Masterjohn of
chrismasterjohnphd.com,
and this is Chris Masterjohn Lite,
where the name of the game is
"Details? Shmeetails. Just tell me what works!"
And today we're going to talk
about how to take aspirin safely.
This episode is not about why you should
start taking aspirin if you don't or why
you should start taking
anti-inflammatory drugs if you don't
already, but if you do take
anti-inflammatory drugs then this is
what I have to say. So first of all,
all anti-inflammatory drugs or most of them
that are available over-the-counter
appear to have the risk of:
Number 1: creating food intolerances and
Number 2: promoting chronic low-grade
inflammation. And this is because they
all work on an enzyme called COX.
COX promotes the initiation of inflammation,
it makes you start getting inflamed, but it
also helps you get rid of inflammation
once the inflammation has run its course.
So these drugs when the inflammation is
going up they prevent the inflammation
from ever getting as bad as it would and
they cause it to start leveling off, but
then because the enzyme that they're
suppressing is the same enzyme that
helps you resolve the inflammation when
the inflammation is on its way down,
those drugs stop the inflammation from
ever going back down to zero and they
leave you stuck in the middle,
just a little inflamed all the time.
Out of all the over-the-counter
anti-inflammatories aspirin is the best one
because instead of inhibiting COX, or
instead of lowering the amount of COX
you have it actually modifies COX
in a way that jump-starts it so that instead
of producing the chemicals
that cause inflammation to increase
it skips that step and starts making the
chemicals that help the inflammation to
go away. So while most over-the-counter
anti-inflammatories are likely to
prevent you from ever fully resolving
inflammation, aspirin is likely to help
you start getting rid of the
inflammation. But aspirin still has some
potential downsides. So first of all aspirin
is acetylsalicylate. That acetyl
part of the salicylate is what modifies
the COX enzyme to jumpstart it to help
you start resolving inflammation.
What's left over after it does that is
salicylate and salicylate acts just like
all the other anti-inflammatory drugs by
blocking COX or making you produce less
of it so you have less of it available.
So in a certain way aspirin is most
likely to have its best effects if the
acetyl group jump-starts the COX to
start resolving inflammation, and then
you get rid of the salicylate. Well how
do you get rid of salicylate?
Number 1: you use glycine, an amino acid
that I've made many episodes on in the
past, so keyword search
chrismasterjohnphd.com for glycine
if you want to learn more about it.
You take glycine and you add it to the
salicylate and that neutralizes it so it
doesn't have its biological effects.
The second thing you've got to do is pee it out.
And you can pee out some of the
salicylate. You don't have to glycinate it first.
You don't have to add the glycine first.
So you can pee out salicylate with the
glycine on it or without, but the more
you add glycine to it the better you
neutralize it and prevent it from
carrying out nasty effects. And then the
faster you pee it out either way the
faster it's gone. So you want glycine and
you want to pee it out.
Well what determines you peeing it out?
The pH of your urine. As your urine pH
goes from 6 to 7 you pee out 17 times
more salicylate, or you pee it out 17 times
faster I should say. As the pH of your
urine goes from 6 to 8 you
pee it out 25 times faster.
Now the second
potential negative effect of aspirin is
the fact that you do use glycine when
you detoxify it. So about one to two
percent of people report that they get
asthmatic symptoms in response to taking
aspirin. But when people are given
aspirin in a controlled setting in a
laboratory where they can measure their
lung function about 10 to 20 percent of
people given a therapeutic dose of
aspirin develop signs of asthmatic
symptoms that can be detected in the
laboratory. My suspicion is that this is
because it's depleting the glycine and
the glycine is needed to make
glutathione, which is the principal
protection against asthma in your lungs.
So you want enough glycine to prevent
glycine from being depleted and
contribute to the asthmatic symptoms and
to help you get rid of that salicylate
by neutralizing it. Unfortunately there
are no dosing experiments with glycine
in the context of doing exactly what
I'm saying here. In studies of aspirin
toxicity 10 to 20 gram glycine doses
have been used, but in studies of healthy
people to get benefits of glycine 3 to 5
gram doses have been used. So my default
guess is that for each dose of aspirin
that you take, take three grams of
glycine powder with it, along with it.
That might give you other benefits as
well as helping you neutralize that
salicylate really fast. Then the other
thing is bring your urine pH up to 7.
You could go up to 8, but I think you get
most of the benefits from 7 and I think
that way you can avoid some of the
negative effects of becoming too
alkaline. So what I would do is first of
all measure your urine pH every time you
pee while you're trying to figure out
the dose of bicarbonate that you would need.
Next start with a 1/4 teaspoon of sodium
bicarbonate, also known as baking soda,
on an empty stomach
and see how much that brings your urine
pH up and how long that effect lasts.
Figure out-- the amount of dose--figure
out the dose of bicarbonate that you
need by slowly going up a 1/4 teaspoon
at a time, and figure out how
often you have to take it in order to
make that effect be consistent
throughout the day. Once you can
consistently maintain your urine pH at 7
or a little higher then that's
when you can take aspirin with the three
gram glycine dose. Always use the aspirin
according to the label. Always check with
your doctor to make sure that taking
aspirin is safe for you. And if you've
experienced negative effects of glycine
in the past, be very careful with the
glycine and don't jump to three grams.
If you're often sensitive to nutritional
interventions like this you might want
to start with a lower dose of glycine
just to test it out and make sure you
don't have a negative reaction to it,
most people don't. If you're taking a
different over-the-counter
anti-inflammatory then I think you
should talk to your doctor to make sure
that whatever you are taking it for it's
safe to switch to aspirin, but I do
believe that taking aspirin providing
that you can render it safe in this way
is better both from the perspective of
not causing chronic inflammation and not
causing food intolerances than the other
options available over-the-counter.
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All right, I hope you found this useful.
Signing off. This is Chris Masterjohn of
chrismasterjohnphd.com. This has been
Chris Masterjohn Lite.
And I will see you in the next episode.