Doctor slams Trump’s aspirin routine as ‘nonsense’

WASHINGTON, DC: A leading cardiologist has challenged President Donald Trump’s self-prescribed aspirin routine, calling the 79-year-old’s reasoning "nonsense" and disputing the idea that his high-dose daily regimen thins his blood.

Trump, in a recent interview, revealed that he takes aspirin every day because he believes that it prevents thick blood.

Doctor calls Donald Trump's aspirin logic 'nonsense'

Jonathan Reiner, CNN’s medical analyst and Dick Cheney’s former heart doctor, said Trump’s theory that aspirin prevents him from having “thick” blood makes no sense, and questioned why the president doesn’t take his own doctors’ advice to pop a lower dosage.

“That makes no sense,” Reiner told CNN’s The Lead. “That actually makes nonsense.”

Reiner explained that using aspirin to thin blood is “not like changing something from gumbo to chicken soup.”

“It doesn’t make it thinner. It makes you less likely to clot,” he said.

Reiner said the dosage that cardiologists typically prescribe to patients, even those with coronary artery disease, is 81 milligrams per day, which is less than a quarter of the amount Trump consumes.

“They’d rather have me take the smaller one,” Trump told the Journal. “I take the larger one, but I’ve done it for years, and what it does do is it causes bruising.”

Questions over ignoring medical advice and visible bruising

“Why is the President taking an unorthodox dose of aspirin?” Reiner asked. 

“And the media has published many photos of his right hand—and now maybe his left hand—with this chronic bruise. The White House has said that this is related to chronic aspirin therapy. So if you’re bruising a lot and your doctor says you’re on too much aspirin, why wouldn’t you go down to the lower dose? It makes no sense to me.”

Donald Trump defends aspirin use, calls his health 'perfect'

“They say aspirin is good for thinning out the blood, and I don’t want thick blood pouring through my heart,” Trump said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that was published on Thursday. 

“I want nice, thin blood pouring through my heart. Does that make sense?”

“Let’s talk about health again for the 25th time,” he told the Journal at the beginning of the interview. “My health is perfect.”

Trump also said that he got a CT during his October visit to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, not an MRI as previously reported.

“I would have been a lot better off if they didn’t, because the fact that I took it said, ‘Oh gee, is something wrong?’ Well, nothing’s wrong,” he said.