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hornbaker | 6 years ago

So true. Be aware that you may have no symptoms in your legs at all, and still develop pulmonary embolisms.

As an otherwise healthy and fit adult male, my first symptom of my PE was a sharp stabbing pain in my chest when inhaling. Thinking I was having a heart attack, I self-admitted to the ER. I had 12 PEs in my lungs, and with ultrasound they found a 3" long deep vein thrombosis under my left knee. My left leg had absolutely no symptoms or pain. My PEs and DVT resolved with a 6-mo course of blood thinners, but I was lucky. PE mortality rate is around 15-20%.

Set your "stand up" timer for every 90 minutes and actually pay attention to it! And it wouldn't hurt to take a daily baby aspirin (probably should ask your doc first).

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Bartweiss|6 years ago

> And it wouldn't hurt to take a daily baby aspirin (probably should ask your doc first).

This is a really interesting point.

Most people have probably seen the debate around daily aspirin, which largely simplifies to "does the decreased clot risk outweigh the increased bleeding event risk?" The math tends to come out very close, but that's largely because the people at high risk of heart attack and stroke are also at elevated risk of bleeding events.

Programmers, heavy gamers, and other people who sit all day seem like they might break that parity; the raised clot risk is circumstantial, not biological, so they're not necessarily at elevated bleeding risk. Changing that circumstance is definitely the winning move, but I'd also love to see a study on how aspirin performs in those populations.