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Originally Posted by Blarg
Good to keep those things in mind I'm sure. I had the stray thought earlier that you might be using aspirin to help with hangovers from your drinking and it didn't even occur to me for some reason that many people take aspirin for their heart/circulatory system. Either way, I was thinking it's quite possible for someone to be taking aspirin, fish oil, and extra helpings of olive oil all at once before they even get to a prescription anti-coagulant, and without being a totally crazed vitamin nut or anything. That's not even counting other oils or nutrients with similar effects.
Anyway, thinking of the spillover effects of all the things you're consuming is certainly worth thinking about. If it were me, I would ask the doctor what he thought about where I should draw the line.
Its really not that big of a deal, when they start you on coumadin(warfarin) they start you out on a small dose and then titrate up to therapeutic levels based on your INR, which stands for international normalized ratio. Basically its the rate at which your blood clots, normalized to account for discrepancies based on the lab that drew it. So, they are going to start him out small, and his INR will be whatever it is, and if he is taking aspirin and fish oil, then he will just require smaller doses.
What they are going to tell you, if you do end up being on coumadin, is just to stay on whatever diet and meds you are currently on. Coumadin works by antagonizing vitamin K, so if you instantly eat a ton of foods with vitamin K, or all of a sudden STOP eating any foods with vitamin K, you can have big swings in your INR. The important thing isnt really what you are taking, its that you just dont make any drastic CHANGES in what you are taking or eating.
That being said, it sucks to be on coumadin for the rest of your life, as a 24 year old, if thats really what you have in store. It requires frequent follow-up and bloodwork, like every week/month, for the rest of your life.