I am not sure if it is just me being intolerant or if BobD has brainwashed me.
Every time I hear the expression “blood thinners” on the television when someone describes anticoagulation I find myself shouting at an inanimate object I.E. the screen in the corner of the room.
Last night whilst watching an episode of 24 hours in A& E ( I know I need to get a life😂) it happened again.
Quote Doctor to patient :
“because you have an extremely high heart rate we are going to have to thin your blood to avoid you having a stroke”.
Addendum 08/08/20
Today I opened a new box of Warfarin to fill my pill box. This is the extract from the patient information leaflet from the manufacturers ALMUS Pharmaceuticals.
“What Warfarin is and what it is used for?
Warfarin belongs to a group of medicines called anticoagulants. It is used to reduce the clotting ability of the blood. (It is sometimes called a ‘blood thinner’, but it doesn’t actually thin the blood).
Warfarin is used to prevent and treat blood clots forming in the legs, lungs, brain and heart.”
Pete 😬😷😜
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pottypete1
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I asked the pharmacist that was explaining everything to me before being prescribed an anticoagulant why they were described as ‘blood thinners’ when they are not & she said that’s the best way for patients to understand so they must think we are all too thick 🤔
Ah my friends I am so sorry. We have been on this case for so long . I find it insulting to my intelligence when the B T words are used. We are not all that thick surely!
Totally agree Pete and it’s part of the old culture which believed that the last person to be told anything must be the patient.
A neighbour was prescribed Warfarin and her understanding of the reason was that ‘her blood was so thick, it was a wonder she didn’t have a stroke’. Poor woman - I don’t know what sort of explanation she was given to cause such pointless anxiety.
Rather than seeing anticoagulation in a positive light, the patient is left to worry about ‘thick blood’. Does making one’s blood boil make it thick? 😂😡
The anticoagulants. made me feel ill. Pains in my chest and in every single joint, also dizziness and shortness of breath. The cardiologist changed the make and after that all was fine. Yes beta blockers also cause problems and I suffer from that also.
There is a cause of "thick" blood and that is high blood sugar. We were at a dinner party with a doctor friend (ER physician) who declined dessert and said that high blood sugar causes the blood to be the consistency of "sludge," so he never ate it.
My wife responded that she had seen it first hand. She took her mother for a blood test and the blood was very dark red and took forever to fill the tube. In fact they had to take out the needle and replace it with a larger guage needle to get the blood into the test tube. Her mother thought having such "thick" blood was a good thing. The phlebotomist at the lab said it was obvious to her that she had diabetes and was dehydrated and explained how dangerous it was to have blood like that. When the woman was finished with my mother in law she reached over and pulled out a test tube full of bright red, watery blood that had been taken from someone else. She showed my wife the difference.
When my wife got her mother home she immediately tested her blood sugar and it was over 400. Her father said, "It is always like that." Well yes it would be on a breakfast of cereal, milk, orange juice, toast with jelly and to top it off, a piece of coffee cake, and a cup of coffee with 3 sugars, which is what my father in law used to feed her. He seemed unable to grasp the concept of carbs. He said she only had the sugar in the coffee!
She was supposed to, according to the endocrinologist, only have 15 grams of carbs per meal. She was probably getting 300 grams of carbs at breakfast alone. He also was unable to calculate her sliding scale insulin dose, so they just didn't bother to test or give her the insulin at meals. She was just getting her oral medication and the long acting Lantus at night. It was the blind leading the blind.
My wife called the endocrinologist and made an appointment for her mother. Because her sugar was so high he saw her within hours. He once again tried to explain the concept to my father in law. The doctor and my wife decided to make up charts to hang on the refrigerator with daily meals planned out in advance that met the criteria for carb levels. The doctor also gave my wife a sliding scale for insulin. If her blood sugar before a meal was X then she was to get Y units of fast acting insulin. He took it up to 450 and said after that to get her to the hospital! She put a copy up on the fridge in big bold numbers and made sure her father did the testing and filled the syringes (which she checked) so she was sure he knew how.
My wife was very successful in enforcing it while she was there, but it was obvious that as soon as she left they went back to their old ways. In fact on the diet, within days there was no need for fast acting insulin during the day because it never rose above the level where the doctor wanted insulin given. When my wife came home and would speak to her mother by phone, it was painfully obvious that her sugar was high again because she was not lucid and slurred her speech, which were signs the endocrinologist said to look for.
Oh, and she was on warfarin the entire time and had been on it since she had her pacemaker/defribrillator implanted 3 years earlier.
Thank you Mollybear - I found that very interesting, if worrying for you and your wife to try to manage from a distance. I believe that sugar is a menace in the modern age - it’s everywhere, even in some cheeses.
Warfarin prevents thick clots of blood forming, so keeps the blood runny - could be described as thinner. Yes, just think of it as keeping the clots thinner.
I've explained to a few people that it's doesn't really thin the blood and to be honest it made me feel like a pompous know all.
It does thin the clots - prevents them from forming, so if people want to call it a blood thinner, let them.
My understanding is that Warfarin prevents clots by not allowing the blood to coagulate as quickly hence INR 1 for normal and between 2 & 3 for those like me taking Warfarin. INR being the rate at which blood clots.
However, it is a clot busting drug that is used to break up clots and has to be administered if doctors think it is the right course of action, as soon as a stroke is diagnosed and before 4 -5 hours have elapsed.
The exact text from the Stroke association website is as follows:
The clot busting medicine itself is called alteplase, or recombinant tissue plasminogen activator (rt-PA). The process of giving this medicine is known as thrombolysis.
My GP called them that too. My daughter works for NHS. Told me to calm down they are trying to make it easy for you to understand. 😡 but it’s lying they don’t thin your blood. Also gives the wrong impression also BobD has encouraged me to to shout my phone a lot.
My moment of glory was when I received an email of apology from Dr Sanjay Gupta after I bo****cked (medical term 😳) him for using the term in his videos. All done with a smile......😉
But to be ever so slightly serious, the concern I think, is that the term blood thinner is misleading because the blood is actually no thinner than normal. For those worried about the risk of spontaneous bleeding or being unable to stem a bleed from a cut or nose bleed (and you know about that), the term can add to their concern, especially if they have accidentally overdosed. By using the term anticoagulant, it may help people understand that in reality, it generally only takes a little longer to stem cuts and some nosebleeds.
If explaining the difference encourages one person to take an anticoagulant who otherwise might not, then I think it’s worth emphasising the point......
I think it frightens some people as they think they will bleed to death on the medication ,some to the point of deciding not to take them when really it is a good idea !
Yes, I agree and I was one of the people that thought they could bleed to death when I first started taking Warfarin. I guess you still could with internal bleeding. I wonder what the symptoms of internal bleeding are?
Then there was the calling it 'rat poison' which is enough to put anyone off taking a drug with that nickname.
There should be a simple explanation leaflet with all anticoagulants clearly stating that it doesn't thin the blood.
Yes Warfarin has had a bad press really and I too always knew it as Rat Poison before I had to take it every day and then checked up on it.
I have tested the bleeding issue at first hand. For me to badly sever my artery in my hand 4 years ago it was a very traumatic experience and they had to give me Vitamin K to reverse the anti blood clotting as I was bleeding so much. The important thing is the deal with these things quickly.
When I fell off the ladder earlier this year I had a haematoma on the back of my leg and on my wrist and I was really worried for a while. It all was OK in the end happily.
All these medications we take can be very frightening and it is important to really understand them isn't it.
I wonder if we could think up a catchier more straightforward name for them than anticoagulants. My offering is 'blood clot preventors' or just 'clot preventors'.
I think if I'd heard the word anticoagulant when first diagnosed with AF, it would have gone in one ear and out the other. It's easy to understand now that a lot of we members are more familiar with medical terms, but when you first start with AF perhaps not.
I saw a neighbour recently who said that her husband was now on a blood thinner after his stroke. This is in Cyprus, so it's not just a UK thing. Interestingly their equivalent of NHS only prescribe a DOAC, if warfarin cannot be tolerated. She was worried about diet and also the blood tests every 5 days!
As I teach the language, I do prefer precise expression but the term "blood thinners" really doesn't bother me as that's what they've been called since they were discovered. In a similar vein, I remember that when I first posted here, I was told not to call my ablation an "op" because it was a "procedure".
Anticoagulants are medicines that help prevent blood clots. They're given to people at a high risk of getting clots, to reduce their chances of developing serious conditions such as strokes and heart attacks.
Blood can be thin or thick - It is measured as viscosity and there are a number of actions that can make blood thinner which is good for heart health apparently. These are quoted as
1. not smoking
2. eating a healthier diet that lowers the amount of LDL in your bloodstream
3. exercising
4. reducing stress
5. taking low-dose aspirin every day
6. donating blood
7. drinking 10–12 glasses of water a day.
as you say nothing to do with anticoagulant medication.
I am off for another glass of water - I feeling viscous.
Interesting that the two American heart specialists who I watched on the Connect AF Patient Education 2020 video yesterday repeatedly used the term blood-thinners. On a different note, I liked the bit where one guy said that AF is a lifetime travelling companion and it's his job, as a health professional, to keep that companion in the trunk where they can't bother you!
All I can say is I thought the appropriate word was blood thinners as I have GPs cardiologists and nurses call anticoagulants blood thinners. I now know it's not correct but saves the medicos having to explain I guess.Learnt a lot from this forum. Thanks
I like to stimulate discussion on this forum from time to time. In all aspects of treating AF you can ask questions and then get a number of differing answers.
“There are two main types of blood thinners. Anticoagulants such as heparin or warfarin (also called Coumadin) slow down your body's process of making clots. Antiplatelet drugs, such as aspirin, prevent blood cells called platelets from clumping together to form a clot.”
I am so happy to see this topic. Being a relative newbie and having seen a few posts where people express fears of internal bleeding etc since now on anticoagulants, I too felt worried. I also saw my own mother, on Warfarin for decades, and how easily she bruised on it. When she passed away we found tissues and plasters carefully folded in each and every pocket. So...how does an anticoagulant such as Abixiban work then? Please inform the uninitiated!
I have suffered AF for 30 years and have been on Warfarin for the past 13 years. I know that it can be a worry for some hence my post inviting discussion.
I will invite BobD to explain how Abixiban works as it is not something I can answer without looking at Dr Google and as we know that can be misleading sometimes with more answers than questions.
Does it really matter . Everyone is not from the same mould. We understand things in different explanations. It's something you don't come across in life unless you have been prescribed. It's human nature to ask what anticoagulant are. And the explanation .blood thinners is is loud and clear wich everyone should understand and why they are used
Anticoagulants slow coagulation they do not thin the blood. The measurement of INR for Warfarin aims to have a coagulation rate ideally of between 2 & 3 times slower than without the administering of the medication. I am very lucky because my INR is very stable and has been circa 2 -3 for many years. For some it is very hard to manage and often other anticoagulants are prescribed that do not have the same test.
You may say "does it really matter" but in these days of misinformation I think it is healthy to debate things particularly if there is confusion and misunderstanding.
My main intention in throwing this out as a thread was to create exactly the response I got. Good health debate.
Those of us who hang around this forum only do so in the main to try and help others. It would be so easy just to keep away.
Hi, the other day I was filling in a new Patient Alert Card that comes with the Apixaban as mine was tatty , I read the card and saw that it said" Eliquis helps to thin your blood." I didn't think it did ,so am now confused.
This was the reason I put this post up. There are a significant number of "official" leaflets and websites as well as a number of the medical profession that have fallen into using this incorrect shortcut description of anticoagulants.
As the name suggests they delay coagulation no more no less. They do not thin the blood.
Having said all this and stimulated all the responses to my post, nothing changes.
You should not worry about taking them as they are only prescribed for those of us who could be in danger of having a stroke as a direct consequence of having heart rhythm problems such as AF.
I'm with you 100%, PottyPete. The medics should not mislead patients, nor talk down to them. Anticoagulants do not thin blood but delay the clotting process, reducing the occurrence of blood clots.
That's an easy to understand definition. Health improvement is not just for medics to administer. It's also for patients to understand their health conditions, and work with medics to improve their health, and so patients should not be misled by false descriptions of the actions of drugs.
Unrelated to AF 4 weeks ago I fell downstairs. The result was no breaks apart from an undisplaced hairline crack to my fibula, torn ligaments in my foot, an haematoma on my leg, heavy bruising, and cuts. I spent 7 hours in A&E, having 3 different doctors look at my leg, and 3 sets of X rays. When I was discharged what information I didn't have wás how I, the patient, could help myself. I have learnt some from a telephone consultation with an orthopedic surgeon, and also from a visit to a GP, and from Dr Google. I recognize that everything is complicated by the pandemic.
Except....how do they delay the clotting process? Asking for a friend and the vast majority of people. Also NHS web page describes DOACs as Blood Thinners.🤫
“Warfarin decreases the body’s ability to form blood clots by blocking the formation of vitamin K–dependent clotting factors. Vitamin K is needed to make clotting factors and prevent bleeding. Therefore, by giving a medication that blocks the clotting factors, your body can stop harmful clots from forming and prevent clots from getting larger”.
IMHO the NHS website has just got it wrong because for some crazy reason the incorrect description “blood thinners“ has entered the medical vocabulary of many.
If you stop and think about the clue is in the title of the medication ‘anticoagulant’ - Something that stops coagulation.
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