Heart Beat

Aspirin before bed

If aspirin is part of your daily medication routine, taking it before bedtime might improve your blood pressure even as it does its main job — working against heart attack and stroke.

In a small Spanish study, taking low-dose aspirin at night lowered daytime systolic blood pressure (the top number of a blood pressure reading) by 7 points and diastolic pressure (the bottom number) by 5 points among people with newly diagnosed mild high blood pressure. That's as much as occurs with exercise or limiting salt. Taking aspirin in the morning increased both systolic and diastolic blood pressure by about 2 points.