The Untold Dangers of Regular Aspirin Use

From the Reuters News Service: Washington, D.C.
Article by Maggie Fox.

Women who take an aspirin a day, which millions do to prevent heart attack and stroke, as well as to treat headaches, may raise their risk of pancreatic cancer, U.S. researchers said on Monday.  The surprising finding worried doctors, who say women will now have to talk seriously with their physicians about the risk of taking a daily aspirin.

Pancreatic cancer affects only 31,000 Americans a year, and kills virtually all its victims within three years.  The study of 88,000 nurses found that those who took two or more aspirins a week for 20 years or more had a 58 percent higher risk of pancreatic cancer.

"Apart from smoking, this is one of the few risk factors that have been identified for pancreatic cancer," Dr. Eva Schernhammer of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, who led the study, told a news conference.  "Initially, we expected that aspirin would protect against pancreatic cancer, especially since its preventive role in colorectal cancer has been well documented.  However, now it appears that we need to examine the relationship more thoroughly," Schernhammer added in a statement.

"This finding does not mean that women should no longer use aspirin.  There are still important benefits to the drug; we also need other large cohort studies to confirm our finding before we can draw any conclusions."

Schernhammer and colleagues presented their findings to a meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, of the American Association for Cancer Research.  They studied 88,378 women taking part in a large and wide-ranging study of nurses and their health.  Over 18 years, 161 of the nurses developed pancreatic cancer.  Those who took 14 tablets or more per week had an 86 percent greater risk of pancreatic cancer than non-users.  The nurses who took between six and 13 tablets had a 41 percent higher risk, while those who only took one to three aspirins a week had an 11 percent greater risk.

The women who took the most aspirin said they were taking it, not to protect against heart disease, but because of headaches or other aches and pains.  Even with the increased risk, heart disease is a much greater threat to a woman's — or a man's — health.  It is by far the biggest killer in the United States, and other developed nations.  The American Heart Association says cardiovascular disease killed more than 945,000 Americans in 2000.

Doctors do not clearly understand what causes pancreatic cancer, or what makes it so deadly.  Obesity is another risk factor, but Schernhammer said her team's findings held, regardless of a woman's weight, whether she smoked, and whether she had diabetes.

Schernhammer noted that one study showed that regular aspirin use may cause pancreatitis, an inflammation of the pancreas that can sometimes precede pancreatic cancer. "There is urgent need to settle the biologic reasons for pancreatic cancer," she said.

 

A few issues that need to be considered here are that:

• Pancreatic cancer is not the only threat to your health from regular aspirin use.  Each year, approximately 13,000 Americans die from sudden bleeding of the stomach or small intestines resulting from aspirin use.  This is down from the approximately 53,000 who died every year before low-dose, enteric coated aspirin became the norm.
• The blood-thinning action of aspirin could be much more safely achieved with clove oil.  Clove oil is effective even for heart attacks, and will not cause gastric bleeding.
• Digestive and / or systemic enzymes, particularly proteolytic enzymes, such as bromelain or nattokinase, are very effective in preventing stickiness of the blood cells, and assisting in the free flow of blood through the circulatory system.  They also have the effect, along with antioxidants, of reducing the inflammation implicated as a leading factor in cardiovascular disease.
• Aspirin, like any drug, is essentially a poison, and has a very negative impact on the liver.  Occasional use might not be an issue, but if you're using it every week, you're placing an undue load on the liver.  Besides the consequences of having a problem that creates the "need" for the aspirin left unaddressed, overloading the liver disrupts proper pancreatic function, which could be a contributing factor in pancreatic cancer.

Finding safe and effective alternatives to aspirin use will go a long way to improving your overall health.  Therapeutic-grade essential oils and systemic enzymes play an important role in this.

The role of aspirin in preventing colorectal cancer

How is it that something as horrible as aspirin can seem to have the positive effect of diminishing the risk of colorectal cancer?  One might surmise that one way is in killing off enough test subjects with sudden bleeding or pancreatic cancer to lower the risks from colorectal cancer.  But that is possibly over-reaching a bit.

Actually, for several years, it was assumed that the roughage contained in fresh fruits and vegetables had a positive impact on this problem.  It has been discovered, however, that the cancer-reducing effects of fruits and vegetables comes from their phyto-nutrients.  Many of them have powerful cleansing and antioxidant properties.

By cleansing the system, especially with fiber and green foods, and adding antioxidant protection, you can significantly reduce your risk of colorectal cancer.  This is the result of reducing inflammation, one of the main effects of aspirin.

However, by reducing inflammation with natural substances that cleanse and feed the system, rather than by adding another poison, and with the addition of systemic enzymes, which help the body to detoxify, you can create a powerful anti-cancer effect without creating a problem elsewhere in the body.

Remember: It's not nice to fool Mother Nature.