The most frightening news yet on the dangers of aspirin
For years now, you’ve been hearing glowing reports about how a daily aspirin can significantly cut your risk of cancer — especially colon cancer.
Unfortunately, however, it’s a lot more complicated than we were led to believe. And, based on flimsy evidence, millions may have started up on a habit that could end up killing them.
Because it turns out that taking an aspirin a day does have an effect on colon cancer, but not in a good way.
It can actually make it more aggressive — and deadlier.
A lethal ‘trade-off’
First, we heard that taking a daily aspirin is the easiest thing you can do to protect your heart.
So drugmakers scrambled to produce low-dose aspirin specially marketed for just that purpose. No more chewing orange-flavored baby tablets!
And as the aspirin myth grew over the years, more health benefits were added, particularly as an easy-to-take cancer preventive.
But as eAlert readers know, that’s not the whole story — not by a long shot.
Now, even more evidence has emerged showing another deadly side to taking these seemingly innocent pills every day.
Recently researchers out of the University of California at Irvine finally did what should have been done way before the “aspirin prevents cancer” story was ever unleashed on the public. And that was document all the effects aspirin has on cancer cells. Could it, perhaps, make it even more deadly?
Frighteningly enough, they discovered it can.
The scientists found that aspirin was able to super-charge colon cancer cells, causing them to mutate, become more resistant to drugs, and spread faster.
Apparently, however, the concept that aspirin can prevent colon cancer is so ingrained in everyone that even the researchers who discovered those deadly cancer mutations almost apologetically called their findings a “trade-off.”
And get this! They advised that those who start taking the drug at a younger age be regularly checked for colon cancer! How’s that for solving this lethal little problem?
But here’s the thing: The idea that we can actually cut our risk of colon cancer in the first place by taking aspirin was based on some of the most absurd claims to ever hit the airwaves.
Several years ago, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), an “independent” panel of experts who dish out health advice to doctors all over the U.S., released a study that hit the media like a firestorm.
Headlines ran everywhere about the benefits of aspirin. Why run the risk of a heart attack, stroke or cancer, the stories asked, when all you have to do is take a daily little pill to keep you healthy?
But if any of those talking heads or news reporters had bothered to read the actual study, they would have discovered that’s not what it found.
The trials that showed a reduction in colon cancer involved people taking humongous doses — up to 1,200 mg of aspirin daily for decades! That translates to nearly 15 low-dose pills a day.
Yikes! I can’t even imagine the risk of gastrointestinal bleeding that could cause.
Plus that, the so-called protective power of aspirin was based on a magic trick called “relative risk.” That statistical sleight of hand can take any study results and make them amazing. Relative risk is a favorite of Big Pharma researchers.
And the same goes for heart attack prevention. Even the USPSTF warned that if you’re over 70, aspirin should be off-limits for you, as it can put you at a “significant” risk of internal bleeding, hemorrhaging, or even a stroke.
Now, you might think that with around half of the adults in the U.S. now popping an aspirin pill every day, these new cancer findings would have made some major headlines. But that doesn’t appear to be the case.
The fact that aspirin is dirt cheap, and you can buy it everywhere in giant bottles, doesn’t mean for one minute that it’s safe to take.
Especially every single day.
“Does daily aspirin make colon cancer harder to treat?” September 6, 2017, NewsMax, newsmax.com


