Study links daily aspirin habit to doubled melanoma risk

Yet another way this serial killer claims its victims

Aspirin is a miracle drug, all right. It’s a miracle that it hasn’t been moved behind the pharmacy counter by now!

For something so benign-looking, cheap, and easy to buy, it’s shocking at how deadly it can be. And that’s even at a “baby” dose of 81 mg.

As many have learned the hard way, it’s an extremely risky med — even when it tastes like oranges or cherries!

And along with the very real threat of internal bleeding (among other catastrophic side effects), we can now add something else to this “wonder” drug’s rap sheet: a doubling of the likelihood of a man developing the most dangerous skin cancer of all, melanoma.

So, if you’re taking a daily aspirin because you think it will prevent a stroke or heart attack or even offer some kind of protection against colon cancer, prepare to trade your skin – and maybe even your life – for those promises, which will more than likely turn out to be empty.

The devil is in the details

For decades, we were told that the simplest way to avert a heart attack is to simply pop a low-dose aspirin daily. But not even the FDA buys that story anymore.

Four years ago, the agency “carefully” examined the “scientific data” and realized that while researchers had found no real evidence that aspirin will prevent a heart attack, they did find some really hazardous side effects, including “dangerous bleeding into the brain or stomach.”

Well, that sure took long enough for the FDA to figure out. I mean, aspirin has only been around for over a century!

But its deadly side effects don’t stop there – and the latest study shows how this common painkiller can actually kill you by sacking you with the deadliest form of skin cancer.

In this new study, researchers at Chicago’s Feinberg School of Medicine followed close to 3,000 total patients of both sexes and ranging in age from 18 to 89. Within that group, nearly 1,200 had been taking a daily aspirin for a year or more.

After tracking their health status for five years, the researchers found that compared to those who didn’t take the drug, the men who popped a daily aspirin doubled their risk of being diagnosed with melanoma.

And even at the low dose of 81 mg, that danger remained.

Now, interestingly, the Feinberg scientists didn’t find this increased melanoma threat to be true for women. Lead researcher Dr. Beatrice Nardone said that could be for many reasons, one being that women may have more “protective enzymes” than men that can help to prevent skin cancer.

One of those watchdog enzymes is called superoxide dismutase, or SOD, an extremely important natural antioxidant that can counteract the damage done by oxidative stress. Having lower levels of SOD can result in unchecked “oxidative cellular damage in men,” said Dr. Nardone.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that aspirin is somehow safer (or safe at all) for women to take, as it’s also possible that further research will connect aspirin and melanoma to the fairer sex as well.

And if you’ve been sold on an aspirin regime based on news stories about how this “miracle” medicine can prevent cancer, especially colon cancer, know that there’s a lot more to the story than simply headlines like “Aspirin prevents cancer.”

The study at the root of a lot of that aspirin-taking hysteria came from a group called the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), a panel of experts that dispenses advice to docs all over the U.S.

While headlines ran nonstop several years ago about how an aspirin a day could keep you safe from colon cancer, as they say, the devil is in the details.

And the details in that research were that the people who appeared to have lower rates of colon cancer were taking gigantic doses — up to 1,200 mg — of aspirin daily for decades. Yikes!

Swallowing that much – the equivalent of nearly 15 low-dose aspirin pills a day for years on end — would send your chances of suffering a GI bleed off the charts! And just last year, I told you how researchers out of the University of California at Irvine found that aspirin can actually supercharge colon cancer cells, making them even more deadly.

So, when you see a bottle of aspirin, recognize it for what it really is: a dangerous drug that you should only be reaching for if you think you’re having a heart attack, not to prevent one.

And if you really want to make sure the odds are in your favor for dodging cancer, don’t even touch one aspirin pill!

“Daily aspirin linked to double melanoma risk in men” Northwestern University, May 3, 2018, ScienceDaily, sciencedaily.com