On the news this morning, they were saying that taking a 1/4 of an aspirin a day will cut the numbers contracting bowel cancer by 1/4 and deaths by 1/3. They don't think this amount will irritate the stomach etc.
What do you think? I'm sure there are better ways to prevent bowel cancer.
The aspirin concept is based in the unproven hypothesis that inflammation causes cancer. The problem is that this is about impossible to prove. Cancer takes time to form and it causes tissue damage leading to inflammation. So it is the chicken and egg principle. Which came first? The inflammation or the cancer?
And aspirin does have side effects including being a common allergen and increasing the risk of internal bleeding.
Better choices to reduce intestinal inflammation include turmeric, yucca root or licorice root. All of these also fight cancer through various mechanisms.
It does seem that anti-inflammatory supplements or drugs such as aspirin act in some way to reduce cancer.And it seems like a little more than coincidence these supplements and drugs happen to reduce inflammation.Maybe there is a link between inflammation and cancer.
I have a hypothesis on this. What if the aspirin and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are not preventing cancer, but just slowing their growth? Malignant tumors secrete various growth factors, such as vascular endothelial growth factor, to stimulate blood vessel formation as a means of increasing food supply. This is the same reason that highly vascular tumors, such as liver or lung cancer are so fast growing compared to undervascularized tumors such as breast cancer. NSAIDs, such as aspirin, work by inhibiting prostaglandins thereby inhibiting blood flow. With this basis we could hypothesize that the NSAIDs are not inhibiting cancer formation but rather slowing the growth of existing cancers by reducing their ability to "feed".
On another topic....what do you think of Dr J. Budwig's flax seed and cottage cheese approarch to fighting cancer?
I have heard of it, but have never investigated it.