Better than aspirin to prevent cancers....

Today's Post: Tuesday, 12-7-2010

Virtually all adults should have aspirin on hand at home AND at work.

If you have a heart attack or symptoms that strongly suggest you might be having one, besides getting checked out at an emergency room, it’s wise to take an aspirin and chew one up and then rinse out your mouth with water and swallow the water.

If you are having a heart attack, I was told once at an emergency room by a doctor, this immediate aspirin dosing roughly will double your chances of surviving it.

Mercifully this won’t happen often or maybe even at all. But such infrequent use of aspirin is almost certainly safe. And for this use, it clearly can save your life.

Aspirin does have some valuable uses in such short term applications and is mostly safer than other drugs.

But is taking a daily aspirin to prevent heart attacks a good idea?

Also, it was all over today’s health news that a study showed taking a daily aspirin tested as making some cancers less likely.

But is taking a daily aspirin to prevent these cancers a good idea?

In my opinion for most people there is a far better way that protects them a good deal more and is MUCH safer.

If you eat what is, as of today, still a typical diet for Americans with lots of refined grains, packaged treats, and desserts, and drink soft drinks daily; you often eat corn oil or soy oil or saffola oil or canola oil AND you never eat fish or exercise AND you prefer to never change any of that, your health is at grave risk. For you, taking a daily aspirin DOES look now as if it will help you prevent heart disease and some cancers.

But taking a daily aspirin and only doing that leaves most of the risks of heart disease and cancers in place and does open you up to frequent bad breath due to bleeding in your gut and may send you to the ER with sudden much greater bleeding or worse.

Does that sound good to you?

Not to me it doesn’t.

There IS a better way.

Aspirin keeps blood from excessive clotting and lowers inflammation. But health protecting upgrades to your lifestyle do a far better job of this and without the obnoxious and occasionally dangerous side effects.

For preventing cancers, there is a superb book on just this subject. It’s:
Anticancer, A New Way of Life, New Edition by David Servan-Schreiber (Hardcover - Dec 31, 2009). (This is available on amazon.com if it isn’t in your local bookstore.)

It also helps that eating the way this book suggests ALSO helps prevent type 2 diabetes, heart disease, mental decline, and obesity!

It seems that refined grains, sugars, oils high in omega 6 oils, and the fat from grain fed animals are each causes of inflammation unless eating them is only quite occasional or even rare.

But the majority of people today eat little else.

Unfortunately the inflammation this causes is a potent cause of cancers and heart disease. There is even some evidence it helps cause mental decline either directly or from the reduced circulation and high blood pressure cardiovascular disease the inflammation helps cause.

It seems these foods contribute to a dramatically severe imbalance of omega 6 and omega 3 oils in your body and increase triglycerides which boosts your level of heart disease causing small particle LDL.

People evolved to eat about half omega 6 oils and half omega 3 oils. Since omega 6 oils cause inflammation and omega 3 oils reduce inflammation people who eat that way have little excess inflammation.

But the people who eat little else but the foods and drinks listed above get over ten times too much omega 6 oils and less than half of the omega 3 oils that their bodies work best consuming.

They have a ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 over 20 to one instead of one to one.

Here’s the outline of the cure for this.

Drink no soft drinks and eat virtually no foods containing high fructose corn syrup or refined grains or oils high in omega 6 such as corn, soy, saffola, or canola. Eat foods containing sugar only rarely. And either eat no whole grains or eat modest amounts only.

Try to get animal protein from animals fed their natural diet such as wild caught fish and beef or lamb from animals fed only grass. Wild caught salmon, herring, sardines, and smaller mackerel are all even better since they are high in omega 3 oils.

And, when you do eat the cheaper animal protein foods from animals fed grain go with nonfat, very low fat, low fat, or super lean versions for most of your food if not all. (Such fat is super high in omega 6 oils from the grain and the bioconcentrated pesticides and herbicides from the grain that such fat contains are not that good for you either.)

Take omega 3 supplements from purified fish oil or algae every day.

For fats and oils, use mostly extra virgin olive oil. Or eat nuts or avocados. Or use some butter, on occasion, from cows only fed grass. (I was told this is the case now for Irish butter that is currently sold at Whole Foods Markets.)

Also never knowingly eat foods that contain ANY kind of hydrogenated oils. This is even worse for your heart than omega 6 oils.

(To avoid hydrogenated oils, always read labels AND reject any food that has a trans fat reading above zero or lists ANY hydrogenated oils as an ingredient.)

It also helps to get regular exercise as this lowers inflammation. And, regular exercise that is vigorous at least in spurts or short duration speed ups as strength training and interval cardio are also boosts your HDL; lowers your triglycerides; and directly lowers your heart disease causing small particle LDL.

You also can cut down on excessive blood clotting by eating minced raw garlic or raw or cooked onions in salads and savory dishes. Taking Kyolic deodorized garlic also works.

These may also lower inflammation. The doctor who wrote the Anticancer book also rates garlic and onions as extremely effective preventers of many kinds of cancers.

Taking curcumin or turmeric supplements and eating curried foods containing them lowers inflammation, prevents many cancers, and prevents Alzheimer’s disease. All this may work even better if you take or eat black pepper at the same time. And taking vitamin D3 at the same time may also work.

Last but far from least make an enormous and focused effort to stay completely away from tobacco smoke.

Cancers are the “little” problem it causes. Some “little” problem! A full 25% of heavy smokers get lung cancer. And both smoking and second hand smoke combined cause about 30 % to a third of ALL cancers.

Tobacco smoke is dramatically more effective in both causing heart disease and triggering heart attacks. Few smokers have any clue that while they might escape cancer, ALL of them have some degree of heart disease from the tobacco smoke.

So, avoiding all tobacco smoke is far more effective at preventing cancers and heart attacks than taking a daily aspirin.

These lifestyle upgrades may take some effort to get done if you’ve not been doing them.

But they are dramatically more effective at preventing heart disease and cancer than taking aspirin. And, instead of side effects, they produce other health benefits!