“Cancer is pretty lethal and we’re not really good at fixing it yet, so when we find something that can really reduce the risk (and there aren’t many—the only other ones I can think of are the magical substances known as not-smoking and avoiding-massive-doses-of-ionizing radiation), we should be all over that like cats on yarn.”
Maintaining moderately high blood levels of vitamin D may reduce over all cancer rates by up to 30%. There is also evidence for green tea significantly reducing cancer rates.
Aspirin is an anti-coagulant so wounds take longer to stop bleeding. A surgeon will require that you stop taking aspirin long enough for the blood clotting factors to recover. (Surgeons hate it when they can’t stop the bleeding.) If I were under 30 I wouldn’t take a daily aspirin as I doubt it provides any benefit and does increase risk slightly. By the time you are 40 your body tissues are in a state of mild, chronic inflammation. That may be good for fighting off infections but isn’t so good for the cardiovascular system, lungs, and brain. I recommend baby aspirin for anyone over 40.
Moderate alcohol use is correlated with a significant reduction in cardiovascular events. As with aspirin I would only recommend it for older people and then only if the likelihood of abuse is small.
Vitamin D is really important. There is an established causal link between vitamin D and immune function. It doesn’t just enhance your immune response—it’s a prerequisite for an immune response.
Anecdote: Prior to vitamin D supplementation, I caught something like 4 colds per year on average. I’m pretty sure I never did better than 2. I started taking daily D supplements about a year and half ago, and caught my first cold a few days ago. It’s worth taking purely as a preventative cold medicine.
Maintaining moderately high blood levels of vitamin D may reduce over all cancer rates by up to 30%.
There is also evidence for green tea significantly reducing cancer rates.
I haven’t seen thoroughly convincing studies, but it’s quite possible that I missed them (among the blizzard of junk studies).
Aspirin is an anti-coagulant so wounds take longer to stop bleeding.
This is true, although I’ve noticed no significant effects. (When the air is cold and dry, I’m sometimes prone to nosebleeds, but they didn’t get worse after I started low-dose aspirin).
It’s also a bug and a feature. Heart attacks and ischemic strokes are no fun at all.
A surgeon will require that you stop taking aspirin long enough for the blood clotting factors to recover.
(Surgeons hate it when they can’t stop the bleeding.)
Not a problem for elective surgery (just stop taking it). If you need immediate surgery (e.g. because of an accident), then low-dose aspirin may be a slight risk—but it doesn’t transform you into an instant hemophiliac.
If I were under 30 I wouldn’t take a daily aspirin as I doubt it provides any benefit
Eight different randomized controlled trials suggest you’re wrong. I’m unsure as to whether they studied relatively young adults like me—the problem is that it’d take even more decades to notice an effect. I consider aspirin’s effects in older men to be persuasive evidence that it has the same effects for women and younger men like me. (In fact, as I mentioned, my doctor saw my slightly elevated cholesterol and told me to start fish oil and low-dose aspirin when I was 25 - it was only later that I saw the article about cancer.)
I recommend baby aspirin for anyone over 40.
Citation needed. Do you really think that, in your 20s and 30s, your cells aren’t accumulating damage that eventually leads to cancer, so that low-dose aspirin has nothing to prevent? Really? It’s possible that the cumulative damage hypothesis, for lack of a better name, is false, but I consider it overwhelmingly likely to be true.
Obviously, in making this decision, my own health is at stake—and I am very careful. In my judgment, trying to be as rational as possible, I believe that the risks of starting low-dose aspirin in my 20s are very small, and outweighed by the cumulative benefit, when I’m older, of having taken it for so long (the time-dependent nature of the benefit is important).
“Eight different randomized controlled trials suggest you’re wrong.”
If the studies were done 20 years ago my guess is that the original trials were performed to see if aspirin reduced the risk of heart attacks. (At least that is what I recollect from that time period.) I doubt there were many people under 30 in those trials. I saw no indication in the linked article that ages were broken out so that one could determine whether people in their 20s who took aspirin for several years had less cancer 20 years later. Since few young people would be expected to get cancer I doubt the studies show that people in their 20s developed significantly fewer cancers from taking aspirin. My guess is that most of the people in the studies were men in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, i.e., those most at risk of heart attack.
“Do you really think that, in your 20s and 30s, your cells aren’t accumulating damage that eventually leads to cancer, so that low-dose aspirin has nothing to prevent?”
My opinion is that the typical young person under 30 who doesn’t abuse their body by smoking or excessive drinking has sufficient mechanisms to repair molecular damage so that aspirin will provide no additional benefit. Metabolism causes damage but it only becomes a problem when the body systems have deteriorated to the point where the body no longer keeps up with the damage done.
I believe that the cancer and Alzheimer prevention benefits from aspirin are due to reducing inflammation. I doubt people in their 20s typically experience mild chronic inflammation so I doubt aspirin will be beneficial. (I don’t have specific papers to cite. This is just my impression from reading about cancer, Alzheimer’s Disease, and inflammation for decades. I suspect you could find papers that discuss increasing inflammation levels with age and other papers that discuss the connection between inflammation and cancer and AD and other papers that discuss aspirin and inflammation reduction.) By their 40s such inflammation is common. For people in their 30s I viewed it as a toss-up.
I doubt most people in their 20s or 30s will be troubled by cancer or Alzheimer’s Disease. There should be effective cures and preventative measures long before they are at significant risk.
If the studies were done 20 years ago my guess is that the original trials were performed to see if aspirin reduced the risk of heart attacks.
Yes. The study’s full text said: “We therefore determined the effect of aspirin on risk of fatal cancer by analysis of individual patient data for deaths due to cancer during randomised trials of daily aspirin versus control (done originally for primary or secondary prevention of vascular events) in which the median duration of scheduled trial treatment was at least 4 years.”
There should be effective cures and preventative measures long before they are at significant risk.
I don’t know if this is original, but it reminds me of the unofficial motto of Google’s Site Reliability Engineering organization: “Hope is not a strategy.”
“Cancer is pretty lethal and we’re not really good at fixing it yet, so when we find something that can really reduce the risk (and there aren’t many—the only other ones I can think of are the magical substances known as not-smoking and avoiding-massive-doses-of-ionizing radiation), we should be all over that like cats on yarn.”
Maintaining moderately high blood levels of vitamin D may reduce over all cancer rates by up to 30%. There is also evidence for green tea significantly reducing cancer rates.
Aspirin is an anti-coagulant so wounds take longer to stop bleeding. A surgeon will require that you stop taking aspirin long enough for the blood clotting factors to recover. (Surgeons hate it when they can’t stop the bleeding.) If I were under 30 I wouldn’t take a daily aspirin as I doubt it provides any benefit and does increase risk slightly. By the time you are 40 your body tissues are in a state of mild, chronic inflammation. That may be good for fighting off infections but isn’t so good for the cardiovascular system, lungs, and brain. I recommend baby aspirin for anyone over 40.
Moderate alcohol use is correlated with a significant reduction in cardiovascular events. As with aspirin I would only recommend it for older people and then only if the likelihood of abuse is small.
Vitamin D is really important. There is an established causal link between vitamin D and immune function. It doesn’t just enhance your immune response—it’s a prerequisite for an immune response.
Anecdote: Prior to vitamin D supplementation, I caught something like 4 colds per year on average. I’m pretty sure I never did better than 2. I started taking daily D supplements about a year and half ago, and caught my first cold a few days ago. It’s worth taking purely as a preventative cold medicine.
I haven’t seen thoroughly convincing studies, but it’s quite possible that I missed them (among the blizzard of junk studies).
This is true, although I’ve noticed no significant effects. (When the air is cold and dry, I’m sometimes prone to nosebleeds, but they didn’t get worse after I started low-dose aspirin).
It’s also a bug and a feature. Heart attacks and ischemic strokes are no fun at all.
Not a problem for elective surgery (just stop taking it). If you need immediate surgery (e.g. because of an accident), then low-dose aspirin may be a slight risk—but it doesn’t transform you into an instant hemophiliac.
Eight different randomized controlled trials suggest you’re wrong. I’m unsure as to whether they studied relatively young adults like me—the problem is that it’d take even more decades to notice an effect. I consider aspirin’s effects in older men to be persuasive evidence that it has the same effects for women and younger men like me. (In fact, as I mentioned, my doctor saw my slightly elevated cholesterol and told me to start fish oil and low-dose aspirin when I was 25 - it was only later that I saw the article about cancer.)
Citation needed. Do you really think that, in your 20s and 30s, your cells aren’t accumulating damage that eventually leads to cancer, so that low-dose aspirin has nothing to prevent? Really? It’s possible that the cumulative damage hypothesis, for lack of a better name, is false, but I consider it overwhelmingly likely to be true.
Obviously, in making this decision, my own health is at stake—and I am very careful. In my judgment, trying to be as rational as possible, I believe that the risks of starting low-dose aspirin in my 20s are very small, and outweighed by the cumulative benefit, when I’m older, of having taken it for so long (the time-dependent nature of the benefit is important).
“Eight different randomized controlled trials suggest you’re wrong.”
If the studies were done 20 years ago my guess is that the original trials were performed to see if aspirin reduced the risk of heart attacks. (At least that is what I recollect from that time period.) I doubt there were many people under 30 in those trials. I saw no indication in the linked article that ages were broken out so that one could determine whether people in their 20s who took aspirin for several years had less cancer 20 years later. Since few young people would be expected to get cancer I doubt the studies show that people in their 20s developed significantly fewer cancers from taking aspirin. My guess is that most of the people in the studies were men in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, i.e., those most at risk of heart attack.
“Do you really think that, in your 20s and 30s, your cells aren’t accumulating damage that eventually leads to cancer, so that low-dose aspirin has nothing to prevent?”
My opinion is that the typical young person under 30 who doesn’t abuse their body by smoking or excessive drinking has sufficient mechanisms to repair molecular damage so that aspirin will provide no additional benefit. Metabolism causes damage but it only becomes a problem when the body systems have deteriorated to the point where the body no longer keeps up with the damage done.
I believe that the cancer and Alzheimer prevention benefits from aspirin are due to reducing inflammation. I doubt people in their 20s typically experience mild chronic inflammation so I doubt aspirin will be beneficial. (I don’t have specific papers to cite. This is just my impression from reading about cancer, Alzheimer’s Disease, and inflammation for decades. I suspect you could find papers that discuss increasing inflammation levels with age and other papers that discuss the connection between inflammation and cancer and AD and other papers that discuss aspirin and inflammation reduction.) By their 40s such inflammation is common. For people in their 30s I viewed it as a toss-up.
I doubt most people in their 20s or 30s will be troubled by cancer or Alzheimer’s Disease. There should be effective cures and preventative measures long before they are at significant risk.
Yes. The study’s full text said: “We therefore determined the effect of aspirin on risk of fatal cancer by analysis of individual patient data for deaths due to cancer during randomised trials of daily aspirin versus control (done originally for primary or secondary prevention of vascular events) in which the median duration of scheduled trial treatment was at least 4 years.”
Hope is not a plan.
I don’t know if this is original, but it reminds me of the unofficial motto of Google’s Site Reliability Engineering organization: “Hope is not a strategy.”
First I heard this phrase was a book by the Army chief of staff: Hope is not a method.
Hm? No, that’s about as official as we have.