Aspirin is probably the oldest pain reducer known to humankind. It was used to treat battle wounds in the days when the Parthenon was being built in Greece and today it has been replaced on pharmacy shelves by a vast assortment of modern drugs.
It has a reputation in modern society for properties that shield us from bowel cancer and all through the last century many people popped an aspirin a day as a precaution. It was both encouraged and forbidden by some sections of the medical profession because it was also known to irrtitate the stomach and cause internal bleeding, but the rumour of bowel cancer protection was strong and it found a place in numerous family medicine cabinets.
At long last that medical equation has been solved. An article by a Melbourne hospital published in the Lancet gave the results of research they conducted into aspirin. Their finding was that people aged from fifty to seventy should take an aspirin tablet daily to reduce the rate of bowel cancer by fifty percent.
This good news got even better. The survey also found that taking aspirin for just a few years delivered a long term protective effect against this disease for years after the patient stopped taking it. It was a clear vindication for those who persisted with aspirin during the time its benficial effects were treated as rumour.
This finding arose from a randomised controlled trial which monitored 427 opeople given aspirin and 434 given a placebo. All of them had Lynch syndrome which is an inherited disorder which puts them at higher risk of getting a range of cancers, including bowel cancer.
The trial was conducted between ten and twenty years and there were 40 cases of colorectal cancer or bowel cancer in those taking 600 mg of aspirin daily, compared to 58 cases in those who were not. It delivers a clear indication that aspirin as a protection from bowel cancer helps built a form of immunity to the disease.
One of the other benefits is that aspirin is probably down at the cheapest end of the pricing of pain killers. It is available, over the counter without the need for a prescription for mere pennies where the advanced drugs on pharmact shelves attract ever rising prices.
The outcome of this trial reccomends that people would be wise to take two aspirtin tablets a day for an average of two and half years to gain the cumulative effects of the drug in shielding them from bowel cancer.
For many, this is vindication for their long held belief and for others it is a prasctical way to avoid one of nature's most diabolical life ending diseases.
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