Aspirin - The Bitter Pill That Kills
Bob
Regarding the May 31st. 2005 Quirks and Quarks Science program on Aspirin was interesting, however, statements such as quoted below sounded more like an advatorial.
"Now, imagine taking this pill daily to prevent cancer and Alzheimer's disease. A growing number of studies suggest that regularly popping an aspirin or other similar anti-inflammatory drugs can reduce your risk of these diseases by 30 to 40 percent."
Wow! What they don't tell you is that some earlier studies tell us quite a different story. Some of these have indicated that you can get strokes and Colon cancer and aspirin may even cause Macular degeneration. While much safer anti-inflammatory foods such as Turmeric; and vitamin C to prevent Colon cancer already exist.
The following extract from the booklet "How Health-Conscious Americans Get Killed by Bad Medicine" by Dr. Douglas' MD will give some balance to the above radio program. The complete booklet is available at: http://www.rhinopublish.com/books/BadMedicine.htm this is a must read and clearly demonstrates the mainstream Quacks are well and alive. Be warned that the ebook version with some minor typos is not printable and copious references are not provided, although these are not as important as most information is logical and self contained.
Of course there is no money for research on these safer alternatives and as usual regulatory bodies such as the FDA, Health Canada etc. will be the first to protect their pharmaceutical buddies with our tax money no less. While in Europe the CODEX initiative to burry safe effective doses of vitamins and herbs is well underway.
Incredible!
Chris Gupta
See also: Vitamins For Macular Degeneration/Eye Health -- Offers Big Savings
Aspirin The Bitter Pill That Kills Aspirin
An aspirin promotion group called the Aspirin Foundation boasts that the chemical "probably has been taken, at one time or another, by almost every human being on earth." Wishful thinking, no doubt, but pill-happy Americans scarf down 25 million aspirin tablets a day. The British take it in a powder, the Italians take an effervescent, champagne-like mix, the French take it rectally, and the Thailanders put it in their morning and evening tea. Chemical companies produce 90 billion aspirin tablets a year. If all those tablets were placed end to end they would stretch to the planet Infinity and back. Did you ever think that you would see the day when Americans by the millions would be popping aspirin for their health* Do all these people really have an aspirin deficiency? Did God forget to put aspirin in our food? Will an aspirin a day keep the doctor away? You'd probably say no to all of the above because it doesn't make any sense to take a chemical as if it were a vitamin. But it took the British to figure out how the aspirin industry and the AMA pulled off such a scam.
The much-promoted Physician's Health Study proving that taking aspirin regularly will prevent heart attacks didn't use just aspirin but aspirin plus magnesium in the form of Bufferin. Research done years ago proved that magnesium protects the heart. It dilates blood vessels, aids in absorption of potassium into cells (which will prevent heartbeat irregularities), acts as an anticoagulant (blood thinner) and keeps the blood cells from sticking together (thrombosis). Autopsy of the heart muscle following death by heart attack almost always reveals that the heart muscle is deficient in magnesium. I have been taking a magnesium supplement (KMag from Vitaline — there are other good ones) for 10 years and I have hundreds of patients on magnesium. We just don't see heart attacks in patients who stick with it. So the doctors (and their patients) have been conned again by the group that has been leading them around by the nose for 75 years — the pharmaceutical industry. A British study using only aspirin revealed that aspirin had absolutely nothing to do with lowering the incidence of heart attacks.
Robbing Peter to Pay Paul?
The American study was so flawed that you can't help but wonder if the aspirin industry financed it. The subjects were white, male, mostly non- smoking doctors who were not monitored, and who reported their condition by letter — post office research. The study used an extremely healthy group with only oneeighth the death rate of the general population. Even with such a healthy group, the study results had some ominous overtones. That's the part the aspirin companies don't want you to know about. Though heart attacks were relatively rare, strokes and sudden death from other causes were more common among the aspirin group than with the placebo group. This information is very significant. The claim for reduction in heart attacks among the aspirin group was 47 percent. But the small print (very small print) in the report said that when death from all causes was considered, there was no difference in the mortality rates of the two groups. Thus, death from other causes among the aspirin group increased substantially — an amount equal to 47 percent of all heart attacks in the nonaspirin group. Did you know that every time you take aspirin you bleed a little into your gut? A microscope will show that the bowel movement of someone on daily aspirin has blood in it every time. If it's happening in your intestinal tract, how do you know it's not happening in your brain? How many strokes are precipitated by chronic aspirin intake? How many fatal hemorrhages of the brain, spleen, liver, intestine, or lung occur after an automobile accident because the blood has been thinned with aspirin? Nobody knows and nobody is checking. Prevention That Works There are many natural ways to protect yourself from heart attack without enriching the Bayer Company:
• Magnesium, as men tioned above, is absolutely essential for a healthy heart and should be given credit for the beneficial results obtained in the aspirin study.
• Salmon oil contains a strong platelet antisticking agent called eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA).
• Garlic blocks the clotting mechanism.• Niacin is a well known anti-atherosclerotic agent.
• Vitamin C is an important factor in prostaglandin production.
• Vitamin E is also important in the production of prostaglandins.• Bromelin reduces platelet stickiness.
• Zinc is a necessary catalyst, along with the enzyme d-6-d, in certain fatty acid metabolic processes essential to the health of your coronary arteries.
• Vitamin B-6 (pyridoxine) converts the highly atherogenic homocysteine to cystathionine. This prevents meat protein from damaging your arteries. Also stops platelet aggregation.
• Folic Acid neutralizes the enzyme XO in homogenized pasteurized milk. XO hardens your arteries.
• Carnitine and Taurine, two of the amino ' acids considered nonessential by most nutritionists, are absolutely essential for a healthy heart. There are other nutrients for a healthy heart, but you get the picture. So who needs aspirin?The Cancer Connection
A few years ago I was in Nashville, Tennessee attending a medical conference with a colleague. While at dinner he developed severe chest pain, was rushed to the university hospital, and was found to have suffered a heart attack. He went very quickly to bypass surgery and survived it with no complications. I was visiting him one day following the surgery when a nurse came in to give him his aspirin tablet. She stood there and watched him take it with a glass of water. It was almost a ritual. Such is the reverence felt for this drug. But in addition to the reports showing aspirin has no preventive effect on heart attacks, new reports show that aspirin may cause cancer. And what's more, a study of California researchers reported in the British Medical Journal that older men and women who take aspirin every day almost double their chances of developing so-called ischemic heart disease. Ischemic heart disease accounts for a wide range of illnesses involving blockage of the arteries carrying blood to the heart. Aspirin-users were also more likely to develop kidney and colon cancer, the study found. Lawrence Garfinkel, Vice President for Epidemiology at the American Cancer Society said, "It would give one pause about using aspirin routinely to prevent an initial heart attack. This is going to be very confusing to the public. "The new study concluded: "Our study would not recommend that these people routinely consume aspirin." There are a few other reasons why you shouldn't take aspirin: indigestion, bleeding ulcers with possible hemorrhage and death from exsanguination (internal bleeding) and hemorrhagic stroke.I'm Vain About My Brain
Leo Dropperman started taking aspirin to prevent a second heart attack, as advised by his doctor and the TV commercials. But when he read that daily doses could increase his chances of getting a hemorrhagic stroke, he quit. "I'd much rather have a heart attack than a stroke," said the Tennessee psychologist. "I'm very vain about my brain.” Of course, it may be even worse than that. The British report mentioned earlier found no beneficial effect on heart attack frequency from taking aspirin, but the California study goes even further in suggesting that daily aspirin use may actually increase the odds of having a heart attack, as well as give you kidney and colon cancer. On hearing that news, drug companies quickly folded their medicine tents and split. Their commercials connecting aspirin with beneficial effects on heart disease were scrapped. Sterling Drug (Eastman Kodak) pulled its commercial depicting the Bayer aspirin logo over a pulsating heart monitor and substituted the old logo: "the wonder drug doctors themselves take more often for pain." Bristol-Myers dragged out Angela Lansbury to say: "A cup of tea and a couple of Bufferin allow me to do the things I want to do." Sterling Drugs even went so far as to introduce a Bayer calendar pack to remind people to take their aspirin. Consumers are beginning to question all these contradictory studies. They don't know who to believe anymore. So, when it comes to advice on drugs, who can you trust? The FDA? Well, in December, 1984 the FDA recommended allowing drug companies to promote the use of aspirin to reduce the chances of a second heart attack. Can you trust the medical journals? In January, 1988, the New England Journal of Medicine reported that an aspirin every other day reduced the risk of heart attacks. (Is it coincidental that the drug companies have been able to get their slimy fingers into the New England Journal of Medicine with multi-million-dollar advertising contracts?) Can you trust the medical advice given by actors on TV commercials? Forget I asked. Can you trust the hospitals and their doctors? Remember the episode my colleague had in the hospital with the nurse force-feeding him aspirin? After the aspirin-popping media blitz, aspirin sales temporarily increased and then resumed the old downward trend. The news leaked out that an aspirin a day would keep good health away. One disgusted advertising drummer said plaintively: "About the only preventive thing people do in this country is brush their teeth with fluoride." I guess you can't trust the advertising agencies either.
posted by Chris Gupta on Wednesday June 4 2003
updated on Thursday January 5 2006URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/chris/2003/06/04/aspirin_the_bitter_pill_that_kills.htm
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