A paper entitled Aspirin Intake and Survival After Breast Cancer was just published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

“Animal and in vitro studies suggest that aspirin may inhibit breast cancer metastasis. We studied whether aspirin use among women with breast cancer decreased their risk of death from breast cancer.”

Considering the seminal role that chronic inflammation plays in cancer this was a plausible connection to test.

“Among women living at least 1 year after a breast cancer diagnosis, aspirin use was associated with a decreased risk of distant recurrence and breast cancer death…This association did not differ appreciably by stage, menopausal status, body mass index, or estrogen receptor status.”

But aspirin can have significant side-effects. Are there agents that may confer similar benefit but, along with being free of side-effects, do even more good? The evidence indicates there are.

Consider this paper entitled Curcumin, resveratrol and flavonoids as anti-inflammatory, cyto- and DNA-protective dietary compounds recently published in the journal Toxicology. Cyto- and DNA-protective means that they protect against the kind of damage that can cause cells to mutate into cancers. This is one of many studies on curcumin, resveratrol and other substances showing that…

“…their intake was related to a reduced incidence of cancer, cardiovascular, neurological, respiratory, and age-related diseases… The polyphenols afford protection against various stress-induced toxicities through modulating intercellular cascades which inhibit inflammatory molecule synthesis, the formation of free radicals, nuclear damage and induce antioxidant enzyme expression. These responses have the potential to increase life expectancy.”

However, here is a critical key point: a certain level of inflammation also protects against cancer. Our bodies are producing abnormal cells all the time. One of the jobs of the immune system is to recognize and eliminate them. It gets rid of abnormal cells, like pathogens, with inflammation. More mutated cells that have accumulated DNA damage is one of the reasons why the level of inflammation goes up with age. This brilliant paper entitled Tumour Biology: Tumour-associated Inflammation versus Antitumor Immunity was recently published in the journal Anticancer Research. Here the author is explaining that abnormal inflammation is involved in causing cancer, while at the same time an inflammatory response is required to get rid of it:

“From the immunological point of view, the main characteristics are dysregulated inflammatory conditions caused by the tumour cells themselves or by external factors, depending on the type of tumour event. It is evident that prolonged dysregulated inflammatory conditions favour not only carcinogenesis but also the local infiltration and metastasis of malignantly modified cells and counteract the development of efficient antitumor immunity. On the other hand, there are indications that through the polarisation of immunological reactions, the ability of immunological regulator and effector cells to induce efficient antitumor immunity can be modulated.”

This is why working with someone who is skilled in the functional approach to evaluating immune function with the appropriate lab tests for inflammatory and protective cytokines and T cell (white blood cell) sub-populations to determine appropriate support is so important.