Aspirin to lower diabetes and breast cancer risk

On an episode of “Friends,” Phoebe thanks Monica for the pills that cured her headache and asks to see the package. “Oh my God,” Phoebe says as she reads the warning label. “Dizziness, nervousness, drowsiness ... headache ... headache?”

She pauses, letting the irony sink in. “Stomach bleeding! Liver damage!” She turns to Monica. “I don’t recall any of this coming up when you gave me these little death capsules!”

With many medications, possible side effects (many extremely uncommon) can be scary, but often the benefits far outweigh the risks. One of the most common meds for which this is true is the mighty aspirin — shown to help prevent a wide spectrum of woes from cardiovascular disease to some cancers.

And now research has found another impressive benefit: It lowers the risk of breast cancer in women with Type 2 diabetes — in whom it’s about 20 per cent higher than in women without diabetes. (It also lowers the risk in women without Type 2 diabetes.) Researchers tracked over 148,000 women with diabetes for 14 years; those who took a daily low-dose aspirin were 18 percent less likely to get breast cancer during that time, while those who took a high cumulative amount (88,900 mg or more) over that 14-year time period had a 47 per cent lower risk of breast cancer!

So, if you have diabetes, talk to your doctor and see if twicedaily baby aspirin (one in the morning and one in the evening with half a glass of warm water before and after each) is right for you.