Talking about beliefs, aspirin is the modern-day equivalent of a medieval elixir. It’s suggested for everything, and a little a day can help ward off heart problems and cancer and the like.
Well, actually, it can’t. A new study has discovered that aspirin has no protective qualities against cancer. They tested the much-mooted theory on nearly 40,000 women, who were given 100 mg aspirin every other day. But after 10 years, the researchers found that the women who took the drug didn’t have fewer cancers than those who hadn’t taken it regularly. This was true across all the cancers, including breast and colorectal, but excluded lung cancer.
(Source: Journal of the American Medical Association, 2005; 294: 47-55).