thenutritionwatchdog.com What's in your food? Discover which "healthy" foods are harming your health and which foods protect your body 
By: Cat Ebeling, RN, MSN-PHN, co-author of the best-sellers: The Fat Burning Kitchen, The Top 101 Foods that Fight Aging & The Diabetes Fix
I’d like to call your attention to a miracle medicine that is probably sitting in the back of your medicine cabinet, long forgotten, gathering dust.
This safe and well-tested medication has been around for literally thousands of years. This simple medication can be considered as one of the greatest contributions to the health of mankind. I am talking about aspirin.
Aspirin, or acetylsalicylic acid, is still one of the most widely used drugs worldwide. Aspirin began as a derivative of willow bark, and was used as both a painkiller and fever reducer by the Egyptians, Sumerians, and other ancient civilizations.
Aspirin has since been used as an anti-inflammatory painkiller, headache reducer, and blood thinning medication. Aspirin also works well on muscle aches, arthritis, toothaches and menstrual cramps.
There is now growing evidence of aspirin’s wide-ranging benefits including fighting cancer, reversing dementia, improving mood, increasing blood flow, and improving metabolic health—to name just a few.
Aspirin is truly a lifesaving, proven, wonder drug with very few side effects.
Let’s dive into some of the amazing, but little-known benefits of this well-known medication.
Heart and Circulatory Support
Aspirin has a longstanding reputation for preventing heart disease. It does this by helping to prevent the blood platelets from clumping to form clots. Clots contribute to the incidence of heart attacks and strokes by blocking blood flow.
Aspirin can also stop a heart attack or stroke as it’s happening by helping to thin the blood and break up a blood clot.
Aspirin is also known as an anti-inflammatory, so its ability to lower inflammation can also be heart protective.
Brain and Nerves
Aspirin’s effects on the brain and nervous system are strikingly potent. Aspirin can be considered a powerful nootropic. Aspirin is especially effective at lowering inflammation in the brain. Inflammation in the brain can cause depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder and other mental disorders.
Aspirin not only helps enhance moods and emotional stability, but it reduces stress, generates a feeling of calm, aids in better sleep, and banishes depression—while regulating serotonin and other vital brain chemicals.
And you may find this information truly amazing–Aspirin helps regrow neurons in the hippocampus. The hippocampus is the area of the brain responsible for mood, emotion, and judgement. This neurogenesis shows great promise at preventing and even reversing some forms of dementia, encouraging stroke recovery, and enhancing memory and cognition.
Neurogenesis is one of the key factors in longevity and slowing the aging process in the brain.
Aspirin stimulates the release of Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor, or BDNF. BDNF plays an important role in many physiological and pathological functions of the brain and nervous system. BDNF plays a crucial role in brain circuits and their ability to communicate. Proper functioning of the central nervous system depends on BDNF.
Aspirin’s anti-inflammatory actions also protect the brain, reducing the risk of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, MS, and other neurodegenerative diseases.
Because aspirin has the ability to break up blood clots, aspirin prevents further injury from strokes, aids in stroke recovery, and alleviates post-stroke depression.
Aspirin has long been known as a help for headaches, but it has also shown to be very effective especially in relieving migraines, especially in combination with caffeine. Aspirin can also help with nerve pain anywhere in the body, caused by simple aches and pains, diabetic neuropathy, chemotherapy or other health conditions.
Along with aspirin, these foods are shown to help heal the brain, and reduce the risk if mental diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, MS
Cancer Fighting
One of the more amazing unsung health benefits of aspirin is its ability to consistently reduce the incidence and mortality of various types of cancers. This is likely due in part to its gentle anti-inflammatory properties.
Long-term, low-dose aspirin has been linked to a reduced risk of colorectal cancer by inhibiting certain inflammatory compounds, according to the National Cancer Institute. Aspirin also reduces overall mortality of liver, pancreatic, prostate, lung, colorectal, breast, endometrial, and ovarian cancers, according to the Journal of Public Health.
Aspirin, when utilized as an adjuvant treatment, along with other more conventional treatments, reduces metastatic spread and increases survival rates of many cancer patients.
Paired with aspirin, these cancer fighting foods will detoxify your body, strengthen your immune system, repair cells DNA, and kill cancer cells to stop the spreading.
Immune Strengthening
Because aspirin has anti-inflammatory, and immune-balancing benefits, it strengthens immune function. This helps prevent overactive immune responses that cause chronic inflammation, and autoimmune diseases.
Inflammation is also a factor when the body is fighting off viruses, which is part of the immune response. However, an overly reactive immune system can cause more serious illness. Aspirin may help modulate the immune reaction so that it boosts its ability to fight viruses and other pathogens.
Studies suggest aspirin can affect the function of immune cells like macrophages, T cells, and dendritic cells, which are essential for recognizing and fighting infections.
Aspirin is also effective against the growth of some bacteria, like H.pylori which causes ulcers in the stomach, and candida albicans, which can infect the gut, causing a variety of symptoms.
Metabolic Health
Poor metabolic health has been discovered as one of the primary causes of inflammation, especially connected to chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, cancer and dementia. Having healthy glucose regulation, along with insulin sensitivity is a goal for almost all people.
Aspirin helps to enhance the body’s ability to stabilize blood sugar by enhancing insulin sensitivity. One study with aspirin reported a 25% decrease in fasting glucose, along with a reduction in total cholesterol and C-reactive protein—all risk factors for heart disease, diabetes, and prediabetes.
This same study showed an amazing 50% reduction in triglyceride levels following a high-dose aspirin treatment. Triglyceride levels, a key indicator for heart disease, and other chronic diseases, are a reflection of blood glucose levels.
When too many carbohydrates and sugar are ingested, the body quickly turns that into glucose. The excess glucose is converted to triglycerides by the liver. Aspirin helps to slow that process, keeping blood sugar and triglycerides low.
Longevity
Aspirin should be everyone’s favorite anti-aging medication. As we age, our immune systems become dysregulated, which makes us more likely to have chronic inflammation. Decreasing hormone levels also contribute to increasing inflammation. This often helps to pave the way for diseases like Alzheimer’s, cancer, and heart disease.
Chronic low-grade inflammation or ‘inflammaging,’ is very common with older people. By lowering overall inflammation, the risk of all-cause mortality is significantly decreased. Studies show that anti-inflammatory drugs like aspirin slow aging.
Aspirin is also responsible for inducing autophagy, the process that removes damaged cells and their components, improving cellular function and metabolic health. This cellular housecleaning helps stimulate energy production, while preventing structural and functional breakdown of mitochondria in the cells.
Everyone has a reason to live a long and healthy life. Making these small changes can help you not only live as long as possible, but living the longest, healthiest life possible—free of chronic diseases.
Reproductive Health
For women, low-dose aspirin is used to improve blood flow to the uterus which is helpful especially for women undergoing fertility treatments. Aspirin also shows promise in reducing the risk of preeclampsia and loss of pregnancy. And aspirin has been used for a long time to reduce the discomfort of PMS.
For men, aspirin is an aromatase inhibitor, which helps to lower estrogen levels by preventing the unwanted conversion of testosterone to estrogen. Because aspirin helps to thin the blood and encourage better circulation, it is also thought to improve blood flow to the penis to put an end to erectile dysfunction.
Other Health Benefits of Aspirin
- Aspirin helps to prevent oxidative damage and inflammation in blood vessels from polyunsaturated, vegetable seed oils.
- Aspirin helps reduce symptoms of psoriasis, and aids in healing skin wounds, and gum disease.
- Aspirin helps to manage asthma symptoms and prevent Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS).
- Aspirin can help prevent microvascular inflammation in the kidneys which protects the kidneys from damage in people with diabetes.
- Aspirin reduces the inflammation associated with Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD).
- Aspirin can slow the progression of age-related macular degeneration by improving blood flow and reducing inflammation.
Aspirin is an amazing medication with widespread applications across most body systems. Aspirin may be one of the best longevity medications that reduces inflammation, prevents heart disease, lowers cancer risk, and protects the brain’s cognitive function.
Aspirin has few side effects, however, aspirin does pose a slight risk for bleeding in the gut, although some studies show only 8 out of 1000 had this reaction, while the placebo was 5 out of 1000.
Anyone interested in using aspirin long term should consult with their healthcare provider to determine if aspirin is right for them, based on their individual health.
Aspirin and healthy lifestyle changes can help reduce your chances of a heart attack, but If you want to avoid a devastating heart attack, also don’t miss this simple test…
Heart Attack Test: Touch Your Feet Like THIS (for 7 seconds)
Can you really predict a heart attack? 
According to America’s #1 heart nutrition expert, Dr. Sam Walters… this 7-second “feet test” can reveal if your heart is dying.
Here’s how to do it:
1. Just sit on a chair.
2. Touch your right foot.
If THIS happens… then your heart is desperately starving for oxygen (but most people only realize when it’s too late).
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