Your New Years resolution for this year might be to research from studies and articles why did some doctors prescribe a daily aspirin to prevent breast cancer? Even the Journal of the American Medical Association confirmed that aspirin didn't help prevent cancer.

More than 40% of the U.S. population is now on prescription drugs for a quick fix instead of getting to the root of the problem causing their symptoms. The drug content in human urine is now so high that trace amounts of antidepressant drugs can be found in public water supplies. Compared to drugs, vitamins, if you need them and are not able to absorb vitamins from whole foods, are cheap prevention methods.

What can you do about drugs in the water supply coming from human urine? The most expensive urine in the world comes from expensive prescription drugs, not whole foods and a few vitamins for those not able to absorb what they need through foods. One more New Year's resolution might be to investigate or examine the root cause of your symptoms rather than looking for a fast fix from a quick pill, unless you truly need that pill to stay alive or mobile.

Remember the entire last decade when some doctors told women to take an aspirin a day (not to prevent a certain type of heart attack or thin the blood) but to cut cancer risk? Studies later found that taking a daily aspirin is useless to prevent cancer. Why would some doctors prescribe it for that use ten years ago? Sometimes doctors can be blindsided.

You take an aspirin, say, to prevent one problem, but little did they know back then that a daily aspirin increased the risk of macular degeneration. What if macular degeneration runs in your family? How will taken a daily aspirin affect your own risk of getting macular degeneration after age 50? Should you even take it? Or should you take more natural solutions such as cod liver oil? That's one question to ponder as you make your New Year's health and nutrition resolutions.

On the other hand, studies have shown since 1998 that taking an aspirin daily increases the risk of getting the number one type of blindness after the age of 50--macular degeneration by forty-four percent. Read the study for yourself: Opthalmology 105:1751-58, 1998. Check out the article, "Adverse Effects of Prescription Drugs/NSAIDs/Antibiotics.

Next, you might want to look at what's happened to the routine hormone replacement therapy those HMOs used to almost automatically recommend a decade ago or more when you went in for your exam at the first sign of approaching menopause.

Why do medical fad diets or prescriptions come and go in waves, like a fashion trend in health? Prevention research is one area you might consider exploring for your New Year's health resolution--to find out what's being explored now.

Ask yourself, are there any foods that can be substituted for a pill that does a better job of prevention? How do you get at the root cause of any symptom and make changes your body needs to fix a deficiency? How do you optimize your health with a plan that works best for you in the long run?

Also a decade ago, published medical studies showed that taking commercial estrogens for about 10 years increased the risk of breast cancer by 23%. If you took commercial estrogen and progesterone (or commercial synthetic progestin) not bio-identical hormones, as most doctors prescribed in the 1990s, breast cancer risk tripled, with an increased risk of 67%. Later, the American Cancer Society published a study in its own medical journal that "postmenopausal hormone use (with estrogen and progesterone) increases breast cancer risk even within five years of use."

Also be alert to  sodium benzoate added to your foods, toothpaste, or vitamins. Sodium benzoate with vitamin C produces benzene, which is toxic and carcinogenic. Found in most soft drinks, juices, pickles, salad dressings, jams, and other food items. FDA tests have found levels of benzene in some soft drinks 16 times the health standard for drinking water, according to R.J.Rowan (MD), Second Opinion, Spring 2008. Also check out the site, MSN, Health and Fitness. Looks like there's a lot of New Year's resolutions to check out regarding research on what's added to foods or prescribed for prevention purposes.

Resources

Egan KM, et al, Prospective study of regular aspirin use and the risk of breast cancer, Journal National Cancer Institute, 88: 988-93, 1996.

Cook and R, et al, Low-dose aspirin in the primary prevention of cancer: Women's Health Study: a randomized controlled trial, Journal of the American Medical Association, 294: 47-55, 2005.

Mahoney MC, et al, Opportunities and strategies for breast cancer prevention through risk reduction, CA. A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, (official publication for physicians of the American Cancer Society) 58; 6-347-71, Nov/Dec 2008.

Colditz, GA, et al, Cumulative risk of breast cancer to age 70 years according to the risk factor status: data from the Nurses' Heath Study, American Journal of Epidemiology 152: 950-64, 2000.

Barr, DB, et al, Assessing human exposure to phtalates using monesters and their oxidized metabolites as biomarkers, Environmental Health Perspective, 111; 9:1148-51, July 2003.

Heiss G, et al, Health risks and benefits three years after stopping randomized treatment with estrogen and progesterone. Journal of the American Medical Association, 299: 1036-45, 2008.

Breast cancer and hormone replacement therapy: collaborative re-analysis of data from 51 epidemiologic studies of 52,705 women with breast cancer and 108,411 women without breast cancer. Collaborative Group on Hormone Factors in Breast Cancer, Lancet, 350:1047-59, 1997.