What’s Bad for Your Heart, Is Bad for Your Gut

If you have coronary artery disease, you have a 34% chance of also having colon cancer. Why is this so? Seems the risk factors for both are the same:

• diabetes,

• smoking,

• hyperlipidemia,

• sedentary lifestyle,

• high-fat and low-fiber diet,

• obesity, and

• hypertension

Patients who took aspirin or statins were excluded from the group, as these medications mitigate both coronary artery disease and colon cancer. The mechanism involved is probably the decrease in chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation has been implicated in both artheroschlerosis (hardening of the arteries, or coronary artery disease) and colon neoplasms (cancers of the colon).

Additionally, those people who had colon cancer were far more likely to have advanced cancer, if they also had coronary artery disease.
So, is the moral of this story to take aspirin and statins? While that probably may help, what will really decrease your chances of getting either coronary artery disease or cancer is to eat healthy, be physically active, and stop smoking. Same old story, it is up to you to change your life-style if you want to live longer.