I am very skeptical about these side effect claims. Do you have hard data supporting this or doctor hearsay. Years ago I remember watching Charlie Rose Brain series where one of the professors said something like “ we know of two drugs that we are certain are very safe for human beings: alcohol and aspirin.”

Almost all strokes are ischemic strokes.

It isn't a cancer drug, so that isn't a fair comparison. GI symptoms from eating more broccoli and not ever drinking are also pretty mild compared to cancer drugs. Aspirin appears to be a preventative according to some initial research. National cancer institute says even the most at-risk age group (age 60+) is still only has cancer rates of around 1 in 100. How long are you going to take low dose aspirin?

Are GI symptoms mild if you take low dose aspirin on a daily basis for 30 years? 40? Longer even? All to reduce your odds of getting cancer from 1 in 100 to 1 in 120 at the latest stage of your life. The gains are marginal in younger stages of your life where cancer rates are much lower.

Don't get me wrong, if this is validated it's a very interesting result. A mechanism of action could be potentially groundbreaking. It doesn't mean start taking aspirin every day for the rest of your life at age 38 just to be on the safe side, however.

It is also worth considering that this is purely an association at this point. It is possible that some of this effect is because cardiovascular disease, the primary reason for taking low dose aspirin, tends to kill people before the odds of getting cancer have time to really flex their muscles. We might assume that ethical researchers without perverse incentives working within a system primarily concerned with scientific truth would have ruled out that possibility... but then we would be idealists who are ignorant of how the world works. Or any other number of reasons why this might turn out to be a big old pot of nothing to get excited about.

because the FDA are sticks-in-the-mud who get blowback when they approve something bad and but barely hear anything if they delay or restrict something good. there was also a to-do about celecoxib potentially increasing risk of heart attacks, plus the off-label marketing thing that led to the largest (at the time) settlement of that sort in history.

the process was also crazy complicated until some new 2020 legislation. the FDA published monographs saying things like "you can make a pain reliever with the following active ingredients and in the following forms." for example, no changes to the monographs on cough and cold medicines were made between 1987 and 2020. the new regime is of course a new mess to figure out, and consumers won't necessarily know the difference between a selective versus nonselective cox inhibitor. so you spend all this money and maybe inertia just keeps people buying ibuprofen and naproxen because it's what they know. and marketing something explicitly as "safer than ibuprofen" would be a massive hurdle to get cleared.

you can find all the FDA's monographs here, where it lists specific ingredients, concentrations, labeling, and testing procedures. https://dps.fda.gov/omuf/monographsearch

Oh i remember reading all of these studies 10 years ago and thinking they had so much potential relative to the small but significant risk in MI. I hope they are reevaluated at some point.

Common misconception, it's actually best to take with alcoholic beverages containing dairy. So like a white Russian.

(I'm obviously joking, this is your friendly reminder not to take medical advice from randos on the internet, especially when their source is "I've heard").