what you need to know

Earlier this year, the US Surgeon General released a bomb report. Before its term ends in January, Vivek Murthy warned that alcohol increases the risk of at least seven types of cancer and a call is made for an alcoholic drink so that the cancer packs cigarettes to carry the warning label. Report¹ A risk triggers a panic of headlines that many people ignore.

The stiffness between alcohol and cancer is not new. Scientists first labeled alcohol as carcinogen more than 35 years ago, and the evidence has increased only since then. “I don’t think the relationship between alcohol and some cancer is very controversial,” says Tim Namey, an alcoholist at the University of Victoria, Canada.

What has been less pronounced is the drinking level on which the risk of cancer starts to increase, and how to weigh that high risk against other effects of alcohol – in particular, fiercely debate is claimed that drinking less or medium improves heart health for some people. “Drinking a lot is absolutely bad,” Emmanuella Gakidau says, which analyzes the risk of alcohol at health metrics and evaluation institutes in Seattle, Washington. “This is the minimum amount of alcohol where there is a debate.”

All this information can make people feel confused. What is really low or medium drinking? And how should people weigh any bliss that can get them from drinking with risks? “Many people enjoy drinking alcohol, and they don’t like to tell that they really enjoy, which is bad for you,” Gakidau says.

Cancer connection

For decades, scientists have been creating a case that causes alcohol cancer. Because it is difficult to test the effects of alcohol in random tests, they have drawn on other types of research instead. Many huge corket studies track several tens of thousands of people that alcohol is associated with high rates of some types of cancer. A large scale 2015 meta-analysis² – The results of hundreds of corket studies and other researches, including more than 485,000 cancer cases, were found – found that many cancer growth risk increased with the level of consumption.

But the Kohrast study has weaknesses. Researchers have to control for other confused factors that can contribute to the risk of cancer, such as the fact that heavy alcoholics are more likely to smoke than those who drink less drinkers, and those who drink alcohol have other healthy habits. And scientists know that study participants say that they often drink less as they actually do. Some studies attempted to accommodate the drinking levels to match the people required by the sale of alcohol, with Peter Sarich, an epidemicist at the Daphodil Center, called Sydney, an epidemic of a cancer research center in Australia.

Other evidences come from animal experiments and laboratory studies that have identified the system through which alcohol can cause cancer. The best installed is that the ethanol is broken into acetaldehyde, a toxin that damages DNA.

Scientists prefer to see the sum of evidence, and there are two synthesis of research that are considered particularly certain for alcohol and cancer. An international agency for research on cancer (IARC) is the cancer branch of the World Health Organization. The agency classified drinking alcohol as carcinogenic in 1988 – placed in the same category as tobacco smoke and asbestos – and restored that scene³ in 2007.

Other synthesis is from the global cancer update program, which is a continuous attempt to assess the overalls on the link between cancer, physical activity, body weight and diet (including alcohol), which uses a panel of experts using systematic reviews and assessing the strength of evidence. The most recent report of the program⁴In 2018, concluded that there is strong evidence that alcoholic beverages increase the risk of many cancer.

“Because we have such a rigid process, people have confidence in the results,” says Helen Croker, assistant director of research and policy at the World Cancer Research Fund International (WCRF) in London.

Depending on such synthesis, researchers agree that alcohol increases the risk of at least seven types of cancer: mouth, throat (pharynx), voice box (selfie), esophagus, breast cancer in women, colorectal and liver. Scientists suspect that other cancer types will be added as more data are collected.

Studies present this risk in different ways. A complexity is that, in alcohol studies and guidelines, a ‘standard’ drink varies between countries: a standard drink in the United States has 14 grams of ethanol, it is 13.45 grams in Canada, 10 grams in Australia and in the United Kingdom 8 grams.

In Surgeon General’s report, results from a big corket study⁵ Sarich was used to calculate the full risks of developing either of the seven cancer types led by Sarich (see ‘the risk of cancer goes up’). This showed that about 17 out of 100 women who either drink nothing or a standard US drink (14 grams of ethanol) will develop such cancer during their lifetime (14 grams of ethanol). It was taken as a basic level of risk. This number increased to about 22 out of 100 in women who have two drinks (28 grams of ethanol) per day. Therefore, five more women will develop cancer due to high levels of alcohol consumption.

For men, the lifelong risk of developing one of these seven cancer types increased from a base line of about 10 to those who do not drink a standard drink per week or are up to 13 out of 13 for those who have an average of two drinks. The sex difference is that breast cancer eats a large number of cancer that is responsible for alcohol in women, but not in men.

Rising risk

But what about those who drink very little? Over the years, scientists have been zero at the drinking level, on which the risk of cancer starts increasing. “We suspect that there may be different answers to different cancer types of this question,” Juragen Rehm says, which study the addiction of alcohol and drugs in Toronto, Canada and the loss of alcohol and drugs in the mental health center.

REHM says that this answer is clear for breast cancer in women that many big corket studies, which included many people who did not drink much. A systematic review⁶ In such studies, which was published last year, found that the risk of cancer was raised slightly in those who had half a drink (5 grams of ethanol) per day – the lowest level was examined. “And clearly, it probably doesn’t matter to go ahead, because I mean, who drinks one-fourth drink a drink?” Reham says.

Nearly half cancer deaths can be stopped

2018 Global Cancer Update Program Report⁴The panel concluded that any amount of alcohol increased the risk of mouth, pharynx, viral, osophage and breast cancer. For these situations, “we do not find any less range”, Croker says. The status of the WCRF, which is similar to the World Health Organization, is that there is no ‘safe’ level that does not increase the risk of overall cancer.

For some other cancer types, the panel found that the elevated risk was the most pronounced at a slightly higher level of alcohol consumption. The risk of colorectal cancer grew more than 30 grams of ethanol (more than two American standard drinks) per day, and the risk of liver cancer increased more than 45 grams (more than three American standard drinks) per day. The lower levels of alcohol can still increase the risk of developing these cancers, but there were not enough evidence to say.

The risks of low or moderate drinking can be partly understanding, as it is difficult for the study to define a reliable comparison group of people who do not drink. Scientists know that some people stop drinking alcohol because their health is already decreasing: Does researchers say sick-quiters. Nimi says that some people claim to avoid life, when the records show that they drank in the past. Therefore, a study may include unhealthy pre-drinkers in the ‘non-drinking’ group.

“The entire evidence around medium drinking is baselessly weak – and it will be a charitable characterization,” says naimi.

Alcohol vs smoking

A few years ago, Nick Sharon, a liver physician working at the University of Southampton, UK, performed a quick calculation on comparative risks of drinking and smoking. He said that he was so surprised by the result that “I spent a long time in an attempt to prove that I was wrong”. But he could not do – and the epidemic agreed that the number was correct.

the study⁷ He published, in 2019, it was estimated that a bottle of alcohol per week was associated with 1% for men and 1.4% for women with a full lifetime risk of cancer. (Therefore, if 1,000 men and 1,000 women consumed a bottle of alcohol each week, the estimated 10 men and 14 women would develop cancer as results.) This, they found, found, five cigarette smokers per week and women smoked. (Drinking three bottles per week was equivalent to 23 cigarette smoking for men and smoking women – more than a pack.)