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Less than half of Americans know that alcohol is a carcinogen

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Re: Less than half of Americans know that alcohol is a carcinogen

#101

Post by Ovah »

dekhn wrote: post #81
Ovah wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are some actual numbers for risk increase. Heavy drinkers have a 5-fold increased risk of getting head and neck cancer, esofageal cancer, and 2-fold increase for liver cancer. The source also reviews colorectal, breast and head+neck cancer. My opinion as a medical professional is that these are significant, and not "very tiny amounts", of increased risk. https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk…

those are relative risks, you need to state them in absolute risk if you want people to be able to understand and make decisions. If the absolute baseline risk of getting head and neck cancer is very low, then having a 5x risk over that isn't really important- it's still absolutely small enough to say "don't care, compared to other risks". And in alcohol, there's a long list of risks that will cause the majority of d…

I mean cancer which risk is affected by alcohol is somewhat low as it is. I simply refuted the above statement that alcohol barely affects cancer incidence.

Cardiovascular disease however is the #1 cause of death in the Western world. And here alcohol alcohol plays a much much more significant role in contributing to mortality.

Re: Less than half of Americans know that alcohol is a carcinogen

#102

Post by BitwiseFool »

csours wrote: post #17

I bought a large mixing bowl, and it had a California Cancer label on the bottom. It's a regular metal bowl. If you put cancer labels on everything, people will quickly ignore them. Maybe it would be better if there was a scale on it, like this is a 1 banana equivalent risk or something, but then how do you determine my exposure to the cancer in the metal bowl.

There's no penalty for putting the label on a product that has none of the substances in it. But the penalty for not putting the label on something that does end up having a carcinogen in it is very high. So it's really in the best interest of the manufacturer to just put the label on it anyway.

Re: Less than half of Americans know that alcohol is a carcinogen

#103

Post by inglor_cz »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #74
hx2a wrote: post #26

Wait, what? Alcohol is a carcinogen? I didn't know this. Here's link to the CDC's website, referenced in that article: https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/moderate-drinking.ht... This part from the CDC's website is also interesting: Although past studies have indicated that moderate alcohol consumption has protective health benefits (e.g., reducing risk of heart disease), recent studies show this may not be true.…

People that drink one glass of wine have very low propensity to over indulge. The latter trait has all sorts of benefits including health and income. It is the adult marshmallow test.

Or, possibly, their drug is just different.

My grandfather was an alcoholic. I have zero problem controlling my alcohol consumption and the older I get, the less I drink. I am currently somewhere in the proximity of 2-3 glasses of wine a week, it was even less in the summer. And there is no urge to consume more.

But I definitely overindulge on HN or Reddit.

Re: Less than half of Americans know that alcohol is a carcinogen

#104

Post by frereubu »

advisedwang wrote: post #51

Source for all the folks asking specifically about risks: https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/a... > an estimated 3.5% of cancer deaths in the United States (about 19,500 deaths) were alcohol related > Moderate drinkers have 1.8-fold higher risks of oral cavity (excluding the lips) and pharynx (throat) cancers and 1.4-fold higher risks of larynx (voice box) cancers than non-drinkers, and heavy…

The crucial data that's missing from those figures (although they're probably buried in the references somewhere) is what the initial risk of cancer is.

If the risk of cancer of the larynx in non-drinkers is 0.0001%, then a 1.4-fold increase means that a moderate drinker has a risk of 0.00014%, an absolute increase of 0.00004%. Instead if it's 20%, then a 1.4-fold increase is 28%, an absolute increase of 8%.

You could potentially extrapolate back from the 3.5% of cancer deaths being "alcohol related", but that gives no context around the related risks of light / moderate / heavy drinking.

Re: Less than half of Americans know that alcohol is a carcinogen

#105

Post by nikolay »

snazz wrote: post #85
nikolay wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually it does care about spreading over time. That's why plant toxins are good in small amounts and bad in large at once. It's always about weighing benefits and negative effects, not looking at things one-sidedly! I would never have vodka, cocktails, and other pure poison products, but I will have a glass of good red wine or a bottle of real beer! Pure ethanol is bad! Ethanol is metabolised as fructose! Sugary al…

We're talking about cancer risk here, not toxicity or effects on blood sugar. As far as I understand (as someone with no medical background), exposure is exposure. I'd love to be proven wrong if someone has some information to the contrary.

Well, I wonder how many of these studies have found a cause or just associations. I can tell you that most drinkers greatly underestimate how much they actually drink and even further if they have to report it to another person, so, a survey will always show people as moderate drinkers! Also, most regular drinkers have other unhealthy habits! Toxicity and cancer risks are also both about the dose. We all have cancerous cells in us, but they become a problem if they survive and grow (and by growing they get a bigger chance of mutating to the level they can trick the immune system). A cancer developers over the course of many years, except certain types, of course. Definitely alcohol is not an immediate killer - there are much worse things, but here we want to vilify one millenniums-old habit as the root of all evils!

Re: Less than half of Americans know that alcohol is a carcinogen

#106

Post by nikolay »

mssundaram wrote: post #89
nikolay wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually it does care about spreading over time. That's why plant toxins are good in small amounts and bad in large at once. It's always about weighing benefits and negative effects, not looking at things one-sidedly! I would never have vodka, cocktails, and other pure poison products, but I will have a glass of good red wine or a bottle of real beer! Pure ethanol is bad! Ethanol is metabolised as fructose! Sugary al…

I have this perspective too in large part due to the book "The Art of Fermentation" by Sandor Katz and the other resources/books that that book cites.

Yeah, arguing that it's not about the dose means you shouldn't eat ripe fruit or drink kombucha.

Re: Less than half of Americans know that alcohol is a carcinogen

#107

Post by rcoveson »

rriepe wrote: post #32
acomjean wrote: post #16

I don't think there are many that consider alcohol healthy at this point. Plus most people are pretty moderate consumers of the stuff. burnt foods also increase cancer. But its kinda marginal. https://www.nhs.uk/news/cancer/warning-over-burnt-toast-chem...

Everyone I know who drinks considers one or two a day to be healthy.

The CDC defines "moderate alcohol consumption" as one drink per day for females and two drinks per day for males. That's probably what they're referring to. It also states:

"This definition refers to the amount consumed on any single day and is not intended as an average over several days."[0]

I don't see any info about weekly consumption.

0. https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/faqs.htm

Re: Less than half of Americans know that alcohol is a carcinogen

#108

Post by adamhowell »

snazz wrote: post #79
adamhowell wrote: post #27

I've personally found, when people ask why I'm not drinking, that "Well, did you realize Alcohol is right above Arsenic on the carcinogen list?" is by far – compared to "Oh, I just don't drink" or the other reasons I've given in the past – the fastest way to move onto other topics.

Does arsenic usually cause cancer or is it toxic in another way? While you can also get alcohol poisoning, this seems like an imperfect comparison.

I wasn't being facetious, I was just referencing the American Cancer Society's list:

https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/general-info/kno...

Arsenic is considered a carcinogen:

https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/arsenic.html

Re: Less than half of Americans know that alcohol is a carcinogen

#109

Post by choward »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #74
hx2a wrote: post #26

Wait, what? Alcohol is a carcinogen? I didn't know this. Here's link to the CDC's website, referenced in that article: https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/moderate-drinking.ht... This part from the CDC's website is also interesting: Although past studies have indicated that moderate alcohol consumption has protective health benefits (e.g., reducing risk of heart disease), recent studies show this may not be true.…

People that drink one glass of wine have very low propensity to over indulge. The latter trait has all sorts of benefits including health and income. It is the adult marshmallow test.

So basically just correlation vs causation.

Re: Less than half of Americans know that alcohol is a carcinogen

#110

Post by Ovah »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #83
Ovah wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are some actual numbers for risk increase. Heavy drinkers have a 5-fold increased risk of getting head and neck cancer, esofageal cancer, and 2-fold increase for liver cancer. The source also reviews colorectal, breast and head+neck cancer. My opinion as a medical professional is that these are significant, and not "very tiny amounts", of increased risk. https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk…

Of course, it matters what the baseline frequencies of these cancers are. If these represent .1% of all cancers, even a tenfold relative risk only increases your absolute risk by 1%. That would be "significant" under some definition of the word significant. But it might not be decisive for someone considering whether they should drink. On the other hand, if the baseline rate of those cancers is 8%, it would likely be…

The baseline risk of getting cancer['s whos risk is increased by alcohol] is somewhat low as it is. Simply refuted the above statement that alcohol doesn't affect cancer risk.

EDIT: Thank you asdfasgasdgasdg for the correction.

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