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Cancer risks increase with alcohol use, leading to over 740k cases last year

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Re: Cancer risks increase with alcohol use, leading to over 740k cases last year

#41

Post by crackercrews »

> Even moderate drinking, two or fewer drinks a day, accounted for an estimated 14%, or 103,000 cases, of alcohol-related cancers, according to the study.

This is not a helpful statistic because it doesn't say what percent of people are in this category. I skimmed the actual paper [1] and it appears that there is no designation below "moderate drinking" so this literally captures everyone who drinks 2 drinks or less per day.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2...

Re: Cancer risks increase with alcohol use, leading to over 740k cases last year

#42

Post by SteveNuts »

wbl wrote: post #27
rob74 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congratulations, if you do that every single day, that makes you a heavy drinker. Drinking alcohol every single day is already one red flag, and drinking more than one "drink" (one small bottle of beer, one glass of wine or one small glass of whisky/vodka/etc.) per day is a second red flag. Of course you can get much worse than that, but it will still negatively impact your health long-term.

It's also completely unremarkable across much of Europe to drink that much.

That absolutely does not mean it's a healthy thing to do.

Re: Cancer risks increase with alcohol use, leading to over 740k cases last year

#43

Post by michaelmrose »

It is frustrating that they lump in any amount of alcohol up to 2 drinks per day as moderate which honestly isn't all that moderate. Still another way to read that is that while alcohol represents a real risk to community health resources you can mitigate 86% of the risk by limiting yourself to ONLY 68 gallons (257 liters) of beer this year.

I would not be terribly surprised if most of the issues with moderate drinkers concerned users were on the heavy side of "moderate"

Re: Cancer risks increase with alcohol use, leading to over 740k cases last year

#44

Post by danuker »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #19
danuker wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They looked at correlations for "cancer sites with sufficient evidence of a causal link according to the most recent IARC monograph.". But they don't mention any other adjustments (age, other dietary factors, BMI...).

Yeah, I get that. And I stand by what I said and I don't understand why it's at all controversial. Some cancers are known to be caused by viruses. Maybe people drink because they caught a virus that causes cancer, either to self medicate or because the virus makes them crave alcohol.

While a randomized controlled trial is the golden standard when it comes to science, ones about cancer can be prohibitively expensive due to the durations involved.

Who will accept a researcher-imposed dietary restriction for years? Who will follow it without requiring supervision?

These cohort studies are the next best thing. The correlation is with alcohol consumption 10 years earlier, and they looked at the changes in countries' alcohol consumption.

Re: Cancer risks increase with alcohol use, leading to over 740k cases last year

#45

Post by jbigelow76 »

hrh wrote: post #17
armada651 wrote: post #6

> Our study highlights the contribution of even relatively low levels of alcohol to the risk of new cancer cases, "relatively" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. I'm always amazed when filling out health surveys where it considers one alcoholic drink every single day a "low level".

Had friends that had to have 4-6 beers to chill out every night and had been doing that for 20 years. I feel fucking terrible the day after drinking a six-pack; I can't imagine what that does to the body (a lot of the same stuff as sugar). You're slowly killing yourself. Having not known a grandfather due to alcoholism (don't be so hard on the boomers, their fuckups are the fuckups of a generation that went through w…

(don't be so hard on the boomers, their fuckups are the fuckups of a generation that went through ww2)

Pretty sure the boomers are the ones that came after WW2, the aforementioned "boom" of their namesake being progeny of those that didn't die during the blitz, Normandy, Stalingrad, and everywhere in between.

Re: Cancer risks increase with alcohol use, leading to over 740k cases last year

#46

Post by hrh »

jbigelow76 wrote: post #45
hrh wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had friends that had to have 4-6 beers to chill out every night and had been doing that for 20 years. I feel fucking terrible the day after drinking a six-pack; I can't imagine what that does to the body (a lot of the same stuff as sugar). You're slowly killing yourself. Having not known a grandfather due to alcoholism (don't be so hard on the boomers, their fuckups are the fuckups of a generation that went through w…

(don't be so hard on the boomers, their fuckups are the fuckups of a generation that went through ww2) Pretty sure the boomers are the ones that came after WW2, the aforementioned "boom" of their namesake being progeny of those that didn't die during the blitz, Normandy, Stalingrad, and everywhere in between.

I was being obtuse: what I was trying to say is there are a lot of GIs and people at home that were damaged. Their kids got the worst of it.

Re: Cancer risks increase with alcohol use, leading to over 740k cases last year

#47

Post by yarcob »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #40
yarcob wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you live that same life and drink a glass of grape juice instead of wine everyday, you'll live even longer. Alcohol is a poisson and there is no "safe" level. Now, it's a personal decision how much risk is acceptable to you, but don't lie to yourself how "one glass a day is not going to make a difference".

> Now, it's a personal decision how much risk is acceptable to you, but don't lie to yourself how "one glass a day is not going to make a difference" If one glass a day only slightly increases your risk (Say a few % points), then it will effectively make no difference.

That is your personal decision, not a fact.

I mean, you could say the same about riding a motorcycle. Riding a motorcycle only slightly increases your risk of dying in a horrible traffic accident, but for a lot of people the risk is big enough that they stop riding once they have kids.

Re: Cancer risks increase with alcohol use, leading to over 740k cases last year

#48

Post by DoreenMichele »

danuker wrote: post #44
DoreenMichele wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I get that. And I stand by what I said and I don't understand why it's at all controversial. Some cancers are known to be caused by viruses. Maybe people drink because they caught a virus that causes cancer, either to self medicate or because the virus makes them crave alcohol.

While a randomized controlled trial is the golden standard when it comes to science, ones about cancer can be prohibitively expensive due to the durations involved. Who will accept a researcher-imposed dietary restriction for years? Who will follow it without requiring supervision? These cohort studies are the next best thing. The correlation is with alcohol consumption 10 years earlier, and they looked at the change…

That's fine. As long as you state clearly it's correlation and not proven causation and we don't know the exact mechanism and yadda.

I'm trying to walk away from a completely ridiculous pile on from an excessive number of people here. This is not a productive conversation at all and I have no idea why it went so wildly sideways.

Re: Cancer risks increase with alcohol use, leading to over 740k cases last year

#49

Post by [deleted] »

michaelmrose wrote: post #43

It is frustrating that they lump in any amount of alcohol up to 2 drinks per day as moderate which honestly isn't all that moderate. Still another way to read that is that while alcohol represents a real risk to community health resources you can mitigate 86% of the risk by limiting yourself to ONLY 68 gallons (257 liters) of beer this year. I would not be terribly surprised if most of the issues with moderate drinke…

[deleted]

Re: Cancer risks increase with alcohol use, leading to over 740k cases last year

#50

Post by refurb »

staticassertion wrote: post #34
rob74 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congratulations, if you do that every single day, that makes you a heavy drinker. Drinking alcohol every single day is already one red flag, and drinking more than one "drink" (one small bottle of beer, one glass of wine or one small glass of whisky/vodka/etc.) per day is a second red flag. Of course you can get much worse than that, but it will still negatively impact your health long-term.

Everybody dies. I can only make so many sacrifices.

“If you don’t drink you don’t live longer, it just feels like you do.”
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