Alcoholic beverages – increasingly popular and widely promoted as a social lubricant, mealtime complement, relaxant, business facilitator and party favourite – have been identified as a major risk factor for cancer.
While this news recently received media attention, medical and epidemiological researchers have known or suspected this for years. Noteworthy recent developments have provided a strong rationale for our governments to review our harm reduction policies, and for those of us who drink alcohol – that's 78 per cent of Ontarians – to rethink our personal practices.
The first development was the recent review by the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). In February 2007, a group of 26 scientists from 15 countries met in Lyon, France, to reassess the carcinogenicity of alcoholic beverages by reviewing several thousand underlying studies in humans and animals.
As reported in the medical journal Lancet Oncology in April of this year, the group identified alcohol as a contributing cause of mouth and oropharynx cancer, esophageal cancer, liver cancer, laryngeal cancer, and now, colon, rectal and breast cancer.
But doesn't this risk apply only to people who consume large quantities of alcohol?
Certainly there is a "dose response relationship," where larger amounts of consumption lead to higher relative risks for breast cancer and all other cancers caused by alcohol. But surprisingly, the relative risk for breast cancer is significantly increased with regular consumption of even about 18 grams of alcohol per day – slightly more than a standard bottle of beer, shot of spirits or glass of wine. This finding is based on a pooled analysis of 53 studies of more than 58,000 women.
As for the people citing those popular "health benefits of wine" studies, here's an idea: if you want flavonoids, drink grape juice. The idea that you can only get them from wine is fucking idiocy and everyone with a brain knows it.
"It's not evil for God to do it. Or for someone to do it at God's command."- Jonathan Boyd on baby-killing
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"Viagra commercials appear to save lives" - tharkûn on US health care.
Well, that settles it. Time for me to quit drinking for good and eat hash brownies instead.
aerius: I'll vote for you if you sleep with me. Lusankya: Deal!
Say, do you want it to be a threesome with your wife? Or a foursome with your wife and sister-in-law? I'm up for either.
...wow. This stinks...
I wonder how risky it is to have a drink once every couple of weeks or so? Or if it's chemically possible to create an alcohol replacement which doesn't fuck up the body quite so badly?
Admiral Valdemar wrote:There was also a discussion on a quota for red meat, like with alcohol units, which is also seen as a carcinogen.
Meh, I'm mostly a chickenhawk/oviraptor/fish-eagle guy anyway when it comes to meats. I love me some baked chicken, egg sandwich, tuna salad, or straight up salmon sashimi with smelt roe.
Loads of things are claimed to cause cancer nowadays, or help prevent it. At this point I'm kind of beyond giving a shit - we all die sooner or later, and not everyone is going to be lucky enough to die of "old age" (a rather nebulous cause of death that I have never seen properly defined), no matter how diligently they avoid carcinogens and accidents. Cancers have a wide variety of causes, which probably why it is such a common cause of death. What I think is an important consideration is not that alcohol causes cancer, but whether it induces fatal or quality of life degrading cancer earlier than the average life expectancy. The article doesn't seem to provide this information as far as I can see. I am perfectly willing to be corrected however.
I personally don't drink much more than a bottle of wine every two weeks. I do it because I enjoy it, and I certainly don't operate under any assumptions that it does wonders for my health. I know that it is a toxin, but for me the benefits outweigh the risks. Binge drinkers are antisocial idiots not just because of elevated cancer risk (which seems pretty minor considering excessive drinking's other problems), but because of more immediate concerns as drunken rowdy behaviour, property damage, urinating in public, liver poisoning, etc.
I don't see this as a reason to stop drinking, more as another reason to avoid drinking to excess. Binge drinking is for idiots, but teetotalism is dull.
Does it follow that I reject all authority? Perish the thought. In the matter of boots, I defer to the authority of the boot-maker - Mikhail Bakunin Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society - Karl Marx Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value - R. Buckminster Fuller The important thing is not to be human but to be humane - Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
Nova Mundi, my laughable attempt at an original worldbuilding/gameplay project
Genetics has a major factor in this too. There are people who are still alive at 100 who have drunk several pints a day and smoked a pack of 20 all their life, while some poor schmoe dies at 30 who ate their own organic produce and never touched booze or fags.
NoXion wrote:What I think is an important consideration is not that alcohol causes cancer, but whether it induces fatal or quality of life degrading cancer earlier than the average life expectancy.
How fucking stupid do you have to be to think that there are cancers that do not degrade quality of life or are potentially fatal?
So how soon do we start to see warnings on the back of a can of beer stating that the use of alcohol increases the risk of "mouth and oropharynx cancer, esophageal cancer, liver cancer, laryngeal cancer, and now, colon, rectal and breast cancer"?
I'm not holding my breath.
I rarely drink and my dietary choices are probably seen as nutty to most of the board here, but why engage in an activity that may increase the risk of getting several different types of cancers? Sure, any number of other things could cause cancer, but why risk something additional? Having seen numerous cancer patients for the first half of the year while taking my uncle to various hospital visits after his successful surgery to remove 1/3rd of his lung with a cancerous spot on it, I'd rather die of a heart attack in my bed. Cancer is horrendous.
Cancer is horrible. I don't find myself living in fear of it, though. It is at least treatable in many cases and we understand how to go about dealing with it. What irks me are the ones that are inevitable and untreatable, such as Alzheimer's.
At least you die yourself with cancer and had a shot at ridding yourself of it.
This is starting to get to the point where everything "increases the risk" of cancer.
The more I hear the less i'm going to care about changing my current habits as it seems no matter how hard I try i'm going to get exposed to carcinogens from somewhere.
I'm beginning to understand a smokers point of view when it comes to health warnings.
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NoXion wrote:What I think is an important consideration is not that alcohol causes cancer, but whether it induces fatal or quality of life degrading cancer earlier than the average life expectancy.
How fucking stupid do you have to be to think that there are cancers that do not degrade quality of life or are potentially fatal?
That's not what I am saying and you should damn well know that. Read it properly. Unless it has been proven that alcohol consumption leads to significantly increased risk of cancer earlier (not my usage of the exact same word in my original statement) than the average life expectancy, I don't any reason to unduly worry. If your occasional drink down the pub doesn't get you, something else will. I don't think it a good reason to stop drinking just because I might get cancer sometime later in life, anymore than I see a good reason to stop crossing roads on the off chance that I might get splattered by a passing vehicle.
Also, unless I am mistaken, non-malignant tumours are examples of cancers that do not significantly degrade quality of life or are fatal. I would imagine that they are not considered "true cancers" in the popular imagination because it has been drummed into us all that cancer = death.
Does it follow that I reject all authority? Perish the thought. In the matter of boots, I defer to the authority of the boot-maker - Mikhail Bakunin Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society - Karl Marx Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value - R. Buckminster Fuller The important thing is not to be human but to be humane - Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
Nova Mundi, my laughable attempt at an original worldbuilding/gameplay project
The second development occurred on Oct. 31, 2007, when the American Institute for Cancer Research and the World Cancer Research Fund released its major report on lifestyle and dietary characteristics for several types of cancer. The authors concluded that there is convincing evidence linking consumption of alcohol to elevated cancer risk, and indicated that if people do drink, they should consume no more than one drink per day for women and two for men.
That same day, academic experts and senior representatives of cancer and public health agencies were holding a seminar on alcohol and cancer in Toronto. Discussions included how the role of alcohol as a carcinogen is not well known to the general public, where media-based messages about the benefits of alcohol (often including inaccurate or exaggerated details) tend to dominate.
Just thought I'd post this part of the article that Wong missed off.
Essentially this says nothing more than what we already know, Binge drinking = bad.
So no need to change my habits at all, I drink even close to what the amounts they are discussing here in a week.
Member of the Unremarkables Just because you're god, it doesn't mean you can treat people that way : - My girlfriend Evil Brit Conspiracy - Insignificant guy
Zac Naloen wrote:I'm beginning to understand a smokers point of view when it comes to health warnings.
Are you kidding?
Of course, that closing comment is completely tongue in cheek.
Member of the Unremarkables Just because you're god, it doesn't mean you can treat people that way : - My girlfriend Evil Brit Conspiracy - Insignificant guy
Let's see, if I drink moderate amount of alcohol, my relative risk for breast cancer is roughly 1.4. If I take the contraceptive pill, my risk is .... 1.6. Relative risk under 5 is considered statistically insignificant. Colour me unimpressed.
The problem is, you can't think about these things in a vacuum. It may be that people who are moderate drinkers are more likely to develop those cancers. The cancers listed are ones that you are likely to get just by getting old. As alcohol has shown to be beneficial to the heart, it means that people who might have died from a heart attack don't. Basically, you don't die of heart disease so you live long enough for cancer to get you. There's a reason why these studies often end with "We need to do a longitudinal study"
As for the people citing those popular "health benefits of wine" studies, here's an idea: if you want flavonoids, drink grape juice. The idea that you can only get them from wine is fucking idiocy and everyone with a brain knows it.
Certainly there is a "dose response relationship," where larger amounts of consumption lead to higher relative risks for breast cancer and all other cancers caused by alcohol. But surprisingly, the relative risk for breast cancer is significantly increased with regular consumption of even about 18 grams of alcohol per day – slightly more than a standard bottle of beer, shot of spirits or glass of wine. This finding is based on a pooled analysis of 53 studies of more than 58,000 women.
I'm personally always surprised at what most people consider a small consumption of alcohol. I understand that 'small' is relative depending on who you are but even a bottle of beer per day is quite excessive for me. Is that what most people consider a small regular consumption of alcohol?
Molyneux wrote:...wow. This stinks...
I wonder how risky it is to have a drink once every couple of weeks or so?
Not that risky. The average life expectancy is still 76 in the UK with an enormous majority of the population drinking far more than that and with diets that could be a lot better, as well as having relatively stressful lives.
Small amounts of alcohol in that sort of timeframe will damage you in a more or less imperceptible way, but the human body can withstand that with ease for an average lifetime, the body regenerates from mild trauma more or less continually. Hell, even walking and running tears loads of tiny muscles and ligaments continually, but your body repairs them.
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Admiral Valdemar wrote:At least you die yourself with cancer...
No, not always; I watched my dying father call to a stuffed animal thinking it was his dog and try to make a cellphone call on a glass of water...at least the nature of the cancer that killed him meant that state lasted only a couple hours.
He lost conciousness shortly thereafter and never regained it, but those are memories of him I am 100% certain he would have suffered through anything to avoid me having, especially as they're my last memories of him being awake.
The hospice nurses assured me that he was recieving less medication than some of the patients who were lucid and mobile, too, so it appears it wasn't drug induced.
