Overall, the effects of alcohol consumption on cardiovascular disease are detrimental in all societies with large proportions of heavy-drinking occasions, which is true for most societies globally (Rehm et al. 2003a). For example, studies in Lithuania (Chenet et al. 2001) found that cardiovascular deaths increased on weekends, when heavy drinking is more common. As with other meta-analyses of published studies, the analysis presented here has various limitations and strengths. One limitation is that for most types of cancer included, the estimates of alcohol’s effects tended to vary widely among the individual studies, making interpretation of the pooled data more difficult. Part of this variability may result from differences in the characteristics of the subjects included in the studies. For example, the gender of the study participants may play a role because potential differences in alcohol breakdown (i.e., metabolism) exist between men and women and may systematically influence the overall pooled estimates (Corrao et al. 1999, 2000).
What’s considered one drink?
But studies have only begun to look at the associations between binge drinking and cancer, he added. The biggest such wins would likely come from helping heavy drinkers cut back or quit, she added. “It’s pretty clear there are no health benefits from heavy drinking, and there’s lots of risk to health overall,” she said. To date, no experimental evidence indicates that alcohol by itself can cause cancer—that is, that alcohol can act as a complete carcinogen. Over the past few decades, however, several animal studies have indicated that alcohol can have a cocarcinogenic, or cancer-promoting, effect. This means that when alcohol is administered together with other known cancer-inducing agents (i.e., carcinogens), it promotes or accelerates cancer development.
Implications of Alcohol-Related Risks for Drinking Guidelines
- Research gaps also exist in understanding additive, synergistic or antagonistic effects of alcohol use in cancer prevention and control.
- Drinking 20 to 60 grams, two to six drinks, of ethanol alcohol per day, which the authors defined as “risky drinking,” represented 39.4% of alcohol-attributable cancer cases.
- There is strong and consistent evidence that drinking alcohol increases your risk of developing a cancer, based on a growing body of research.
- According to the federal government’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2020–2025, individuals who do not drink alcohol should not start drinking for any reason.
“When it comes to managing your cancer risk, there is no alcoholic drink that is better than the other. All of them — including beer, wine and liquor — have ethanol, which is linked to increased cancer risk,” Bevers says. Evidence from Western countries already strongly indicates that alcohol is a direct cause of cancer in the head, neck, oesophagus, liver, colon and breast. But it has been difficult to establish whether alcohol directly causes cancer, or if it is linked to possible confounding factors (such as smoking and diet) that could generate biased results. It was also unclear whether alcohol is linked to other types of cancer, including lung and stomach cancers.
Numerous studies indicated that people were drinking more alcohol, with stress, increased access, and boredom cited as factors. While she says the best way to reduce cancer risk is not drinking alcohol, drinking less can have a positive impact. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) writes that even if a man and woman drink the same amount of alcohol, the woman will usually have a higher blood alcohol level. And not only do women usually experience the immediate effects of alcohol more quickly than men, but they are also at a higher risk for alcohol’s long-term health effects.
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At least 4% of the world’s newly diagnosed cases of esophageal, mouth, larynx, sun rocks strain colon, rectum, liver and breast cancers in 2020, or 741,300 people, can be attributed to drinking alcohol, according to a study in the July 13 edition of Lancet Oncology. Of the 172,600 alcohol-related cancer cases diagnosed in women, the vast majority, or 98,300 cases, were breast cancer. Both average volume of alcohol consumption and the level of drinking before the event have been shown to affect suicide risk (Borges and Loera 2010). There also is a clear link between alcohol consumption and aggression, including, but not limited to, homicides (Rehm et al. 2003b). Cultural factors that are related to both differences in drinking patterns and beliefs and expectations about the effects of alcohol also influence the relationship between drinking and aggression (Bushman and Cooper 1990; Graham 2003; Leonard 2005; Room and Rossow 2001).
Alcohol consumption and cancer
Cancers of the esophagus and liver accounted for more than 340,000 alcohol-attributable cancers diagnosed in 2020. The researchers estimated that, overall, about 17% of liver cancer cases and 32% of esophageal cancer cases diagnosed in 2020 were attributable to alcohol use. The results of this study can be explored by country and world region in the Cancers Attributable to Alcohol visualization tool, which is part of the Cancer Causes subsite of the IARC Global Cancer Observatory. The database has user-friendly facilities to produce maps and explore visualizations of the global burden of cancer attributable to alcohol consumption by sex, cancer site, and country or world region. The effects of alcohol consumption on ischemic stroke5 are similar to those on ischemic heart disease, both in terms of the risk curve and in terms of biological pathways (Patra et al. 2010; Rehm et al. 2010a). On the other hand, alcohol consumption mainly has detrimental effects on the risk for hemorrhagic stroke, which are mediated at least in part by alcohol’s impact on hypertension.
Some of the highest proportions of alcohol-related cancers were found in Moldova and Romania, she said. But recent changes in taxing policy, which has increased the cost of alcohol in those countries, have caused a drop in alcohol sales. The liver cancer the authors measured was hepatocellular carcinoma, the most common type of primary liver cancer – cancer that begins in your liver, rather than spreading to your liver from other organs. Further research into the mechanisms of alcohol’s effect on cancer risk could increase understanding of other factors that may interact with alcohol to increase cancer risk.
The link between alcohol and almost all kinds of unintentional injuries has long been established. It depends on the blood alcohol concentration (BAC) and shows an exponential dose-response relationship (Taylor et al. 2010). However, the epidemiological literature shows that even at lower BACs, injury risk is increased compared with no alcohol consumption (Taylor et al. 2010). However, some individuals with the defective form of ALDH2 can become tolerant to the unpleasant effects of acetaldehyde and consume large amounts of alcohol. Epidemiologic studies have shown that such individuals have a higher risk of alcohol-related esophageal cancer, as well as of head and neck cancers, than individuals with the fully active enzyme who drink comparable amounts of alcohol (31). These increased risks are seen only among people who carry the ALDH2 variant and drink alcohol—they are not observed in people who carry the variant but do not drink alcohol.