The most depressing news-No Amount of Alcohol Is Safe

[n2doc]

"Responsible drinking" has become a 21st-century mantra for how most people view alcohol consumption. But when it comes to cancer, no amount of alcohol is safe.[1] That is the conclusion of the 2014 World Cancer Report (WCR), issued by the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).

Declared a carcinogen by the IARC in 1988,[2] alcohol is causally related to several cancers. "We have known for a long time that alcohol causes esophageal cancer, says Jürgen Rehm, PhD, WCR contributor on alcohol consumption, and Senior Scientist at the Centre for Addictions and Mental Health in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, "but the relationship with other tumors, such as breast cancer, has come to our attention only in the past 10-15 years."

The Risk Is Dose-Dependent

The more alcohol that a person drinks, the higher the risk. The alcohol/cancer link has been strengthened by the finding of a dose/response relationship between alcohol consumption and certain cancers. A causal relationship exists between alcohol consumption and cancers of the mouth, pharynx, larynx, esophagus, colon-rectum, liver, and female breast; a significant relationship also exists between alcohol consumption and pancreatic cancer.[1]

Links have also been made between alcohol consumption and leukemia; multiple myeloma; and cancers of the cervix, vulva, vagina, and skin, but fewer studies have looked at these relationships and more research is needed to establish a confirmed association.[1] For bladder, lung, and stomach cancers, the evidence for an alcohol-cancer link is conflicting.

more

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/824237

[Enthusiast]

1. I'm fucked.

[JustAnotherGen]

2. +1000

Wine is killing me

[Warpy]

4. Yeah, you and the rest of the human race

I love hysterical articles like this one proving alcohol is the demon drug and a sip at a party twice a year is going to make you dead of cancer the next.

Our ancestors lived on alcohol because water was not safe to drink unless boiled and if you've ever had boiled water to drink, you know it's not pleasant. It was better to add honey or malted barley and let it ferment for a while and that would give you water that was more pleasant to drink combined with alcohol that killed the bugs in it.

This zero tolerance stuff is for people with zero critical thinking skills and zero brain power.

[lordsummerisle]

14. What he said ^^ n/t

[ForgoTheConsequence]

3. Not depressing to me.

I'll still drink casually. If I stopped consuming everything that is linked to cancer or disease it would be a pretty dull life. I'll enjoy myself and die a few years earlier.

[lordsummerisle]

5. It says in the post

That the risk is dose-dependent and the more alcohol that a person drinks, the higher the risk. But your post title says that no amount of alcohol is safe. Seems a bit contradictory although I didn't read the entire article.

[n2doc]

6. It means the risk is never zero

1 drink = some risk. Of course nothing is without risk. Pick your poison, as they say.

[unblock]

8. not contradictory -- the risk starts with the first drink and increases from there.

one drink is safer than two, sure; but zero drinks is safer than one.

we've been inundated lately with the health virtues of moderate drinking, though few articles point out that most of the benefits can be derived from a daily glass of (non-fermented) grape juice.

in either case i'm out of the market because grapes in any form are a migraine trigger for me.

[lordsummerisle]

11. Grape juice

Like non-alcoholic beer and decaf coffee....drinks without a soul.

[unblock]

17. yes. well. not sure what that has to do with longevity or cancer or health.

[MannyGoldstein]

7. But IIRC, alcohol reduces heart disease, too

The thing to look at, I think, is total mortality vs. alcohol dosage, which usually indicates that a drink or two each day maximizes life expectancy, e.g.,

http://www.bmj.com/content/325/7357/191

[unblock]

9. that answers a different question

if you're trying to decide between drinking wine vs. drinking water on the basis of maximizing life expectancy, then yes, that's the way to go about it. and ok, a drink or two might be better than water in that regard.

but to better understand the risk profile of foods and beverages and lifestyles, it's important to clarify the risks. so it appears that alcohol may lower cardiac risks but increase numerous cancer risks. perhaps that's a wise trade-off in terms of longevity because cardiac problems can end your life faster than cancer often does (though perhaps that's not what people might prefer in terms of quality of life).

the question then becomes, what other foods or drinks provide the cardiac benefits without the cancer risks? without much research, i suggest that grapes or grape juice might do the job better than either an extra glass or either water or wine.

[MannyGoldstein]

10. Strictly true on being a different question, but

isn't life expectancy what we normally want to optimize? All other things being equal?

Two questions:

Have grapes or grape juice been shown to confer increased life expectancy?

Has it been shown that drinking alcohol and ingesting grapes/grape juice at the same time is not as good as ingesting grapes/grape juice alone?

Unless the answer to the second question is yes, then I don't think we have evidence that grapes confer the same cardiac benefit as alcohol but without the added cancer risk.

[unblock]

16. not as many studies about grape, but the key compounds are very similar

flavenoids and whatnot.

obviously alcohol is a notable difference, though not at all the only one.

grape juice has been shown to confer many advantages comparable to wine (i don't know if increased longevity specifically is one of them), without the obvious alcohol-related problems. i don't know of any study linking non-fermented grapes to cancer, though that doesn't mean a link isn't there waiting to be found.

one thing is for certain, there are multiple sources of information bias toward promoting alcoholic beverages. the wine lobby is far more powerful than the grape lobby, wine is far more profitable, out culture prefers wine to grape juice, our media finds stories about wine far more interesting than stories about grape juice, and most people just plain like wine more than grape juice.



regarding your specific question #2, i don't think that's quite the study i'd be most interested in. i'd like to see a study comparing the outcomes (longevity, cancer, cardiac issues, etc.) of exclusively fermented-grape consumers against exclusively non-fermented-grape consumers.

[lordsummerisle]

12. I can't wait for the next health scare

masturbation leads to infertility?

[SheilaT]

13. So what happened to the thing about red wine in moderation

is good for you?

Here's the problem with any and all of these studies. There are risks everywhere. Sometimes they are really obvious, like getting drunk and then behind the wheel of a car. Or jumping off a tall building without double checking the length of the bungee cord.

Sometimes they're also obvious but often denied, such as smoking and the diseases it creates. One reason smokers can deny that risk is that not everyone gets even one of those diseases.

Sometimes the connection is strong, such as certain genetic markers and breast cancer. But even that's well under 100%.

More often the risk is real, but still vanishingly low. Such as some particular food or behavior or exposure to something increases the likelihood of some specific disease by a set amount. But often the risk of that particular disease is very low in the first place. So even doubling your chance of getting the disease still means that you're vastly unlikely to get it.

Life involves risks and trade offs. I think I'm going to head out and get a bottle of wine.

[lordsummerisle]

15. I would tell my Seventh-Day Adventists friends about this

except I don't have any...