Alcohol Consumption and Cancer

Alcohol Consumption and Cancer – From the LA Times

The media is saturated with conflicting reports about whether or not Alcohol, in moderation, is risky.  Some say no, it’s actually GOOD for you… others say to stay away.  And then this shows up a few months back:

“If you’d like to increase your risk of getting an array of cancers, a new study suggests you should hit the bottle…Compared with people who had less than one drink per week, those who drank daily were nearly three times as likely to get esophageal cancer. Moderate drinkers (who consumed between one and six drinks per week) were 67% more likely to get stomach cancer.”

Okay, well… maybe that was just a fluke.  Maybe the esophagel cancer comes from drinkers who smoke?  And what if you don’t smoke?  Maybe stomach cancer is caused by a combination of alcohol and other toxins?  And what if you’re otherwise pretty healthy?

“People who imbibed spirits daily had more than three times the risk of liver cancer, more than twice the risk of pancreatic cancer, and a 66% risk of rectal cancer... Moderate Wine drinkers had elevated odds of rectal and bladder cancer.“

Meaning:  if you like port, which is nothing more than wine infused with spirits, you can kiss your rectum goodbye.

“’For the most part we showed that light drinkers were less affected or not affected at all,’ lead author Andrea Benedetti, a researcher at McGill University in Montreal, said in a statement. “It is people who drink every day or multiple times a day who are at risk’…  Benedetti noted that ingested alcohol breaks down into acetaldehyde, a known carcinogen that interferes with DNA repair. ”

Well…sh*t.  That made me pour out my whiskey.