The paper, which will be used to inform the new 2025 Dietary Guidelines, found that moderate drinkers have a lower risk of premature death from heart attack and stroke than people who don’t drink at all. Still, the studies are comprehensive, significant, and have informed many of the physicians who say alcohol is a serious health concern. That report, published in The Lancet, concluded that there is no safe level of alcohol consumption when it comes to cancer. The third significant study that Murthy highlighted was a 2018 global systematic analysis looking at alcohol-related deaths in 195 countries over the course of 26 years. There is also robust evidence that alcohol can drive inflammation, which is linked to cancer. There are four ways alcohol causes cancer, Murthy said, citing a 2021 Nutrients study.
Isn’t Moderate Drinking Good for My Heart?
Doctors can ask adult patients about their step 1 a a. why the 12-step journey begins with powerlessness alcohol use and offer behavioral counseling to those who drink excessively. Talk with your doctor if you have concerns about your drinking. There are several other modifiable risk factors that researchers found are linked to more than 40% of all cancer fatalities, including smoking, excess body weight, physical inactivity and diet.
With the immune system being compromised, alcohol consumption can exacerbate damage from viral infections such as hepatitis C virus, which is common among chronic alcoholic liver disease patients . However, some of the associations among alcohol drinking premenopausal women were limited to those taking oral contraceptives . DHEAS is metabolised to oestrogen by aromatase, the activity of which is also increased in chronic alcohol consumers .
3. Colorectal Cancer
Alcohol consumption may play a preventive role in the development of thyroid cancer by reducing thyroid-stimulating hormone levels . This heightened risk can be attributed to alcohol’s impact on the mammary gland, including elevating estrogen and insulin-like growth factor concentrations, altering structural development, and stimulating cell proliferation . Notably, this risk was prominently observed in Asians (RR, 1.49; 95% CI, 1.12 to 1.98) , potentially due to genetic variations in ethanol metabolism . From 2019 to 2020, the drinking rate of adults aged 19 and older in Korea was 74.8%, higher than the global average drinking rate of 43% (≥15 years) 29,30. The 2021 Korean National Cancer Prevention Awareness and Practice Survey showed that the guideline to “avoid alcohol consumption” was challenging for many respondents .
In addition, Choi et al. reported that light alcohol consumption slightly increased the incidence of colorectal cancer in males. Furthermore, female generally had lower risks of all cancer types than male. However, the impact of light alcohol consumption varied across cancer types.
- But alcohol use also increases the risk of several types of cancer – a reality that isn’t as well known by the public.
- A study published in 2023 found widespread mistaken beliefs that the risk varies by beverage type, with the lowest cancer risk assigned to wine.
- On a state level, the analysis found Washington, D.C., had the highest alcohol-related mortality rate across both sexes, while Utah had the lowest.
- We have only covered carcinogenesis in this review, but alcohol likely alters, through these pathways and others, other functions in the body which render it more susceptible to other diseases and injuries, as discussed in other articles in this Special Issue.
- Theories suggest that for certain people drinking has a different and stronger impact that can lead to alcohol use disorder.
The curves shown here were obtained by fitting certain statistical models to the data from several studies (i.e., a meta-analysis). A RR among the people with the variable (e.g., drinkers) of greater than 1.0 indicates that the variable increases the risk for the disease. The RR describes the strength of the relationship between a variable (e.g., alcohol consumption) and a disease (e.g., cancer). Moreover, a recent study suggests that the association may be limited to women with a family history of breast cancer (Vachon et al. 2001).
The authors stressed that improving public awareness through education campaigns and warning labels could help reduce alcohol-related cancers nationwide. Lack of knowledge was more common among those with less education, current smokers, and people who believed cancer is not preventable. The risks were even greater among older adults with existing health problems (like frailty, diabetes, or high blood pressure) or those with lower socioeconomic status, such as lower income or limited access to healthcare.
Interestingly, there is evidence that higher folate intake among alcohol drinkers may attenuate the increased risk of liver cancer mortality compared with those with low folate intake . An MR analysis by Ong and colleagues found no significant increase in breast cancer risk per genetically predicted drink per day (odds ratio 1.00 (95% CI 0.93–1.08)) . Many observational studies have been conducted to identify and define the risks from drinking alcohol and cancer development. The association between alcohol drinking and risk of other cancer types has been studied but without sufficient evidence to be classified in the IARC monographs or WCRF Continuous Update Project.
Risks Associated with Different Types of Alcoholic Beverages
Theories suggest that for certain people drinking has a different and stronger impact that can lead to alcohol use disorder. Here, over 200 million people in the Region are at risk of developing alcohol-attributable cancer. It doesn’t matter how much you drink – the risk to the drinker’s health starts from the first drop of any alcoholic beverage. In the EU, cancer is the leading cause of death – with a steadily increasing incidence rate – and the majority of all alcohol-attributable deaths are due to different types of cancers.
9. Confirming the Causal Relation Reported in Observational Studies
Early intervention can prevent alcohol-related problems in Being drunk fandom teens. Too much alcohol affects your speech, muscle coordination and vital centers of your brain. But as you continue to drink, you become drowsy and have less control over your actions.
There are several medications for alcohol use disorder that are approved by the FDA to help reduce drinking, and there are some that are used off label. Many patients aren’t aware of the cancer link when they start to make decisions about their alcohol consumption. An estimated 20,000 U.S. cancer deaths a year can be attributed to alcohol use, mostly among men, a 2024 study says.
4. Disruption to One-Carbon Metabolism and Folate Absorption
The Global alcohol action plan 2022–2030, endorsed by WHO Member States, aims to reduce the harmful use of alcohol through effective, evidence-based strategies at national, regional and global levels. Alcoholic beverages are classified as carcinogenic by the International Agency for Research on Cancer and increase the risk of several cancer types. In this context, it is easy to overlook or discount the health and social damage caused or contributed to by drinking.
This means that when alcohol is administered together with other known cancer-inducing agents (i.e., carcinogens), it promotes or accelerates cancer development. Nevertheless, the mechanisms underlying alcohol-related cancer development remain largely unclear. When they excluded such studies from the analysis and considered only studies reporting estimates adjusted for tobacco use, however, the pooled RR declined to 1.07. Such analyses were conducted for most cancers of the upper airways and digestive tract, as well as for lung and bladder cancer. The number of individual Drinking and Bruising studies does not add up to the total shown because several studies examined more than one type of cancer.
That usually means four or more drinks within two hours for women and five or more drinks within two hours for men. After more analysis of the research, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Health agencies outside the U.S. may define one drink differently. Knowing your personal risk based on your habits can help you make the best decision for you.
In addition, heavy episodic alcohol use might reduce the immune system’s defence against infection by disrupting the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines and increasing the expression of anti-inflammatory cytokines . Additionally, alcohol may suppress T cell immune responses therefore decreasing the anti-tumour regulation of the immune system. Alcohol increases CYP2E1 activity (Section 3.2) which also functions to metabolise retinoic acid resulting in the production of toxic metabolites . Alcohol can alter retinoid metabolism by inhibiting the oxidation of vitamin A to retinoic acid .
In the past, moderate drinking was thought to be linked with a lower risk of dying from heart disease and possibly diabetes. And drinking raises the risk of problems in the digestive system. As consumption goes up, the risk goes up for these cancers. In the United States, moderate drinking for healthy adults is different for men and women. Moderate alcohol use may not mean the same thing in research studies or among health agencies. The evidence for moderate alcohol use in healthy adults is still being studied.
- They compared the cancer risk of heavy drinkers with that of occasional drinkers and nondrinkers.
- It estimates that alcohol contributes to nearly 100,000 cancer cases and about 20,000 cancer deaths annually.
- Alcohol consumption may play a preventive role in the development of thyroid cancer by reducing thyroid-stimulating hormone levels .
- A total of 139 papers were included in the systematic review, and 106 papers were included in the subsequent meta-analysis.
- Another study published in JAMA Network Open in 2023 looked at how alcohol-related deaths have changed in the United States from 1999 to 2020.
13 Using national CDC data, they found that over 605,000 alcohol-related deaths occurred in those 21 years. Another study published in JAMA Network Open in 2023 looked at how alcohol-related deaths have changed in the United States from 1999 to 2020. Overall, the researchers concluded that there is no safe level of alcohol for longevity or health. Patients with cancer who abuse alcohol do worse because alcohol causes poorer nutrition, a suppressed immune system, and a weaker heart.2
And just as with smoking, there’s evidence that reducing or stopping your alcohol consumption now can reduce your risk of cancer later. What would be your advice to a patient who drinks alcohol who is concerned about the risk of cancer or other health problems? The cancer risk from alcohol is a byproduct of the metabolism of the alcohol molecule. There’s no minimum amount of alcohol that’s considered totally safe from a cancer prevention standpoint, but the cancer risk is proportional to the amount of alcohol you drink.
“Even within the current guideline limits of one drink a day for women, two drinks a day for men, we actually see increased cancer risk, even consuming at those levels,” Murthy said. For female breast cancer, the meta-analysis described here confirms the existence of a strong dose-risk relationship between alcohol consumption level and breast cancer risk. This analysis found that alcohol consumption of at least 50 grams (i.e., 4 standard drinks) per day significantly increased the risk of developing any type of cancer. To estimate the effect of alcohol consumption on the risk for each type of cancer studied, based on the pooled data from all studies included in the meta-analysis, the investigators used meta-regression models—statistical models developed specifically for such analyses (Corrao et al. 1999, 2000). This meta-analysis found that alcohol most strongly increased the risks for cancers of the oral cavity, pharynx, esophagus, and larynx. The analysis found that heavy drinkers (drinking more than 3.5 drinks per day) in comparison to non-drinkers and occasional drinkers, increased the risk of raises the risk of the mouth and pharynx, larynx, esophagus, female breast, colorectum, and liver.
Inflammation is a key pathway to cancer progression at several sites and is enhanced by alcohol use. Linhart and colleagues were able to demonstrate correlation between the amount of CYP2E1 and etheno-DNA adducts in cell, animal, and human tissue models, and highlighted their major importance in ethanol-mediated carcinogenesis in the liver, colorectum, and oesophagus, as well as other tissues . In carriers of this polymorphism, acetaldehyde is not metabolised quickly enough, leading to an accumulation of acetaldehyde and thus the prolonged possibility to exert its described genotoxic effects. Once consumed, alcohol is metabolised by enzymes including alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH), cytochrome P-450 2E1 (CYP2E1) and bacterial catalase, producing acetaldehyde .