News: Even a Little Alcohol May Raise Cancer .. The New York Times Behind the headlines NLM

Ashton also noted though that the data is “crystal clear” that abstaining completely from alcohol is best for a person’s overall health. Previous research has already shown that just as women metabolize alcohol differently than men, they also face more serious health consequences. For women, a moderate alcohol intake per week is defined as seven servings of alcohol or less. For men, it is 14 servings of alcohol or less per week, according to the U.S.

• The technical committee, whose members have not been publicly disclosed, was tasked with combing through the research literature and summarizing the findings of the scientific review panel.
• All of the papers included in the review were case-control studies or cohort studies — observational studies with “considerable” limitations, the authors note.
• Predictably, the alcoholic beverage industry opposes more restrictive guidelines.
• Talk to a healthcare provider if you have concerns about your alcohol consumption or a history of addiction or dependence.
• “When you talk about risk versus benefit, it’s one thing to say there is no benefit,” said Dr. Jennifer Ashton, a board-certified OB-GYN and ABC News chief medical correspondent, who was not involved in the research.

STAT Plus: First of two major reports on alcohol finds moderate drinking tied to lower mortality

The standard drink in the U.S. has about 14 grams of pure alcohol in it, equal to a 12-oz. Bottle of 5% ABV beer or a five-ounce glass of 12% ABV wine, or 1.5 ounces of 40% ABV liquor. If confirmed as health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will have the power to shape the guidelines against the foods he often criticizes, including ultra-processed snacks, sugary drinks and seed oils. He is in long-term recovery from alcohol and drugs, but hasn’t taken a clear stance on alcohol policy.

Reviews

At two drinks per week, that risk went up to 6.1 per 1,000 people (5.2 for women). Consuming one drink daily equaled a lifetime risk of 8.2 per 1,000 for men and 19.5 per 1,000 people for women. At three drinks per day, those risks increased to 22.6 per 1,000 for men and 66.9 per 1,000 for women.

All of the papers included in the review were case-control studies or cohort studies — observational studies with “considerable” limitations, the authors note. Their selection of papers did not include reviews on the relationship between alcohol and HIV, sexually transmitted diseases, depression or cervical cancer. The included research may also compare people who drink to those who abstain for health reasons, and would not include those who died or became disabled from alcohol-driven problems when they were younger. We cannot conclusively prove that moderate alcohol consumption is totally benign, much less beneficial. Based on the data we have, it also seems extremely unlikely that moderate alcohol consumption is fully “bad” for your health. This complication of long-term heavy drinking causes scarring of the liver.

Another federal report on alcohol finds even moderate drinking carries risks

However, subsequent analyses to determine causality of the effect have called those findings into question, the ICCPUD report notes. While some public health advocates celebrated the new report, the alcohol industry came out against it on Tuesday, saying it should not be factored into dietary guidelines. A public comment period on the two reports will begin Wednesday and end on Feb. 14. Rimm would like more studies on what constitutes healthy drinking patterns. But for many cancers, the story is different, Rimm says; drinking even modest amounts raises the risks of breast, colon, and esophageal cancer. Doctors may advise people at particular risk for breast cancer, for example, to limit their drinking, he adds.

The average number of deaths per year from excessive alcohol use increased 29% between 2017 and 2021. Studies suggest alcohol consumption and related harms only worsened during the pandemic. In the past, some research has suggested some alcohol use may have a protective even a little alcohol can harm your health, research shows the new york times effect against heart disease, diabetes, stroke, kidney cancer and thyroid cancer.

Mukamal notes that ethics committees from the four study sites and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, which was coordinating the project, all granted their approval. A number of experts have recommended revision of the guidelines toward lower amounts, as more studies have linked even moderate alcohol consumption to health risks. Predictably, the alcoholic beverage industry opposes more restrictive guidelines. A new federal report on alcohol’s health effects has found even moderate drinking — within the bounds of U.S. nutrition guidance — could carry health risks, including injuries, liver disease and cancer.

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In 2018, The Lancet published a comprehensive study on the link between alcohol consumption and cancer, heart disease, and other illnesses. It is an extraordinary work of scholarship, combining hundreds of previous papers. And the results indicate an upward trend in cancer, in particular, as alcohol consumption increases. But the effects at moderate levels of drinking—say, one to two drinks a day—are very small. For heart disease, we see the familiar decrease in risk at moderate drinking levels, and an increase with higher amounts.

The lead agency typically has a strong say; a 2020 recommendation to lower drinking thresholds for men to one drink per day was rejected by the government. Large alcohol firms have an acute interest in the dietary guidelines outcome, and how it shapes public perception of drinking. Major alcohol companies have spent millions lobbying lawmakers and other federal officials about the guidelines since 2022.

Research has found an increased prevalence of AUD and heavy drinking, primarily among women. Talk to a healthcare provider if you have concerns about your alcohol consumption or a history of addiction or dependence. It’s fitting at this time of year, when many abstain from beer and wine for “Dry January,” to consider the shifting public conversation about drinking alcohol. The World Health Organization, for example, warns that even small amounts of alcohol can be harmful to health. The NASEM report also echoed a connection other studies have made between even moderate drinking and the risk of breast cancer.

The risk of those potential harms, and of dying from alcohol-related causes, increases the more a person consumes, according to the study by the Interagency Coordinating Committee for the Prevention of Underage Drinking. You can expect to hear about more research, debate, and controversy in the near future regarding the potential risks and benefits of drinking, and how much — if any — is ideal. Alcohol can act as a social lubricant and provide “liquid courage” for people who are anxious or shy, but it can be harmful to rely on it too much.

Overall, the report confirmed the link between alcohol use and seven cancers, and said risk starts to increase “with any alcohol use” and goes up from there as drinking becomes heavier. Women have a higher risk of alcohol-attributable cancers per drink, the study found. The researchers analyzed “lifetime cancer risk,” meaning the number of people out of 1,000 who would be expected to develop an alcohol-attributable cancer at any point in their life. For men, at one drink per week, the lifetime risk was 5.6 per 1,000 people.

• Adolescents are more susceptible to brain damage from alcohol use than adults.
• Others soon cast doubt on the possibility that red wine could really have any causal relationship with longevity.
• Two researchers from Harvard’s School of Public Health and Medical School argue that this dire messaging—that no amount of alcohol is safe—oversimplifies the existing knowledge about alcohol consumption.
• Heavy drinking alters nerve cells and makes them smaller than normal, which can have severe, lasting effects on your brain.

I should also stress that the data are fundamentally flawed because the largest, most commonly cited studies we have are observational, not randomized. And the characteristics of people who consume alcohol in moderation are different from those who do not. In a 1991 segment on 60 Minutes, a French researcher claimed that red-wine consumption was responsible for good health in France. This argument proved popular with the wine-consuming public, and prompted academic papers positing an inverse relationship between red-wine consumption and cardiovascular disease.

NEJM and public health group are launching rival to CDC’s MMWR publication

“Associations of alcohol with cancer risk are likely linear and not J-shaped,” the report’s authors wrote. The NASEM committee was called out by watchdogs for including researchers with ties to the alcohol industry. In a letter earlier this year to George Koob, director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 25 members of Congress outlined concerns about the ICCPUD study. Alcohol policy experts slammed the letter as an intrusion into the scientific process, and asked whether the alcohol industry was behind it. A new study of millions of South Koreans found mild to moderate alcohol consumption lowered dementia risk, but there are caveats — and other health risks to consider.

These limitations make it hard to know how much to rely on studies that find health risks (or benefits) to alcohol consumption. In a study published in 2018, people who regularly had 10 or more drinks per week had one to two years shorter life expectancies than those who had fewer than five drinks. That number increased to four or five years shorter for people who had 18 drinks or more per week. The researchers linked alcohol consumption to various types of cardiovascular problems, including stroke. Even low levels of drinking can harm your health, and high levels have even worse effects. Drinking in moderation is defined as one or fewer drinks per day for females and two or fewer drinks per day for males.