"Can Alcohol Cause Cancer?"
We’ve known about the possible association
between the consumption of alcohol
with excessive mortality from cancer
for more than a hundred years.
Though the evidence is accumulating that alcohol drinking
is also associated with pancreatic cancer, prostate cancer, and melanoma,
we’re pretty certain that alcohol increases
risk of mouth cancer, throat cancer, esophageal cancer, colorectal cancer,
liver cancer, voice box cancer, and breast cancer.
Current estimates suggest that alcohol
causes about 5.8% of all cancer deaths
in these organs worldwide.
Here's how that breaks down for men and women.
In men, alcohol causes mostly head and neck cancers,
and gastrointestinal cancers,
whereas it’s mostly breast cancer in women.
Alcohol appears to cause more than 100,000 cases
of breast cancer every year.
Yeah, but is that just among heavy drinkers?
No, all levels of evidence show a risk relationship
between alcohol consumption and the risk of breast cancer,
even at low levels of consumption.
Now, eating a healthy diet may help
modulate that risk.
Yeah, alcohol increases the risk of breast cancer,
but a fiber-rich diet may have the opposite effect.
And so, eating more whole plant foods
may be able to ease the adverse effects of alcohol.
Alcohol has been shown to increase
sex hormone levels, like estrogen,
which may increase breast cancer risk,
but you see the opposite happening
eating fiber-rich foods.
Fiber appears to bind estrogen
in the colon and help flush it out of the body.
But, even so, there does not appear
to be any level of alcohol consumption
that is completely safe from a cancer standpoint.
So, that’s why you see commentaries like this
in the medical literature, exclamation point and all,
that consumption of an addictive carcinogen
cannot be considered a healthy lifestyle choice.
Thus, the final message on alcohol
should be clear: it is toxic,
carcinogenic, birth defect causing,
and potentially addictive.
By arguing otherwise, scientists can give
the alcohol lobby and advertisers
the opportunity to manipulate the scientific evidence
to place profits over public health.
They do this through denying the evidence,
distorting the evidence,
and trying to distract the public’s attention.
The alcohol industry, Big Booze,
appears to be engaged in the same kind
of extensive misrepresentation
of the evidence for which Big Tobacco is best known.
Yet, they are able to maintain this illusion of righteousness.
Alcohol, tobacco, and junk food companies
increasingly seek to present themselves
as objective providers of health information about their products,
but health information should come
from health authorities,
not the 21st century’s most successful drug peddlers.
Alcohol industries profit hugely
from this disconnect, though,
and sometimes even appropriate the cause
of cancer prevention in order to promote
their carcinogenic product.
Case in point: Mike’s Hard Pink Lemonade.
“Join The Fight Drink Pink” carcinogens,
associating the creation of their pink-ribboned alcohol
with the death of one of its employees
from breast cancer.
Ironically, contributing to risk in the name of prevention.
Who, after all, can forget Kentucky Fried Chicken’s
buckets for the cure campaign?
Cancer risk is one of the things
the alcohol industry won’t tell you.
But why doesn't your doctor tell you?
There’s relatively little public awareness of the link,
and the medical community
has largely remained silent.
The medical profession may be getting more hip
to corporate conflicts of interest in general,
but why are we ignoring the alcohol industry?
In other words, why is alcohol cancer’s best kept secret?
Maybe, it’s because the doctors
are drinkers themselves;
and so, they want to remain in denial
over the whole thing.
Not only do most doctors drink,
a significant proportion admit to drinking
while on call
and report encountering fellow physicians
who were on call while apparently impaired.
Even though most doctors felt
they had an obligation to tell their patients
should such a situation arise,
guess how many actually do?
Only 12% reported that they inform
their patients they’ve been drinking.
The industry has identified the alcohol-causes-cancer message
as a considerable threat.
They have a “vested interest in maintaining
the status quo of relative ignorance, uncertainty, and denial
among the general population
and their trusted health advisers.
In the face of this, it is time
that health professionals set aside
any leanings that might stem from their own drinking…
and convey unreservedly to their patients
and the communities they serve
that alcohol-causes-cancer.”