"Preventing Skin Cancer From the Inside Out"
More than a million new cases of skin cancer
are diagnosed every year,
affecting about 1 in 3 Americans within their lifetimes.
The chief risk factor is UV exposure from the sun,
but alcohol consumption may also play a role.
Most of the cancers associated with alcohol use
are in the digestive tract, though,
from mouth cancer, throat cancer,
stomach cancer down to liver and colon cancer;
tissues alcohol comes in more direct contact with.
Why skin cancer?
Well, a study of 300,000 Americans
found that excessive drinking was associated
with higher rates of sunburn.
It may be that heavy and binge drinking are markers
for an underlying willingness to disregard health risks
and pass out on the beach,
but maybe it’s because breakdown products of alcohol in the body
generate such massive numbers of free radicals
that they eat up the antioxidants
that protect our skin from the sun.
Plants produce their own built-in protection
against the oxidative damage of the sun,
and we can expropriate these built-in protectors
by eating those plants to function as cell protectors
within our own body.
One might say fruit and vegetables provide the best polypharmacy,
the best drug store against the development of cancer.
The ingestion of plant foods increases
the antioxidant potential of our bloodstream,
which can then be deposited in our tissues and protect us
against the damaging effects of the sun’s rays,
but only recently was it put to the test.
If you take 20 women, and burn their butts
with a UV lamp before and after half of them ate
three tablespoons of tomato paste a day for three months,
(well, half of them did, half of them did not),
there was significantly less DNA damage
in the derrieres of those who had been eating the tomatoes.
So three months before bikini season,
or even just ten weeks,
if we eat lots of antioxidant- rich food like tomato sauce,
we may reduce the redness of the skin burn 40%.
It’s like you have built-in sunscreen within your skin.
Now this isn’t as good as a high SPF sunblock,
but much of the UV exposure over a life time occurs
when the skin is not protected;
thus, the use of dietary factors
with sun-protecting properties
might have a substantial beneficial effect.
But it works both ways.
Alcohol consumption decreases the protection within our skin.
If you have people drink about three shots of vodka,
within 8 minutes— not 10 weeks - 8 minutes,
the level of carotenoid antioxidants in their skin
drops dramatically.
If, however, you drink the same amount of vodka in orange juice,
there’s still a drop in skin antioxidants
compared to the initial value,
but drinking a screwdriver is not as bad as drinking vodka straight.
Is the difference enough
to make a difference out in the sun, though?
After the drinks, they exposed the volunteers to a UV lamp
and waited to see how long it would take them to burn.
The time span until they started turning red
was significantly shorter after alcohol consumption,
than in the experiments where either no alcohol was consumed
or alcohol was consumed in combination with orange juice.
That's like an extra half hour out in the sun
based solely on what you put in your mouth before heading to the beach.
And oranges are pretty wimpy. Not as bad as bananas,
but berries are the best.
The researchers conclude, that people should be aware
of the fact that the consumption of alcohol
in combination with sun exposure or a tanning booth
increases their risk of sunburn and therefore
their risk of developing premature skin aging
and even skin cancer.
If the consumption of alcohol cannot be avoided,
like if someone’s holding you down or something,
then you should make sure that you have sunblock
or at least like do a strawberry daiquiri
or something in order to reduce oxidative damage.