The US Surgeon General proposed Friday adding a label to bottles of alcoholic beverages warning of the cancer risks associated with their consumption, but how big is the risk and which cancers are most linked to alcohol consumption?
According to the advisory, fewer than half of Americans know about the cancer risks of drinking alcohol.
Alcohol is a leading cause of cancer, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said in his opinion, released as research and evidence mounts on the harmful effects of alcohol on human health.
Moderate alcohol consumption was once thought to have beneficial effects on the heart, but better research methods have thrown cold water on that.
Here’s what you need to know:
Alcohol consumption increases the risk of several types of cancer, including colon, liver, breast, mouth and throat.
The seven cancers most linked to alcohol consumption are: mouth, throat, voice box, esophagus, liver, breast, colon and rectum, according to the National Cancer Institute.
According to Murthy’s opinion, there are approximately 100,000 alcohol-related cancer cases and approximately 20,000 alcohol-related cancer deaths each year in the United States.
“When thinking about whether or how much to drink, keep in mind that less is more when it comes to cancer risk,” Murthy wrote on social media platform X on Friday.
“In addition, data on alcohol and health in humans show a strong association between alcohol consumption and increased cancer risk, regardless of the type of alcohol,” the advisory said.
According to the opinion, studies have found four possible ways that alcohol consumption can lead to cancer, although research is still underway on some of them.
The two main methods include:
Other avenues that are still being studied:
The idea that moderate drinking has health benefits comes from flawed studies comparing groups of people based on how much they drank. Usually this was measured at some point. And none of the studies randomly assigned people to drink or not drink, so they couldn’t prove cause and effect.
People who report moderate drinking tend to have higher education levels, higher incomes and better access to health care, said Dr. Timothy Naimi, who directs the Canadian Institute for Research on Use. of substances at the University of Victoria in British Columbia.
“It turns out that when you adapt to these things, the benefits tend to disappear,” he said.
Another problem: most studies do not include young people. Nearly half of people who die from alcohol-related causes die before the age of 50.
“If you study people who survived to middle age, who didn’t stop drinking because of a problem, and who didn’t become heavy drinkers, that’s a very small group ” Naimi said. “This gives the impression of an advantage for moderate drinkers, which is actually just a statistical illusion.”
Other studies challenge the idea that alcohol has any benefits. These studies compare people with a genetic variant that makes the drink unpleasant for people without the genetic variant. People with this variant tend to drink very little, if at all. One such study found that people with the genetic variant had a lower risk of heart disease – another blow to the idea that alcohol protects people from heart problems.
Thousands of deaths each year in the United States could be avoided if people followed government dietary guidelines, Naimi said.
These guidelines advise men to limit themselves to two drinks or less per day and women to one drink or less per day. One drink is approximately the equivalent of a 12-ounce can of beer, a 5-ounce glass of wine, or a shot of liquor.
But guidelines vary greatly from country to country. However, the general trend is to drink less.
The United Kingdom, France, Denmark, the Netherlands and Australia have recently reviewed new evidence and lowered their alcohol consumption recommendations. Ireland will require cancer warning labels on alcohol from 2026.
“The scientific consensus has changed because of the overwhelming evidence linking alcohol to more than 200 health problems, including cancers, cardiovascular disease and injuries,” said Carina Ferreira-Borges, regional alcohol advisor at the bureau regional office of the World Health Organization for Europe.
Naimi served on an advisory committee that wanted to lower the U.S. recommendation for men to one drink a day. This advice was taken into account and rejected when the federal recommendations were published in 2020.
“The simple message that is best supported by the evidence is that if you drink, less is better when it comes to health,” Naimi said.
Bottles of beer, wine and liquor already carry warning labels indicating that pregnant women should not drink and that alcohol consumption may impair the ability to drive a vehicle. But Murthy’s proposed label would go even further, also raising awareness about the risk of cancer.
Even with the Surgeon General’s advisory and new research that shows the dangers of alcohol consumption, it is unlikely that Congress will move quickly to enact a new Surgeon General warning on alcohol products.
It’s been nearly four decades since Congress approved the first government alcohol warning label, the one that told pregnant women not to drink and warned of the dangers of driving drunk. No updates have been made since.
Before that, Congress approved a label on cigarettes warning users that smoking is dangerous to your health, a move that would have helped America significantly reduce its bad habits.
Any effort to add a cancer warning label to alcohol would face significant retaliation from a powerful and well-funded beverage industry, which spends nearly $30 million each year to lobby on Congress.
Just a few weeks ago, the federal government decided to change existing dietary guidelines regarding alcohol. Current guidelines recommend women drink one drink or less per day, while men drink two or fewer.
NBC Chicago
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