Is your alcohol consumption healthy? 3 charts illustrate the link between alcohol and cancer, heart disease and more.

In one of his final acts as America’s surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy demanded that alcohol products carry a label warning that they can cause cancer. His office also released a report detailing how carcinogenic alcohol can be, estimating that more than 741,000 cases of cancer worldwide in 2020 were attributable to alcohol.

In truth, it is not news that alcohol can cause or increase the risk of cancer. It’s also not news that alcohol consumption is linked to all sorts of other health problems, including brain damage and liver disease. But even amid a broader shift away from drinking culture and sober living, moderate drinking (particularly of red wine) continues to be seen by many as healthy for the body. heart. The World Health Organization (WHO), however, has stated that no amount of alcohol is safe.

So what really is the connection between alcohol and health, especially when it comes to cancer and heart disease? These charts break down this complex connection, while experts recommend simple ways to make your drinking habits healthier.

Alcohol and cancer

First, a word on cause versus risk. At the cellular level, alcohol is carcinogenic because of the way it damages cells. When it comes to a person as a whole, alcohol is one of many factors – which also include smoking, genetics, diet and environmental exposures – that contribute to cancer risks. It is therefore unlikely that alcohol alone is the reason why a person develops cancer.

On the other hand, 5.4% of all cancers in the United States are attributable to alcohol (meaning alcohol likely explains the difference between a person getting the disease or not), according to the report 2024 from the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). Alcohol is unequivocally linked to increased risks of six types of cancer: head and neck, esophageal, colorectal, liver, stomach and breast cancer in women.

But how much alcohol does it take to significantly put a person at risk for these diseases? “As the surgeon general’s report points out, even at low levels (of alcohol consumption), there is a slightly increased risk of cancer,” said Dr. Michael Pignone, a professor of primary care at Duke University and member of the AACR 2024 Report Steering Committee. , tells Yahoo Life. That said, Pignone is less concerned about the risks of someone drinking one or two drinks a day: “Frankly, it doesn’t matter much,” he says. “What worries me is people who drink four or five drinks a day and don’t realize that this can lead to cancer risks or other health consequences.”

According to the surgeon general’s report at the time, a woman who drinks two drinks a day has a nearly 22 percent risk of developing alcohol-related cancer, compared to a 16.5 percent risk for a woman who drinks. less than one drink per week. For men, the risk increases from 10% (with less than one drink per week) to more than 13% (with two drinks per day). Not drinking at all won’t reduce your risks to zero, but drinking any amount will increase your risks to some extent.

You may also want to consider other risk factors, such as a family history of alcohol-related cancers, including breast or colorectal cancer. “If you’re very worried about cancer, you may want to take that into account when deciding whether to drink alcohol,” says Pignone.

Alcohol and heart disease

You’ve probably heard or read a lot about the purported cardiovascular benefits of red wine. This is sometimes called the “French paradox”. France has low rates of heart disease, even though most people eat diets high in saturated fat and cholesterol, which contribute to cardiovascular problems. Some scientists have hypothesized that the habit of drinking red wine may have protective effects because it has anti-inflammatory properties. But this claim – as well as the studies that support it – is somewhat misleading.

The hypothesis has what scientists call “biological plausibility” – meaning we know alcohol can do things that, in theory, help protect heart health – but the evidence is “mixed”, said to Yahoo Life Priscilla Martinez, deputy scientific director of the Alcohol Research Group. Real research suggests that red wine has anti-inflammatory effects. But alcohol consumption can also contribute to worsening high blood pressure, a key risk factor for heart disease.

The conflicting effects of alcohol could explain why studies on the link between heart health and alcohol often show a J-shaped curve. In other words, people who drink alcohol have lower more likely to die from heart disease than non-drinkers – to the point where those who drink more than a certain number of alcoholic drinks per week are at significantly higher risk than those who abstain.

But, Martinez notes, “sometimes we see a J-shaped curve, and sometimes we don’t,” when studying this relationship. And the relationship between alcohol consumption (and red wine consumption in particular) and heart health might actually not be about alcohol at all. Researchers noted that people who drink moderately – defined as two or fewer drinks per day for men and one or less for women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) – may be more likely to have higher incomes and therefore have better nutrition and better access to health care. All of these factors can do more to protect their heart health than red wine ever could.

And ultimately, even though red wine or other forms of alcohol have slightly protective effects on the heart, “no one should ever start drinking it for health reasons,” Martinez says. “There is no benefit to starting to drink because you risk death or contracting diseases.”

Alcohol and the risk of death from any cause

Heart disease and cancer are the first and second leading causes of death in the United States, respectively, but alcohol can increase the chances of dying from many other illnesses and injuries. The risks of dying from any of these causes, from injuries caused by alcohol consumption or from liver cirrhosis, begin to increase with even one drink a day, according to a recent draft report from the Committee on Interagency Coordination for the Prevention of Underage Drinking (ICCPUD). “Our report indicates that no level of (alcohol) consumption is completely safe,” says Martinez, who contributed to the ICCPUD report. “Among drinkers, the lower your alcohol intake, the more likely you are to die or develop an alcohol-related illness,” she adds.

There is not much controversy about this: drinking a lot is more dangerous than drinking a little or not drinking at all. But the question of how much constitutes light, moderate, or heavy drinking is up for debate. Currently, the CDC defines “light” drinking as having 12 drinks in the past year, but no more than three per week on average. The agency says “occasional” drinking means drinking 11 or fewer drinks per year — but some experts think the CDC’s standards are too lax. Studies on the extent to which light or moderate drinking increases your risk of illness or death are much less consistent. “When you get to very low levels of (alcohol) consumption, the epidemiology becomes a little more difficult,” Pignone explains.

In fact, another report, released just weeks before the ICCPUD report, found that people who drank “moderately” (here, that is, one drink per day or less for women, two or less for men) less more likely to die from any cause than those who do not drink at all. This report still concluded that excessive alcohol consumption (five or more drinks per day or 15 or more drinks per week for men; four or more per day or eight or more for women) is linked to higher risks. of death, whatever the cause.

Takeaways

The impact of alcohol on your health is complex, but the experts’ advice is actually quite simple:

1. If you don’t drink, don’t start. Pignone and Martinez emphasize that there simply isn’t strong enough evidence of the benefits of alcohol to suggest that it’s worth starting to drink.

2. Be aware of the risks. “If you’re drinking small amounts of alcohol, you need to make an informed decision” about your habits, Pignone says. He notes that he drinks “less than one drink a day” and is not going to stop, because “that’s not where most of the excessive side effects are.” Martinez says she just wants people to be informed about the negative effects alcohol can have on their health, “so they can look at their behaviors and say, ‘Yes, I know what I’m doing.’

3. If you drink, take “sober and curious.” Although “not drinking is best for your health, drinking less is also a good thing,” says Martinez. Instead of thinking that changing your habits means depriving yourself of something enjoyable, try “adding non-drinking days to your weekly drinking schedule,” she advises. Keeping less alcohol at home and buying nice, non-alcoholic drinks on hand can make this easier.

4. Not sure if you’re drinking too much? Keep a journal. Pignone notes that many people drink at levels that can harm their health but do not meet criteria for an alcohol use disorder. If you think you’re regularly drinking more than what the CDC considers moderate, keep a journal of your habits. If you actually drink more than this, talk to your doctor or counselor. “The evidence-based screening questions we use to identify alcohol consumption basically ask whether you had four, five or more drinks in one sitting,” Pignone says.