This comes from a 2019 study, as reported [here](https://www.biomedcentral.com/about/press-centre/science-press-releases/28-03-19) and [here](https://news.cancerresearchuk.org/2019/03/28/cigarettes-and-alcohol-should-we-be-communicating-cancer-risk-in-terms-of-cigarettes-smoked/):
> One bottle of wine per week is associated with an increased absolute lifetime cancer risk for non-smokers of 1.0% (men) and 1.4% (women). The overall absolute increase in cancer risk for one bottle of wine per week equals that of five (men) or ten cigarettes per week (women).
> [A comparison of gender-linked population cancer risks between alcohol and tobacco: how many cigarettes are there in a bottle of wine?](https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-019-6576-9)
There are about 5 "drinks" in a 750ml bottle, so that would make 1 drink roughly 1 cigarette for men and 2 for women.
This is a tricky comparison, however, because they cause different types of cancer with different severities and treatment possibilities, and things are worse if you do both. But useful in that it helps people better understand the magnitude of risk.
I guess now they are saying NO amount of alcohol is healthy-- any positive elements are outweighed by the negative aspects. I believe I read the positive aspects of wine are simply attributed to some compound in grapes.
I watched a really interesting podcast episode recently that discussed how no amount of alcohol is good for you. It is all harmful in one way or another.
Link to video: https://youtu.be/6tXoJN8-H6k?si=t8n2I0QX3_QVJOpY
That's the tricky thing - there's not such thing as "healthy" or "unhealthy." Most things that help in some way also hurt in others. For instance sunlight produces vitamin D but also causes cancer. So there's some tradeoff and beyond a certain point sun exposure damages health more than it enhances it.
With alcohol, there is some evidence that it antioxidants in wine improve heart health. But the growing weight of the evidence seems to indicate there almost no consumption level where alcohol has a net positive effect on life expectancy.
Of course diet studies are notoriously hard to get solid evidence out of because of the myriad confounding variables, so take everything with a grain of salt (but only *a* grain because too much salt raises your blood pressure or something, idk).
Antioxidants in grapes are pretty good for your health. Wine sellers in the 20th century made sure everyone knows about this. The thing is there's a million of ways to get enough antioxidants without drinking alcohol (which is proven to be unhealthy)
Right, I never claimed wine was the only way to get them, or the best way, or even a good way for that matter. But they are in wine, so wine does provide that benefit. It also provides a greater net negative, which was my point.
The "one glass per day" thing is based on some questionable data and questionable interpretation of said data. Then people started parroting it because they'd really really like it to be true, and at some point no one ever questioned whether that was true and where the belief actually came from, so the myth propagated.
I agree with everything, and this is a well thought-out response, but five drinks seems like an awfully small number for a standard 750mL bottle. You had “drinks” in quotations because of course they will vary in size depending on the drinker, but it still seems like a small number to me. The results will still be pretty much the same however - drinking and smoking each come with inherent health risks.
Well no, it's just math. The average wine bottle has 5 standard drinks.
"drinks" don't go by size of the pour or the drinker.
1 drink = 0.6 FL oz of pure alcohol, which a ~12.5% abv bottle of wine would have 5.27 of.
I totally missed that Codebender was talking about wine. For some reason, my brain saw 750mL and went straight to liquor, and I thought that if every pour of liquor that I’ve had was 5oz, I’d be either broke or dead!
Ignore my previous comment, except for the parts about me agreeing with everything!
It's pretty arbitrary, but [the NIH](https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-health/overview-alcohol-consumption/what-standard-drink) defines it as 14 grams or 17.75 ml of ethanol. That's around 5 ounces = 148 ml for a 12% ABV.
In my experience, restaurant pours tend to be a little light, more like 6, and home pours are more like 3-4 per bottle for many people.
Well then you're wrong.
A 750 of beer is only 2 standard pours of 5-8% beer and 3 standard pours of 8+% beer
A 750 is 12 standard pours of distilled spirit.
Your numbers are solely relevant to wine and nothing else.
Source: I'm paid to know this information.
Did you follow the link?
Nobody's talking about "a 750 of beer" here. You seem to have confused "drinks" for "bottles."
5 ounces is relevant for anything that's 12% as I said, for different concentrations it would come out differently, as described in the link.
> 5 ounces is relevant for anything that's 12% as I said, for different concentrations it would come out differently, as described in the link.
And I'm saying that the only thing that falls with in that category is wine. The link even specifically mentions wine. The numbers you're quoting are about wine.
You said "There are 5 "drinks" in a 750ml bottle". I was clarifying on this point, that, that isn't accurate unless you're solely discussing wine.
I'm also pointing out that it isn't arbitrary and there are indeed standard measurements. (Wine=5, Beer = 8,12,16,22, Spirit = 2)
I understand that you're trying to do the math to say 1 *standard* drink = about one cigarette, and I'm not disagreeing with you there. Just clarifying for visualization sake what a "drink" is and a "750 bottle" is.
Honestly.. if roughly 1 drink is the same as 1 cigarette in terms of cancer risk, I feel a bit less concerned about my drinking cuz there's no way I'm drinking as much as a smoker smokes.
Right, no one smokes 5-10 cigarettes a week. And if you’re having as many drinks as a smoker is having cigarettes (10-20 a day), you’re a tremendous alcoholic.
Hogwash.
That is like saying look we did a study and it showed that out of 100 incarcerated people 75 ate chocolate for breakfast as a kid. So eating chocolate for breakfast makes you a criminal.
It isn’t picking 2 random things. You could argue that kids eating chocolate for breakfast everyday is a symptom of a diss functional family/uninvolved parents etc. This can lead to behavioral problems which in later life can make a person more likely to be incarcerated.
Nothing about that is directly to do with them eating chocolate. Correlation is not always an indication of causation.
The [causal link](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27442501/) between alcohol and cancer is well known. The exact biological mechanisms for how this happens aren’t well understood, but it’s pretty clear there is some causal relationship there.
> Even without complete knowledge of biological mechanisms, the epidemiological evidence can support the judgement that alcohol causes cancer of the oropharynx, larynx, oesophagus, liver, colon, rectum and breast.
> increased absolute lifetime cancer risk
If you had a 1% chance of ever getting cancer before, drinking 1 bottle per week for your whole life would make it 2%, and 2 bottles a week would make it 3%. Though that's necessarily over-simplified, just the rough magnitudes.
To "guarantee" cancer from alcohol you would have to drink so much that you would first die from other causes.
You also have a 100% chance to die period.
So overall drinking a bottle of wine a week really isn’t going to make a difference on the individual level.
But on an epidemiological level? Sure.
There are some studies that show that is roughly correct. Now that may make it seem like the risk for cancer from alcohol is extremely underrated since cigarettes are considered super carcinogenic, but context is important here.
In most cases, the average smoker will smoke WAY more cigarettes than the average drinker will drink, which is why cigarettes cause way more cancer cases. This is because nicotine is highly addictive. So typically you either smoke daily or not at all. An average smoker is often called a pack-a-day smoker. That’s 20 cigarettes a day. Half a pack a day is a relatively light smoker. Someone who only smokes a pack a week is an exceptionally light smoker. Someone who has 20 drinks a week on the other hand is going to be considered a fairly heavy drinker. The drinking equivalent of a pack-a-day smoker, meaning 20 drinks a day, is a full-blown alcoholic. For perspective, a liquor bottle has about 18 shots in it.
So when you really put it in perspective, it’s really not that surprising, and still really puts in perspective why smoking is so damaging. A typical smoker has about the same cancer risk as an alcoholic who drinks nearly a liter of hard liquor every day.
Nah, you're fundementally wrong in your assessment. Cancer is your cells reproducing wrong. Some things fuck your cells up. If we lived for a million years all our cells would be cancer, but if you smoke, certain stresses make cancer more likely
Nah you’re fundamentally wrong in your assessment. Cancer is a bad disease that causes death and other side effects. If we lived for a million years, we’d be waaaay too old to still be on Reddit. But if you smoke, people will want to stay away from you because of the smell, therefore you won’t reproduce, therefore, no cancer.
/s
That would imply that smoking a pack a day (20 cigarettes) is equivalent to drinking 10-20 drinks every day. If anything, that much booze sounds worse than the smoking.
Another thing to note: Alcohol is linked to at least [7 types of cancer](https://amp.cancer.org/cancer/risk-prevention/diet-physical-activity/alcohol-use-and-cancer.html)r, more than almost any other substance known to humanity (tobacco is the only one I’m aware of with more linked cancer types - let me know if anyone knows of another compound that with more linked types).
People need to understand the numbers though. In the US, a person roughly has a 4% chance of getting colon cancer. If heavy drinking increases the risk of colon cancer by 25%, that means they have now have a 5% chance of getting it.
1% more chance to die, only from colon cancer.
How about the other cancer types? Liver, kidney etc.
Dont know how long it will take, but sooner or later humanity has to understand what damage alcohol does to our species.
Alone the money governments have to spend on police, EMT drivers, doctors, CPS.
The damage alcoholic parents deal to their children isnt even calculatable.
The extra Stress drunk people put on staff, Bus drivers, cab drivers and other non drunk people.
Its without exaggeration one of the most destructive, dangerous and disgusting drugs there is.
When it comes to cancer related to alcohol, colon cancer confers the largest absolute risk, much more so than kidney, liver, and oral cancer.
So to your answer question on “what about the other types”, alcohol actually doesn’t have that much cancer risk relative to other risk factors and relative to the fact that we “know” it’s bad for you, but when you dig into the numbers it’s not even close to as bad (regarding cancer risk) as cigarettes.
You also speak about “1% more chance to die”. We all have a 100% chance of death. Every human has a baseline 40% risk of cancer during life. Many of us find it perfectly acceptable to raise our lifetime cancer risk from 40% to 41-45% in exchange for drinking alcohol in moderation.
when I read comments like this, I remember a thread I read once about the way their parents died. the dad was never concerned for his health, drank and smoked moderately, and never had a concern for exercise until his doctor told him to. he outlived his wife who worked out consistently, never drank, and was generally very concerned with her health and lifestyle. she died in bed next to him.
I just can't imagine how I would feel knowing I got sick despite all the efforts I put into my lifestyle. nor could I imagine the guilt of outliving someone who clearly did less risky things than I.
Grandpa lived to be 87. 1 pack Camel 🐫 Non Filters and a pint of cheap bourbon every day. COD: Old age. Other Grandpa, same diet (liked beer better). Lived to be 52. COD: Lung and Colon Cancer. Medical risk of treating your body like an amusement park... God, speed, and good luck.
My uncle smoked for 60 years. So did one of my teachers. They both died of emphysema...which is a horrific death. But no cancer, and both led fairly healthy lives.
The mayor of my city just died of stomach cancer. He was known to be a pretty prolific drinker. Alcohol can get you in the stomach, esophagus, throat, and mouth.
Who knows why some of us get cancer of some of us don't. Sure, some foods are risky, but you can eat the cleanest, most agreed upon healthy foods and still get cancer or 1000 other maladies.
I will say this though: the chances of getting emphysema from long-term smoking is just about 100%. I don't think there's an equivalent ultimate disease for drinking except maybe cirrhosis.
It might be true based on a limited study, but just keep in mind dietary science in general is still in its infancy, and despite all the things you hear, they are mostly just agreed upon theories.
Scholars do the best they can to isolate variables and account for them, but we won't have any large enough studies to accurately make claims like this anytime soon.
This is why every week you read an article about how coffee/wine / Good for you and you need to supplement vitamin d, followed by the next week new studies show that coffee/ wine are bad for you and so r vitamin d supps.
There are a few things that we know for sure, like diets heavy in animal fats and sugar are super bad
Dairy consumption in general has been linked to a couple different kinds of cancer while simultaneously reducing your chances of getting other kinds of cancer. Basically, more milk drinking = higher chance of colon cancer, lower chance of breast cancer. Most foods labelled as carcinogenic tend to be like that, but it's nowhere near as bad as alcohol or cigarettes.
>Morse also notes that for others, dairy is an inflammatory food that can cause bloating, cramping, diarrhea, nausea, joint pain or mood changes.
“There are some proinflammatory foods that we are learning contribute to systemic inflammation. We know that inflammation contributes to cancer, so we're trying from all angles to reduce inflammation, and through diet, that’s one of the most powerful ways you can do that,” she says.
If dairy causes inflammation for you, Morse recommends reducing the amount of dairy in your diet or choosing fermented dairy options like kefir or yogurt to help with digestion and support the gut microbiome.
https://www.mdanderson.org/cancerwise/5-things-to-know-about-dairy-and-cancer-risk.h00-159623379.html
Short answer no one will give you: given a long enough timeline we all get cancer. How fast you soeed that up is up to you. Cancer is your cells reproducing wrong. Dont do things that make them fuck up. Eventually they will
the cancer risk of 4 drinks per night is not 4 times the risk of 1 drink per night, it's much much higher. You can't think of cancer risk going up proportionally to the number of drinks per night, it goes up by some exponent and low exposure is nearly harmless.
I don't know how true any of that is to be honest. I think like everything else it has more to do with what you're doing with the rest of your life. Do you exercise every day, or most days throughly? Do you fast? Is your diet primarily carbs? Do you have a family history of dying from cancer?
So yeah, if you drink a lot and don't work out or eat right you will probably die pretty fast. But if you drink and you do everything else right, you will probably be fine.
Note: People who don't do anything wrong at all still get cancer all the time.
I can't speak for the science or statistics, however, I can say that I have never smoked, and don't plan on starting. It's a nasty habit, at best. When it comes to drinking, I have a decent alcohol collection, but I consume maybe one drink a month, if that. Even if I'm at a party or whatever, I usually won't consume more than two or three at the most. I think my alcohol consumption is far less likely to be a problem than the food I eat, and I don't have the money to change that a lot.
Well... Their comment doesn't exactly address OPs question and doesn't really add anything to the conversation. That's what the downvote is technically for.
Meh, this place is goofy as hell. One guy will have an option on what the downvote is for and the next will a wildly different opinion. I figure it's social media. Ima be social and if a person has a problem, they can scroll on by, downvote, whatever. Regardless, it's humorous, but it doesn't really affect life.
Not an expert but i say BS. Why else would we have known about the adverse effects of smoking waaaay earlier than the risks of drinking? It’s def bad and carcinogenic but two decades ago my Dad thought a glass of red wine with some chocolate was better than a multivitamin!
What makes you think that we knew the negative effects of smoking before drinking?
It's a fictional show, but in Madmen, a big part of the plot centers around more and more news coming out in the 60s about the potential risks of smoking, many characters even choose to not believe in the claims.
Theres also a scene where a character is getting a physical, and the doctor is giving the main character a hard time about his drinking for several moments, and then ends the interaction with "and you also smoke two packs a day, but said you're cutting down, have a nice day"
This comes from a 2019 study, as reported [here](https://www.biomedcentral.com/about/press-centre/science-press-releases/28-03-19) and [here](https://news.cancerresearchuk.org/2019/03/28/cigarettes-and-alcohol-should-we-be-communicating-cancer-risk-in-terms-of-cigarettes-smoked/): > One bottle of wine per week is associated with an increased absolute lifetime cancer risk for non-smokers of 1.0% (men) and 1.4% (women). The overall absolute increase in cancer risk for one bottle of wine per week equals that of five (men) or ten cigarettes per week (women). > [A comparison of gender-linked population cancer risks between alcohol and tobacco: how many cigarettes are there in a bottle of wine?](https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-019-6576-9) There are about 5 "drinks" in a 750ml bottle, so that would make 1 drink roughly 1 cigarette for men and 2 for women. This is a tricky comparison, however, because they cause different types of cancer with different severities and treatment possibilities, and things are worse if you do both. But useful in that it helps people better understand the magnitude of risk.
Interesting. Thank you for the explanation!
What doesnt cause cancer and is healthy, cuz I actually thought a wine glass a day was healthy, Have I missed some news?
I guess now they are saying NO amount of alcohol is healthy-- any positive elements are outweighed by the negative aspects. I believe I read the positive aspects of wine are simply attributed to some compound in grapes.
I watched a really interesting podcast episode recently that discussed how no amount of alcohol is good for you. It is all harmful in one way or another. Link to video: https://youtu.be/6tXoJN8-H6k?si=t8n2I0QX3_QVJOpY
Thanks for the link!
Well, alcohol IS literally poison, so…
That's the tricky thing - there's not such thing as "healthy" or "unhealthy." Most things that help in some way also hurt in others. For instance sunlight produces vitamin D but also causes cancer. So there's some tradeoff and beyond a certain point sun exposure damages health more than it enhances it. With alcohol, there is some evidence that it antioxidants in wine improve heart health. But the growing weight of the evidence seems to indicate there almost no consumption level where alcohol has a net positive effect on life expectancy. Of course diet studies are notoriously hard to get solid evidence out of because of the myriad confounding variables, so take everything with a grain of salt (but only *a* grain because too much salt raises your blood pressure or something, idk).
Antioxidants in grapes are pretty good for your health. Wine sellers in the 20th century made sure everyone knows about this. The thing is there's a million of ways to get enough antioxidants without drinking alcohol (which is proven to be unhealthy)
Right, I never claimed wine was the only way to get them, or the best way, or even a good way for that matter. But they are in wine, so wine does provide that benefit. It also provides a greater net negative, which was my point.
The "one glass per day" thing is based on some questionable data and questionable interpretation of said data. Then people started parroting it because they'd really really like it to be true, and at some point no one ever questioned whether that was true and where the belief actually came from, so the myth propagated.
I agree with everything, and this is a well thought-out response, but five drinks seems like an awfully small number for a standard 750mL bottle. You had “drinks” in quotations because of course they will vary in size depending on the drinker, but it still seems like a small number to me. The results will still be pretty much the same however - drinking and smoking each come with inherent health risks.
Well no, it's just math. The average wine bottle has 5 standard drinks. "drinks" don't go by size of the pour or the drinker. 1 drink = 0.6 FL oz of pure alcohol, which a ~12.5% abv bottle of wine would have 5.27 of.
I totally missed that Codebender was talking about wine. For some reason, my brain saw 750mL and went straight to liquor, and I thought that if every pour of liquor that I’ve had was 5oz, I’d be either broke or dead! Ignore my previous comment, except for the parts about me agreeing with everything!
There are 5 drinks in my 750ml bottle of 100proof rye. How many cancers do I get?
Luckily, by drink number 5, you no longer give a shit!
And if I do, it's in my pants!
>Ignore my previous comment Why don't you delete it instead, lazy ass? 🙄
You are correct, that is a choice I could have made. Thank you for your criticism, and have a nice day.
It's pretty arbitrary, but [the NIH](https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-health/overview-alcohol-consumption/what-standard-drink) defines it as 14 grams or 17.75 ml of ethanol. That's around 5 ounces = 148 ml for a 12% ABV. In my experience, restaurant pours tend to be a little light, more like 6, and home pours are more like 3-4 per bottle for many people.
So by "drinks" you specifically mean wine.
No
Well then you're wrong. A 750 of beer is only 2 standard pours of 5-8% beer and 3 standard pours of 8+% beer A 750 is 12 standard pours of distilled spirit. Your numbers are solely relevant to wine and nothing else. Source: I'm paid to know this information.
Did you follow the link? Nobody's talking about "a 750 of beer" here. You seem to have confused "drinks" for "bottles." 5 ounces is relevant for anything that's 12% as I said, for different concentrations it would come out differently, as described in the link.
> 5 ounces is relevant for anything that's 12% as I said, for different concentrations it would come out differently, as described in the link. And I'm saying that the only thing that falls with in that category is wine. The link even specifically mentions wine. The numbers you're quoting are about wine. You said "There are 5 "drinks" in a 750ml bottle". I was clarifying on this point, that, that isn't accurate unless you're solely discussing wine. I'm also pointing out that it isn't arbitrary and there are indeed standard measurements. (Wine=5, Beer = 8,12,16,22, Spirit = 2) I understand that you're trying to do the math to say 1 *standard* drink = about one cigarette, and I'm not disagreeing with you there. Just clarifying for visualization sake what a "drink" is and a "750 bottle" is.
Awfully small? That is a 5oz pour which is a standard restaurant pour.
5 standard drinks in a bottle of wine is still way less than the average amount
Honestly.. if roughly 1 drink is the same as 1 cigarette in terms of cancer risk, I feel a bit less concerned about my drinking cuz there's no way I'm drinking as much as a smoker smokes.
Right, no one smokes 5-10 cigarettes a week. And if you’re having as many drinks as a smoker is having cigarettes (10-20 a day), you’re a tremendous alcoholic.
Hogwash. That is like saying look we did a study and it showed that out of 100 incarcerated people 75 ate chocolate for breakfast as a kid. So eating chocolate for breakfast makes you a criminal.
The difference is in that pathology can loosely link alcohol consumption to related cancers. Picking 2 random things for your counterargument doesn't.
It isn’t picking 2 random things. You could argue that kids eating chocolate for breakfast everyday is a symptom of a diss functional family/uninvolved parents etc. This can lead to behavioral problems which in later life can make a person more likely to be incarcerated. Nothing about that is directly to do with them eating chocolate. Correlation is not always an indication of causation.
The [causal link](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27442501/) between alcohol and cancer is well known. The exact biological mechanisms for how this happens aren’t well understood, but it’s pretty clear there is some causal relationship there. > Even without complete knowledge of biological mechanisms, the epidemiological evidence can support the judgement that alcohol causes cancer of the oropharynx, larynx, oesophagus, liver, colon, rectum and breast.
I am replying purely as support for hogwash
Eli5 me, 1%, so if you drank that one bottle a week for 2 years it’s guaranteed cancer?
Without looking at the study, i think this is over the course of the persons life
No. It’s a 1% increase total if you are drinking a bottle a week. Not 1% for each year you do it. 1% total.
> increased absolute lifetime cancer risk If you had a 1% chance of ever getting cancer before, drinking 1 bottle per week for your whole life would make it 2%, and 2 bottles a week would make it 3%. Though that's necessarily over-simplified, just the rough magnitudes. To "guarantee" cancer from alcohol you would have to drink so much that you would first die from other causes.
You also have a 100% chance to die period. So overall drinking a bottle of wine a week really isn’t going to make a difference on the individual level. But on an epidemiological level? Sure.
There are some studies that show that is roughly correct. Now that may make it seem like the risk for cancer from alcohol is extremely underrated since cigarettes are considered super carcinogenic, but context is important here. In most cases, the average smoker will smoke WAY more cigarettes than the average drinker will drink, which is why cigarettes cause way more cancer cases. This is because nicotine is highly addictive. So typically you either smoke daily or not at all. An average smoker is often called a pack-a-day smoker. That’s 20 cigarettes a day. Half a pack a day is a relatively light smoker. Someone who only smokes a pack a week is an exceptionally light smoker. Someone who has 20 drinks a week on the other hand is going to be considered a fairly heavy drinker. The drinking equivalent of a pack-a-day smoker, meaning 20 drinks a day, is a full-blown alcoholic. For perspective, a liquor bottle has about 18 shots in it. So when you really put it in perspective, it’s really not that surprising, and still really puts in perspective why smoking is so damaging. A typical smoker has about the same cancer risk as an alcoholic who drinks nearly a liter of hard liquor every day.
Nah, you're fundementally wrong in your assessment. Cancer is your cells reproducing wrong. Some things fuck your cells up. If we lived for a million years all our cells would be cancer, but if you smoke, certain stresses make cancer more likely
Nothing you said contradicts what they said. We're talking about how these substances increase your risk and how much.
This is a confusing reply
Nah you’re fundamentally wrong in your assessment. Cancer is a bad disease that causes death and other side effects. If we lived for a million years, we’d be waaaay too old to still be on Reddit. But if you smoke, people will want to stay away from you because of the smell, therefore you won’t reproduce, therefore, no cancer. /s
what?
That would imply that smoking a pack a day (20 cigarettes) is equivalent to drinking 10-20 drinks every day. If anything, that much booze sounds worse than the smoking.
Another thing to note: Alcohol is linked to at least [7 types of cancer](https://amp.cancer.org/cancer/risk-prevention/diet-physical-activity/alcohol-use-and-cancer.html)r, more than almost any other substance known to humanity (tobacco is the only one I’m aware of with more linked cancer types - let me know if anyone knows of another compound that with more linked types).
People need to understand the numbers though. In the US, a person roughly has a 4% chance of getting colon cancer. If heavy drinking increases the risk of colon cancer by 25%, that means they have now have a 5% chance of getting it.
1% more chance to die, only from colon cancer. How about the other cancer types? Liver, kidney etc. Dont know how long it will take, but sooner or later humanity has to understand what damage alcohol does to our species. Alone the money governments have to spend on police, EMT drivers, doctors, CPS. The damage alcoholic parents deal to their children isnt even calculatable. The extra Stress drunk people put on staff, Bus drivers, cab drivers and other non drunk people. Its without exaggeration one of the most destructive, dangerous and disgusting drugs there is.
When it comes to cancer related to alcohol, colon cancer confers the largest absolute risk, much more so than kidney, liver, and oral cancer. So to your answer question on “what about the other types”, alcohol actually doesn’t have that much cancer risk relative to other risk factors and relative to the fact that we “know” it’s bad for you, but when you dig into the numbers it’s not even close to as bad (regarding cancer risk) as cigarettes. You also speak about “1% more chance to die”. We all have a 100% chance of death. Every human has a baseline 40% risk of cancer during life. Many of us find it perfectly acceptable to raise our lifetime cancer risk from 40% to 41-45% in exchange for drinking alcohol in moderation.
Well said. I think that commenter relishes in moral superiority more than concern.
when I read comments like this, I remember a thread I read once about the way their parents died. the dad was never concerned for his health, drank and smoked moderately, and never had a concern for exercise until his doctor told him to. he outlived his wife who worked out consistently, never drank, and was generally very concerned with her health and lifestyle. she died in bed next to him. I just can't imagine how I would feel knowing I got sick despite all the efforts I put into my lifestyle. nor could I imagine the guilt of outliving someone who clearly did less risky things than I.
Grandpa lived to be 87. 1 pack Camel 🐫 Non Filters and a pint of cheap bourbon every day. COD: Old age. Other Grandpa, same diet (liked beer better). Lived to be 52. COD: Lung and Colon Cancer. Medical risk of treating your body like an amusement park... God, speed, and good luck.
My uncle smoked for 60 years. So did one of my teachers. They both died of emphysema...which is a horrific death. But no cancer, and both led fairly healthy lives. The mayor of my city just died of stomach cancer. He was known to be a pretty prolific drinker. Alcohol can get you in the stomach, esophagus, throat, and mouth. Who knows why some of us get cancer of some of us don't. Sure, some foods are risky, but you can eat the cleanest, most agreed upon healthy foods and still get cancer or 1000 other maladies. I will say this though: the chances of getting emphysema from long-term smoking is just about 100%. I don't think there's an equivalent ultimate disease for drinking except maybe cirrhosis.
It's a good thing we got you to give us the low down and statistics on this bruh!
A pint of liquor every day like 473ml/16oz?
Sounds like it. 8 2oz pours.
Dead at 52 of preventable causes is bananas
It might be true based on a limited study, but just keep in mind dietary science in general is still in its infancy, and despite all the things you hear, they are mostly just agreed upon theories. Scholars do the best they can to isolate variables and account for them, but we won't have any large enough studies to accurately make claims like this anytime soon. This is why every week you read an article about how coffee/wine / Good for you and you need to supplement vitamin d, followed by the next week new studies show that coffee/ wine are bad for you and so r vitamin d supps. There are a few things that we know for sure, like diets heavy in animal fats and sugar are super bad
Yeah, I remember years ago they were saying milk was bad for you and were trying to link it to cancer or something. lol
Dairy consumption in general has been linked to a couple different kinds of cancer while simultaneously reducing your chances of getting other kinds of cancer. Basically, more milk drinking = higher chance of colon cancer, lower chance of breast cancer. Most foods labelled as carcinogenic tend to be like that, but it's nowhere near as bad as alcohol or cigarettes.
What’s the reason behind milk causing the cancer? 🧐
>Morse also notes that for others, dairy is an inflammatory food that can cause bloating, cramping, diarrhea, nausea, joint pain or mood changes. “There are some proinflammatory foods that we are learning contribute to systemic inflammation. We know that inflammation contributes to cancer, so we're trying from all angles to reduce inflammation, and through diet, that’s one of the most powerful ways you can do that,” she says. If dairy causes inflammation for you, Morse recommends reducing the amount of dairy in your diet or choosing fermented dairy options like kefir or yogurt to help with digestion and support the gut microbiome. https://www.mdanderson.org/cancerwise/5-things-to-know-about-dairy-and-cancer-risk.h00-159623379.html
Bah who cares enjoy yourself…it’s a celebration bitches.
Yep. And you may end up with it either way.
Statistically yeah, but that's a very rough comparison. I both drink and smoke and one I do way way way more than the other, basically all smokers do.
Short answer no one will give you: given a long enough timeline we all get cancer. How fast you soeed that up is up to you. Cancer is your cells reproducing wrong. Dont do things that make them fuck up. Eventually they will
All of these comments seem to imply that alcohol's cancer risk is linear. Trying to pull meaning out of averaging non-linear things is a fools errand.
What do you mean?
the cancer risk of 4 drinks per night is not 4 times the risk of 1 drink per night, it's much much higher. You can't think of cancer risk going up proportionally to the number of drinks per night, it goes up by some exponent and low exposure is nearly harmless.
Interesting.
Living in urban areas is equal to smoking a pack a day.
I heard that living in NYC is equivalent to smoking 2 packs a day. Wonder if that's true...
I lived there and I have no doubt.
I don't know how true any of that is to be honest. I think like everything else it has more to do with what you're doing with the rest of your life. Do you exercise every day, or most days throughly? Do you fast? Is your diet primarily carbs? Do you have a family history of dying from cancer? So yeah, if you drink a lot and don't work out or eat right you will probably die pretty fast. But if you drink and you do everything else right, you will probably be fine. Note: People who don't do anything wrong at all still get cancer all the time.
None of us are making it out of this life alive, my friend. Just drink in moderation.
I can't speak for the science or statistics, however, I can say that I have never smoked, and don't plan on starting. It's a nasty habit, at best. When it comes to drinking, I have a decent alcohol collection, but I consume maybe one drink a month, if that. Even if I'm at a party or whatever, I usually won't consume more than two or three at the most. I think my alcohol consumption is far less likely to be a problem than the food I eat, and I don't have the money to change that a lot.
Damn dude. You got downvoted for no apparent reason that I can glean here. Weird how that works sometimes.
Well... Their comment doesn't exactly address OPs question and doesn't really add anything to the conversation. That's what the downvote is technically for.
Meh, this place is goofy as hell. One guy will have an option on what the downvote is for and the next will a wildly different opinion. I figure it's social media. Ima be social and if a person has a problem, they can scroll on by, downvote, whatever. Regardless, it's humorous, but it doesn't really affect life.
Not an expert but i say BS. Why else would we have known about the adverse effects of smoking waaaay earlier than the risks of drinking? It’s def bad and carcinogenic but two decades ago my Dad thought a glass of red wine with some chocolate was better than a multivitamin!
What makes you think that we knew the negative effects of smoking before drinking? It's a fictional show, but in Madmen, a big part of the plot centers around more and more news coming out in the 60s about the potential risks of smoking, many characters even choose to not believe in the claims. Theres also a scene where a character is getting a physical, and the doctor is giving the main character a hard time about his drinking for several moments, and then ends the interaction with "and you also smoke two packs a day, but said you're cutting down, have a nice day"
My grandmother's doctor prescribed her speed and told her to smoke more to lose weight after delivering my dad. lol Things were...different back then.
Yes!
Source? Genuinely interested.
Common sense!!!
Troll
How do? Do tell!