The al­co­hol-cen­tred cel­e­bra­tions that sur­round the Car­ni­val sea­son car­ry a risk that many of us do not re­alise. All al­co­holic drinks, in­clud­ing red and white wine, beer and liquor, are linked with can­cer. The more you drink, the high­er your can­cer risk. This is tak­en straight from the Cen­tres for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion web­site, which al­so de­tails the types of can­cers that al­co­hol put you at an in­creased risk of– mouth, throat, oe­soph­a­gus, colon, rec­tum and breast. 

Yes, even for women too, where drink­ing al­co­hol is thought to be the cause for sev­en out of every 100 new breast can­cer cas­es. And this is not mere­ly a weak link that is still up for de­bate. The ev­i­dence clear­ly shows that there is a di­rect causal re­la­tion­ship be­tween al­co­hol and can­cer which has been doc­u­ment­ed by many re­search stud­ies and it is now es­ti­mat­ed that about four per cent of can­cers world­wide are caused by al­co­hol con­sump­tion. When you drink al­co­hol, your body breaks it down in­to a harm­ful chem­i­cal, ac­etalde­hyde, which dam­ages your DNA and pre­vents your body from re­pair­ing the dam­age. When DNA is dam­aged, a cell can grow out of con­trol mak­ing can­cer more like­ly to de­vel­op. Even more sober­ing is the fact that many peo­ple are un­aware of this im­por­tant as­so­ci­a­tion.

A na­tion­al US study pub­lished this month in the Amer­i­can Jour­nal of Pre­ven­ta­tive Med­i­cine re­port­ed that the ma­jor­i­ty of Amer­i­cans are not aware that al­co­hol con­sump­tion caus­es a va­ri­ety of can­cers, and es­pe­cial­ly do not con­sid­er wine and beer to have a link with can­cer. In this study, the re­searchers posed the fol­low­ing ques­tion to thou­sands of peo­ple, “In your opin­ion, how much does drink­ing the fol­low­ing types of al­co­hol (wine, beer, liquor) af­fect the risk of get­ting can­cer?

Less than a third of those who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the study, a mere 31 per cent, were aware of the al­co­hol-can­cer link. This re­mains dis­ap­point­ing since know­ing about this cru­cial risk means that you can do some­thing about it. In­deed, drink­ing al­co­hol is a can­cer risk that you can con­trol.

In fact, sci­en­tists re­fer to this as a ‘mod­i­fi­able risk fac­tor.’ This means that you can change or mod­i­fy your be­hav­iour in or­der to re­duce your risk. The same can al­so be said for smok­ing and obe­si­ty–both es­tab­lished and ma­jor risk fac­tors for can­cer as well. There is now an ur­gent need for com­pre­hen­sive al­co­hol con­trol and can­cer pre­ven­tion strate­gies to re­duce the world­wide can­cer bur­den.

Pub­lic sup­port is al­so now in­creas­ing for the idea of adding writ­ten warn­ings about the al­co­hol-can­cer link to al­co­holic bev­er­ages, which is some­thing that a num­ber of can­cer or­gan­i­sa­tions have been pe­ti­tion­ing for. Cur­rent la­belling on bev­er­ages tend to fo­cus on risks dur­ing preg­nan­cy or use while op­er­at­ing ma­chin­ery and may in­clude a vague state­ment that al­co­hol “may cause health prob­lems.” But high­ly-re­gard­ed pro­fes­sion­al bod­ies such as the Amer­i­can So­ci­ety of Clin­i­cal On­col­o­gy, the Amer­i­can In­sti­tute for Can­cer Re­search, and Breast Can­cer Pre­ven­tion Part­ners, all in col­lab­o­ra­tion with sev­er­al pub­lic health or­gan­i­sa­tions have right­ly stat­ed that the mes­sage needs to be out there in the pub­lic do­main and should be crys­tal clear, even propos­ing la­belling that would read: “WARN­ING: Ac­cord­ing to the Sur­geon Gen­er­al, con­sump­tion of al­co­holic bev­er­ages can cause can­cer, in­clud­ing breast and colon can­cers.” Such la­belling ul­ti­mate­ly has the po­ten­tial to save lives by en­sur­ing that con­sumers have a more ac­cu­rate un­der­stand­ing of the link be­tween al­co­hol and can­cer, there­fore al­low­ing them to bet­ter pro­tect and safe­guard their health.