For a long time, few cancers were directly linked to alcohol, which further made people complacent about its carcinogenic effects. It seemed that as long as one could boast of a "good liver," the dangers of alcohol could be ignored. However, recent studies and follow-ups have found that alcohol can cause cancers not limited to liver cancer, but spanning the digestive tract, respiratory tract, and skin.

Alcohol's Widespread Carcinogenicity

Rehm J et al. reported in the 2014 World Cancer Report that 3.5% of cancers were caused by alcohol, and one in every 30 cancer deaths was alcohol-related. Moreover, the risk of alcohol-induced cancers has been increasing in recent years; in 2012 alone, 5.5% of cancers were caused by alcohol (5.8% of cancer deaths).

If these data are not enough to alert drinkers, here are a bunch of latest experimental results.

In August 2015, a prospective cohort study analyzed 30-year follow-up data from 88,084 women and 47,881 men, finding an indisputable linear relationship between alcohol and cancer occurrence. In another similar study, researchers found that the relative risk of alcohol for certain cancers (colorectal cancer, female breast cancer, oral cancer, pharyngeal cancer, laryngeal cancer, liver cancer, esophageal cancer) was 1.13 for women and 1.26 for men.

Other researchers used cohort studies to verify the types of cancers associated with drinking, finding that heavy drinkers (more than 3 drinks per day) were more likely than non-drinkers to develop five types of cancer: upper digestive/respiratory tract cancers, lung cancer, female breast cancer, colorectal tumors, and melanoma. Light-to-moderate drinkers were more likely to develop the other four tumors except lung cancer.

Tumors Associated with Alcohol Consumption

Don't be naive. Another study analyzed 486,538 cancer cases from 572 experiments, showing that compared to non-drinkers and light-to-moderate drinkers, heavy drinkers had relative risks of 5.13 for oral and nasopharyngeal cancer, 4.95 for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, 1.44 for colorectal cancer, 2.65 for laryngeal cancer, 1.61 for breast cancer, 1.21 for stomach cancer, 2.07 for liver cancer, 2.64 for bladder cancer, 1.19 for pancreatic cancer, and 1.15 for lung cancer. Similar results were seen for prostate cancer and melanoma. Look at these results—it's almost a clean sweep. How many tumors can still be said to be unrelated to alcohol?

Mechanisms of Alcohol-Induced Cancer

The IARC has long classified alcohol and its primary metabolite acetaldehyde as Group 1 carcinogens, with the highest level of carcinogenic evidence in both humans and animals.

The specific mechanisms by which alcohol causes cancer vary by cancer type. For example, in liver cancer, alcohol first causes cirrhosis, while in upper digestive tract tumors, it is mainly because ethanol is converted to acetaldehyde in saliva, making the concentration of acetaldehyde in saliva 10-100 times higher than in blood, leading to carcinogenesis in the upper digestive tract.

In addition to the direct carcinogenic effects of alcohol and acetaldehyde, alcohol can also promote the generation of oxygen free radicals via cytochrome P450, causing extensive DNA mutations and histone methylation and acetylation. At the same time, alcohol can reduce retinoic acid concentration, leading to excessive cell proliferation and differentiation, thus making cancer more likely.

Alcohol can also affect hormone levels, such as increasing estradiol levels, which is one of the causes of female reproductive system cancers like breast cancer.

Drinking Does More Harm Than Good

There are currently advertisements promoting the benefits of alcohol, such as softening blood vessels and lowering blood pressure. However, this is still controversial in academia. Although a few months ago The Lancet published an article claiming that moderate drinking has some effect on reducing cardiovascular disease incidence, a subsequent study published in Nature showed that alcohol has no effect on cardiovascular disease incidence. Other domestic and international studies claim that even moderate drinking is harmful to the cardiovascular system.

Even if moderate drinking could reduce the incidence of cardiovascular disease, the risk of myocardial infarction in moderate drinkers decreases (hazard ratio 0.76), but the risk of alcohol-related cancers and injuries increases simultaneously (hazard ratios 1.51 and 1.29, respectively), meaning the harms outweigh the benefits.

Scientific Cancer Prevention Starts with Lifestyle

First, establish a healthy lifestyle. To stay healthy, the most important thing is to integrate a healthy lifestyle into daily life, such as staying away from tobacco and alcohol, establishing a reasonable and scientific diet structure, eating more vegetables and fruits, reducing high-protein and high-fat foods, and increasing physical activity. In fact, exercise can be done anytime and anywhere; for example, during work breaks, you can do some simple exercises to relax and enhance physical fitness. Especially for urban white-collar workers who sit for long periods, they should get up and move every 40 minutes.

Second, maintain a calm mindset. A person's emotions are closely related to overall health. Learn to appropriately relieve mental stress and keep the body and mind in a balanced state. If you are under high pressure for a long time, your physical and mental health will be damaged, and tumor incidence is related to emotions.

Finally, regular health check-ups are essential. Everyone should have this health awareness, especially those over 40, who should have regular physical examinations every year. The earlier a disease is detected, the better the treatment effect, and the less treatment cost and energy you will spend. With population aging and lifestyle changes, the incidence of tumors is increasing, and it is unlikely to decrease significantly in the coming years. But as long as we can achieve early detection and early treatment, the treatment effect will be much better than late detection.

Our platform will soon organize distributor friends who are interested in transitioning to B2B platform e-commerce to visit and learn from B2B platforms.

The B2B platforms for this visit include:

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