How does alcohol impact your health?
Studies show that alcohol consumption not only has a detrimental effect on your overall health, but increases your risk of a wide variety of cancer.
These cancers include:
- Mouth, head and neck cancers,
- Throat (pharynx) cancer
- Voice box (larynx) cancer
- Oesophageal cancer
- Liver cancer
- Colon and rectum cancer
- Breast cancer
To help reduce your risk, it has been recommended that you do not drink, but if you do, to reduce the amount you are drinking to ensure you stay within standard drinking guidelines.
If you reduce the number of drinks per day from four or more, to one or fewer drinks each day, you can reduce your chances of getting:
- Liver cancer by 21%
- Colorectal cancer by 31%
- Breast cancer in women by 30%.
Aside from cancer, alcohol can also contribute to accidents and injuries, stroke, high blood pressure, liver disease and pancreatitis. Cutting down could help reduce the risk of these conditions as well.
Also, drinking less can help you:
- Avoid hangovers
- Save money
- Sleep better
- Cut out some ‘empty’ calories.
How does alcohol affect your body?
There are two main ways alcohol can have an impact on your health.
- Cell Damage:
Alcohol can act as an irritant, especially in the mouth and throat. Cells that are damaged by the alcohol may try to repair themselves but these cells can repair incorrectly, which could lead to DNA changes that can be a step toward cancer.
Once in the body, alcohol can be converted into acetaldehyde, a chemical that can damage the DNA inside cells and has been shown to cause cancer.
Drinking alcohol can also lead to oxidative stress in cells, causing them to create more reactive oxygen species (chemically reactive molecules that contain oxygen). These can lead to damage inside the cells that might increase the risk of cancer.
Alcohol and its by-products can also damage the liver, leading to inflammation and scarring (cirrhosis). As liver cells try to repair the damage, they can end up with mistakes in their DNA, which could lead to cancer.
- Increase the impact of other harmful chemicals:
Alcohol may help other harmful chemicals, such as those in tobacco smoke, enter the cells lining the upper digestive tract more easily. This might explain why the combination of smoking and drinking is much more likely to cause cancers in the mouth or throat than smoking or drinking alone.
In other cases, alcohol may slow the body’s ability to break down and get rid of some harmful chemicals.
Alcohol guidelines
Ethanol is the type of alcohol found in alcoholic drinks, whether they are beers, wines, liquors (distilled spirits), or other drinks. Alcoholic drinks contain different percentages of ethanol, but in general, a standard size drink of any type — 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine, or 1.5 ounces of 80-proof liquor — contains about the same amount of ethanol (about half an ounce). Of course, larger or ‘stronger’ drinks can contain more ethanol than this.
Overall, the amount of alcohol someone drinks over time, not the type of alcoholic beverage, seems to be the most important factor in raising cancer risk. Most evidence suggests that it is the ethanol that increases the risk, not other things in the drink.
To reduce your risk of cancer, and to keep health risks to a minimum, women should drink no more than 11 standard drinks a week. Men should drink no more than 17 standard drinks a week.
Be aware of how many standard drinks are in your favourite drink. For example, there are two standard drinks in a pint. And remember these drink guidelines are a limit, not a target.
These guidelines are intended for adults only. When considering these guidelines, it is important to remember that drinks should be spaced out over the week and should never be saved up to drink in one session.
When it comes to alcohol and cancer, less is better. None is best.
What is a standard drink?
One standard drink of alcohol is:
- A half pint of beer, lager or stout
- One small glass of wine (100ml)
- One measure of spirits.
As a rough guide, a standard drink contains about 10-12 grams of pure alcohol. However, some restaurants and bars serve larger drinks than the standard. Also, there are differences in the size and strength of a standard drink across European countries.
You should avoid alcohol:
- During pregnancy
- While breast-feeding
- When trying for a baby.
How to cut back on alcohol
There are a number of easy things you can do to cut back on the amount of alcohol you drink
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