• JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca
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    6 hours ago

    Party pooper: Consuming alcohol significantly increases your chance of getting cancer. To the point that it compares with asbestos, radiation and tobacco.

    https://www.partnershipagainstcancer.ca/topics/alcohol-policies/background-statistics/

    https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-alcohol-consumption-is-safe-for-our-health

    https://www.aacr.org/patients-caregivers/progress-against-cancer/americans-largely-unaware-of-link-between-consumption-of-alcoholic-beverages-and-risk-of-cancer/

    https://www.fau.edu/newsdesk/articles/alcohol-use-cancer-risk

    A recent study counters that info a little bit (says there isn’t a link for some cancers) but it’s important to note that the study is still disputed. Also, cancer is on top of liver and heart disease, dementia and many other things that alcohol is known to directly increase.

    You should do your best to reduce your alcohol consumption or cut it out completely - if you care about your health.

    • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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      2 hours ago

      TBF ingesting anything that’s not what the orifice in question is intended for might be harmless, but probably isn’t. Don’t breath smoke, don’t drink a concentrated light organic compound.

    • Zacryon@feddit.org
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      4 hours ago

      The WHO did a meta analysis, which is how they came to their conclusion.

      The title “No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health” is slightly misleading though, since they focused on typical alcoholic beverages. There is no statement about alcohol in fruits.

      Bottom line:
      Drinking even a little bit of <alcoholic beverage> safe? Likely no.
      Eating <fruit that contain low amounts of alcohol>: unknown

    • Kristell@herbicide.fallcounty.omg.lol
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      4 hours ago

      I clicked one of the links, and read the study.

      450ml of liquor per week isn’t light to moderate by most definitions? If you don’t drink 2 nights a week that’s 5 medically significant binges per week, every week. One “drink” in this context is 1oz (~29ml). Most of the doctors I’ve been to, when asking how much you drink, will even ask of you have 15 drinks per week. They cut that off at 7+.

      While a lot of us don’t know the link to cancer, I’d imagine most of us know there’s something there.

      I’m fine with doing alcohol like we did cigarettes, I was just kinda shocked that they called “5 medically significant binges per week” light to moderate drinking??? Even when I was drinking an amount that people were talking about doing an intervention for, it was less than half of that (1oz (29.5ml) per day)

      • JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca
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        33 minutes ago

        450ml of liquor per week isn’t light to moderate by most definitions?

        If you read the one published by the WHO, It says “light” to “moderate” is less than 450ml, presumably meaning 450ml and over is considered “heavy” (which more or less lines up with 2 drinks a day.)

        Generally, light is considered to be 1 drink a day, moderate is 1.5 and heavy is 2. So 1 drink a day is the cause of half of all alcohol-attributable cancers (according to the WHO).

    • zout@fedia.io
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      6 hours ago

      To the point that it compares with asbestos, radiation and tobacco.

      This is kind of ambiguous; it’s in the IARC group 1, which indeed includes asbestos and radiation. It also includes a lot of other things, like therapeutical hormones, many viruses and bacteria, being a firefighter, leather dust, being a painter, processed meat, wood dust, plutonium, vinyl chloride and outdoor air pollution.

      • JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca
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        33 minutes ago

        Yes, recently (the past couple of years) the connection between small amounts of alcohol and increased cancer risk has been more thoroughly documented. Check the link from the WHO.