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RIts time It is a Sunnah when people make resolutions that they may struggle to keep. One reason for this is confusion. According to Gallup, a polling expert, three out of five adults drink alcohol. About 45% believe that drinking even in moderation is bad for their health, while 43% believe it has no effect. Americans drink more spirits (or hard liquor) now than during the Civil War—a time period so intoxicating that some historians say it sparked the temperance movement. This is despite something public health researchers have known for a long time.
The nerds got their way on January 3rd, when Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, America’s top doctor, issued an advisory into the relationship between drinking alcohol and cancer. Wants labels on alcoholic drinks to carry a cancer warning. Alcohol, the advisory notes, is the third most preventable cause of cancer in America, after tobacco and obesity. It accounts for approximately 100,000 cancer cases per year. But while 89% of Americans know that tobacco can cause cancer, less than half realize that alcohol does, too.
This is partly because the risk from alcohol is smaller, but not trivial. According to the Surgeon General’s report, 17% of women who drink occasionally will, at some point in life, be diagnosed with one of seven cancers whose causal influence of alcohol has been established. For women who have two drinks a day, the cancer rate rises to 22%. Among men, the cancer rate rises from 10% among those who drink occasionally to 13% among those who have two drinks a day.
The link between alcohol and cancer is not scientific news. The World Health Organization classified alcohol as carcinogenic in 1988. However, today nearly 10% of Americans say that drinking is good for health. Some of the confusion stems from studies that have found, over the years, that moderate drinkers last longer than non-drinkers. This finding is mostly explained by an apparently protective effect of moderate drinking against heart disease.
But what scientists have learned over the years is that explicit comparisons of drinkers and non-drinkers make alcohol seem healthier than it might be. Many abstainers have given up alcohol because it feels unwell; Some former alcoholics. How researchers interpret these matters is “disputed.” Some exclude all non-lawyers from analyzes and measure only how disease risk changes with amount of drinking; Another group of former supervisors with current drinkers. With such modifications, the protective effect of moderate drinking on longevity and heart disease almost disappears; Increased risk of cancer that has been exposed to drinking rises.
More recent studies using genetic tolerance to alcohol to mimic randomized trials of drinking have found no health benefits from alcohol. This study method mitigates biases: people who drink are wealthier, more educated, and healthier than those who don’t. This may explain why red wine, the favorite drink of the wealthy, appears to be particularly hard for the heart. Most scientists now view the idea that alcohol is beneficial in moderation as “either exaggerated or completely wrong,” says Tim Stockwell of the University of Victoria in Canada.
Americans are bombarded with headlines about the benefits of alcohol (“Wine may be good for the heart, new study says”). Sometimes, the title gives them pause (“Even a little alcohol can harm your health”). The Surgeon General’s letter may clear the air–and make decisions to drink better. ■
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