I remember attending an Actuarial Club meeting at the beginning of my career where there was a talk on the fact that drinking alcohol lead to cancer. This was in the late 80’s.
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I posted that in another thread.
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The TIL thread??
Not sure if you’re being a smartass but I don’t care to figure it out.
https://community.goactuary.com/t/drink-order/218/3455?u=jfg
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Interesting that women are significantly more likely to have an alcohol-related cancer at the same number of drinks. Is it simply because “drinks” are standard and therefore the alcohol-to-mass is greater for the women or are women predisposed?
I don’t have any knowledge about men and women. I did however notice something in UK. Bars would sell pints and half pints. Half pints were the preferred glass for ladies. After a while I graduated myself to that half pint. Best decision of my drinking life.
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I was!!
Might be explained by the increase in breast cancer risk.
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in college, a friend was dating a gal from ireland. gf’s dad was over for a week. friend barely drank (too busy running 110 miles a week for that). they were at a philly area pub and he discovered he could order a half pint! after a while of him marveling at this discovery and feeling good that he could get quality man time with the gf’s old man she told him “yeah, all the pubs back home do that. that’s what all the women drink.” my friend felt like he’d been set up for failure.
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I feel like it was common sense that alcohol is bad for you and gave you cancer.
I’m just surprised by its impact on increased head and neck related cancers - I just figured it would mostly be liver/stomach related stuff
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Lots of people still firmly believed that drinking in moderation actually had health benefits with no negative consequences, so I don’t know that it was widely accepted. I hope that changes.
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the onion a million years ago had and article touting how routine alcohol consumption reduced awareness of heart disease. that’s really all it is - wishful projecting.
Did they control for tobacco use? Drinking and smoking often go together.
Back when I was waiting tables you always wanted to get tables in the smoking section of the restaurant because they were far more likely to order alcohol, which led to a higher check, which led to a bigger tip.
So if they didn’t control for that it’s probably a higher concentration of smokers with the head and neck cancers.
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That’s a valid observation.
There was a time when the UK chief medical officer was thinking of scrapping alcohol guidelines per week because studies seemed to indicate that any alcohol drinking wasn’t ok. One of the studies they cited was an increase in cancer as well.
I think Huberman also has a study he explains in one episode of his podcast that also concludes the only safe amount of alcohol is no alcohol.
I’m not sure if they controlled for smoking
I think the study was to compare cancer rates among people who averaged 0, 1, 2, 3+ drinks a day.
Going from 0 to 1 greatly increased risk of head/neck cancer. By the time you got to 3+ you had greatly increased risk of stomach, breast, and other cancers
I love the smoking section anecdote, brings me back old memories of sitting in the smoking section as a kid because there was no wait to be seated there
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Alcohol can cause GERD which is also an increased cancer risk. It may not take much alcohol to trigger that.
Just a couple of months ago my MIL was trying to goad my pregnant SIL into having a glass of wine, because “my doctor said I could drink and you turned out fine!”
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Are they going to add cancer warnings to soda, since obesity causes cancer and soda causes obesity?
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WHO encourages a sugar tax on anything that has sugar added and South Africa has had a sugar tax for a while now to combat obesity.
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I’d think an obesity warning for certain foods would be more appropriate than a cancer warning.
Maybe we just need a lifestyle/cancer risk catch all…