If I stop drinking does that decrease risk of cancer?
If I stop drinking does that decrease risk of cancer?
I’ve been drinking for 7 years. Typicall I’ve only drank 3-4 drinks a year. If I stop drinking now, would that help decrease chances of cancer? If it does will it take a long time?
Don’t take this the wrong way, but if you’re worried about getting cancer from 3-4 drinks per year, it sounds like you might be dealing with a fair bit of anxiety.
Stress caused by anxiety is bad for your health and a possible cancer risk, and almost certainly worse for you than 3-4 drinks a year. I don’t want you to now be anxious about your anxiety, but this might be a good thing to focus on to improve your general quality of life (and possibly reduce your cancer risk in the process).
You could start by talking to a doctor or other medical professional about it, or try finding a therapist in your area. The therapist search on https://www.psychologytoday.com/ is a good place to look, or try an online service like Better Help.
[edit: corrected overstatement about stress being a major cancer risk]
Stress caused by anxiety is a major cancer risk, definitely much more so than 3-4 drinks a year.
Oh great, another thing to be anxious about. My anxiety is going so out of control it's going meta now.
How does anxiety cause cancer?
Cortisol, the "stress hormone", has been shown to possibly accelerate cancer development.
Fair question, and looks like I overstated that link.
Chronic stress affects your immune system (via cortisol, long term inflammation) and that is no bueno for all sorts of health outcomes, including likely making it harder to fight off tumours.
But to my surprise, there doesn’t actually seem to be solid evidence of a causal link between stress and increased risk of developing cancer.
3-4 drinks per year won't affect your cancer risk. Unless you've been drinking radium or something.
What if I've been drinking radium
That’s completely wrong. There’s no safe level of alcohol intake:
https://time.com/6248439/no-safe-amount-of-alcohol/
Edit: from the articles, in case you don’t have time to read them:
“We cannot talk about a so-called safe level of alcohol use. It doesn’t matter how much you drink—the risk to the drinker’s health starts from the first drop of any alcoholic beverage”
As a non-drinker who has seen the ravages of alcohol abuse in several loved ones, I completely understand the "no level is safe" guideline.
That said, 3-4 drinks per year is far below any measure of alcohol use that is seriously studied, where researchers look at drinking at the "amount per week" level. 3-4 drinks per year is essentially on the level of being a non-drinker.
Change of risk for 3 drinks a year is unnoticeable. You can't tell it from normal noise.
Sounds like the American equivalent of pot. I brew beer and have customers who drink 50L kegs every week and have for years, try doing that with asbestos and live...
Jesus, dude. You need a drink.
If you've been drinking 3-4 drinks a year for 7 years, you'd almost decrease your chances of cancer by drinking more lol
If you are referring to the J curve (that the lowest point is those who drink a little), it's usually explained that those who don't drink at all usually do so because of poor health.
3-4 drinks a year is nothing, I have alcohol intolerance (stomach cancer risks) and I can probably drink that.
Maybe 3 or 4 drinks before lunch you may need to worry
You drink 3-4 time a year? It would change absolutely nothing for you stopping drinking. Getting cancer is a game of probability. Risk factors increase the probability (do not necessarily cause cancer). Your 4 drinks don't change anything, don't worry. Thing is different if you drink 3 drinks a day...
Probably but by a very very very very very small amount. So small it's essentially no change at all.
Does that apply to the chance of developing cancer or only decreasing
Alcohol, similar to eating red meat, smoking, sunlight, smoked food, etc a cancer risk, but it does not always cause cancer. Given that you lifetime chance of developing cancer is around 50%, a 0.5% increased chance of cancer is fairly insignificant on an individual level (but from a public health standpoint it might be), but a 20% increase is.
A small amount of alcohol like this presents a fairly insignificant risk. There is no truly safe level, but you would have to drink a lot for a significantly increase in cancer risk. At that point you are at a far higher risk of other forms of poisoning. Even just drunkenness itself highly increase your risk of major falls, car crashes, even house fires. With alcohol, cancer is the least of it's problems.
There are some large, easily avoidable cancer risks in daily life, like sunlight exposure, which can be prevented with sunscreen. Whenever you hear that "X causes cancer", always find out how big the effect is, it could be almost insignificant like eating red meat, or a huge risk, like smoking or sunburns .
Actually, if you stop drinking you’ll eliminate the risk of getting cancer from alcohol. That’s a fact. Not drinking any alcohol is the only way to avoid getting cancer from it. Same is true for tobacco.
Now, there are many things that can give you cancer, from environmental factors to genetic ones. So, there are a lot of things not under your control that may still give you cancer.
But if you want to, at least, eliminate the ones you can control, not drinking alcohol and not smoking are two good candidates. There are others, related to your diet that you can control (some related to red meats, for example).
From all I’ve read, there’s no safe level of alcohol intake. So, I became a teetotaler a few years ago. It’s not that bad. There’s are lots of alternatives that still allow you to socialize in a group that’s drinking. If you have any questions, just ask.
Edit: regarding what you ask, the effects are immediate. Same for tobacco. The sooner you stop, the better for your body. Now, you don’t drink much, but if you did, you’ll lose tolerance for alcohol pretty quickly. I can no longer tolerate alcohol, and I don’t even like the smell of it anymore. It’s actually pretty curious.
I'm just a simple statistican, but I would be more worried about sun exposure, tap water quality, air quality, processed foods and occupational hazards (depending on job) over 3-4 drinks per year.
Yeah, ok. But I just want to make clear that I’m not telling people what to do, or to establish what’s more or less dangerous here. My only intention was to respond to OP’s question, by giving a straight answer.
And I totally understand that people don’t like to hear that alcohol, in any quantity, gives cancer. It’s a rather unpopular opinion, and I know what awaits me when I say it. But it is what it is. I can’t change what countless studies and what every major Health organization says.
That's really not a lot of drinking. I guess technically, yes, it would decrease the risk but your risk is already really low at 3-4 servings of alcohol per year.
True enough, but you should try to not worry about cancer as much. Not saying don't stop drinking; only good things can come out of not drinking alcohol, but stress and anxiety are also pretty bad for your health. If this is as bad as it looks, you might wanna talk to a professional.
Nope, no measurable effect.
You already have cancer from the one drop of alcohol you drank 7 years ago
Note that moderate intake of alcohol can be beneficial to health.
More than 100 prospective studies show an inverse association between light to moderate drinking and risk of heart attack, ischemic (clot-caused) stroke, peripheral vascular disease, sudden cardiac death, and death from all cardiovascular causes.
But if you're only considering cancer, then as some of the other answers suggested, cutting alcohol intake to zero could reduce the risk of getting cancer, although the reduction is likely very small that's neglectable.
The better conclusion is "people who drink in moderation have a decreased risk of cancer", which is different. Causation is hard to prove, especially when we can only ethically do observational studies. It's likely that people who drink in moderation are more likely to make healthy choices in other areas of their life or have other factors that reduce risk.
Only if you're a White Lab Rat. Anything gives them cancer. Otherwise, unless your drinks are in excess of a gallon per glass I don't think you've a worry.
True enough, but you should try to not worry about cancer as much. Not saying don't stop drinking; only good things can come out of not drinking alcohol, but stress and anxiety are also pretty bad for your health. If this is as bad as it looks, you might wanna talk to a professional.
I'm going to assume you mean 3-4 drinks per week and not per year. If its per year, your not a drinker (unless these are multiday black out binges).
Alcohol is hard on your liver, so reducing that stress will help your liver stay healthy. Alcohol is processed into fructose, and then into sugar into your blood stream. Cancer cells are typically defined as having mitochondrial dysfunction... meaning they can't eat fat/ketones. Cancer cells can only eat Sugar in the blood stream. If you have cancer and you have excessive sugar in your blood your feeding it!
So yes, if you reduce alcohol consumption, you reduce your cancer risk because there is less food for baby cancer to eat to grow into a big threat.
it might. but the difference would be absolutely marginal. also there's a line between reasonably moderating your life not to die of cancer at 30 and worrying about everything and micromanaging every single aspect of your life to minimize your risk of cancer, which could ironically increase it. i know you didnt say anything like that, but many keep reading that x thing causes cancer and cut it out of their lives, then read that y causes it too and so on, just be reasonable
Drinking alcohol doesn't cause cancer. It destroys your liver. And it would need more like 4 times a week (depending on how much you drink every night).
Alcohol absolutely increases the risk of cancer. But yeah, 3-4 drinks a year is nothing.