You Never Expected This Drink Would Increase Your Risk Of Cancer

Photo credit: bigstock.com

Photo credit: bigstock.com

Alcohol is an integral part of daily life for billions of people around the world. For thousands of years, people have used different types of alcoholic beverages for various reasons, ranging from purely recreational and social gatherings to religious rituals. From wine and whisky, to beer, vodka and sake, alcohol consumption is so deeply embedded in cultures around the world that it is quite difficult to imagine life without it.

Everyone knows, of course, that there are risks associated with alcohol abuse. Most people acknowledge the possibility of drunkenness, hangovers, and everything that comes with that, and it is possible to develop an dependency on it, which leads to a plethora of other health complications. But did you know that drinking alcohol may increase your risk of developing cancer? New research shows that regular alcohol consumption appears to correlate with increased risk of several types of cancer. In this article, we’ll explore why this is, and tell you what you can do to minimize your risk.

The National Toxicology Program at the US Department of Health and Human Services issued a document called the Report on Carcinogen, in which it listed alcohol as a “known human carcinogen.” According to the report, the greater the quantity of alcohol consumed, the greater the risk of developing cancer at some point in life. According to data from 2009, approximately 3.5 percent of cancer deaths in the United States were tied to alcohol.

The way that drinking alcohol increases the risk of developing cancer has a lot to do with what happens when alcohol is broken down in the body. The process of metabolizing ethanol (the type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages) produces a chemical called acetaldehyde. This chemical has been linked to DNA damage in the cells, which can increase the risk of cancer developing.

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One Comment

  1. Anto

    Nov 3, 2016 at 3:37 pm

    “If you lead a physically active life and eat a healthy diet low in sugars and unnatural fats,…”

    And if all you’re body’s defence mechanisms aren’t already working flat out to protect you from environmental toxins and food additives and pesticides in food and toxic people in your life and …..
    … then you can afford to have the occasional drink of alcohol.
    But, if you’re like most of us and your defences are already working up near the limit to protect you, it may be that there’s just not the capacity to remove another single cancer cell from your system, that one drink will produce the first cancer cell in the tumour that metastasises and turns you into a chemo/radio patient, and then kills you.
    Bottoms Up!