
The link between alcohol and breast cancer - kawera
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/04/did-drinking-give-me-breast-cancer/
======
INTPenis
This really hits close to home. My SO passed in september and she not only had
a problem with alcohol off and on. She also had very high levels of estrogen
causing other minor issues during her lifetime.

Her breast cancer fed on estrogen. Depriving her of that hormone in an attempt
to starve the cancer was awful. Like sucking a persons life blood out of them.
Her sparkling and childish personality vanished with the hormone.

Just like the author she was fit and loved exercise, ate all the right things
in a balanced diet. And she was relatively young.

~~~
tzakrajs
I am sorry for your (and our community's) loss. Thank you for sharing this
experience and I hope you the best!

------
pc2g4d
"Corollary 5: The greater the financial and other interests and prejudices in
a scientific field, the less likely the research findings are to be true.
Conflicts of interest and prejudice may increase bias. Conflicts of interest
are very common in biomedical research, and typically they are inadequately
and sparsely reported."

\-- Why Most Published Research Findings are False
[http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jou...](http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124)

The base of research on alcohol is inherently biased due to both financial
conflicts of interest and the general desire to see something enjoyable as
healthy (alcohol, chocolate, sex, etc.) In addition, even when reliable
research is performed, its results are inconvenient and thus discarded by
journalists, health professionals, and the general public. It's an uphill
battle to get to the truth of the matter and make it stick. But it seems we're
making some progress, if articles such as these are any indication.

~~~
mr_toad
Something that causes cancer is in the headlines every week.

It’s not easy to assess either the relative risks, or the quality of the
research without making a career out of it.

~~~
forgotmypw
The underlying "cause" of cancer is the cells reverting back to their ancient
state of independence and non-cooperation, and all the fail-safes that keep
this from happening failing.

The reason for this happening is stress on the cells. And there are more and
more things that can cause us cellular stress.

It is a bit of information overload, but if you separate things into "my
great-great-grandparents were exposed to this in their daily lives" and "my
great-great-grandparents were not exposed to this in their daily lives", you
may begin go see a pattern.

And by "exposed to this", I mean looking closely at the exposure type and
limits. They might have had wine, and even hard liquor, but probably not
available every day.

~~~
batty_alex
There's history to suggest that alcohol was used as currency to pay workers in
ancient times [1].

Alcohol has been with us for the long haul and has been available to our
ancestors in large quantities for most of our history. It's almost engrained
in our history.

Not that it makes alcohol healthy but, I don't agree it's safe to just look
back and say, "Yo, great-grand-papa could only afford to get wasted once a
week - maybe that's the secret?"

[1]: [https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/5000-year-old-pay-
st...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/5000-year-old-pay-stub-shows-
that-ancient-workers-were-paid-in-beer/)

~~~
sjg007
All it means is that they survived long enough to reproduce to have your
parents etc.. So look at the age they had them and how old they are when they
died (or now). There is probably a selection event but also availability and
potency have increased recently.

------
_Schizotypy
This subject needs far more attention than it's getting.

It's funny how the psychoactive compound we have the least reliable data on is
legal and the most abused while safer and better understood drugs remain
illegal.

It's fucked up.

~~~
maxerickson
The article shows that there is good data.

One of the more easily interpreted statistics given is that American women on
average have a lifetime risk of developing breast cancer of about 12%, while
women that consume 2-3 drinks per day have a lifetime risk of about 15%.

It's a huge lever for public health to pull on, I guess individuals may not
give much thought to moderate consumption.

~~~
npsimons
> One of the more easily interpreted statistics given is that American women
> on average have a lifetime risk of developing breast cancer of about 12%,
> while women that consume 2-3 drinks per day have a lifetime risk of about
> 15%.

I find this interesting. By all means, people should be entitled to informed
consent and allowed to make their own choices. But only a 3% increase? And
that's if you're consuming 2-3 drinks _a day_? Doesn't seem all that
significant.

Meanwhile, being obese increases the chance of a myriad of cancers (including
breast), yet talk of addressing the obesity epidemic (35% and climbing of the
adult population is obese in America) is shouted down as nanny-state hysteria
and "it's impossible to lose weight anyway."

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Hormone based contraception apparently increases the risk of breast cancer by
about 25% too.

>And that's if you're consuming 2-3 drinks a day? Doesn't seem all that
significant. //

That was my take away, that's pretty heavy drinking, surely?

Per your last para though, we can address more than one health situation at a
time, and need to, it's not just USA with an obesity crisis; UK is deep in to
that as well, and probably a lot of other countries.

~~~
npsimons
> That was my take away, that's pretty heavy drinking, surely?

Yes, that is the impression I received.

> Per your last para though, we can address more than one health situation at
> a time

My main point with my last paragraph is that people all too often focus
inordinate effort on things that don't have the highest payback. Willpower,
time, etc are all finite, so it's best to try to tackle the things with the
greatest ROI first. As an analogy, if someone is paying 25% interest on a
revolving balance (credit card) a month, it's best to focus on paying that off
before making a second monthly payment on their 2.9% mortgage. Getting to a
healthy weight reduces so many health risks, it's the logical first step in
any health improvement plan. Although I don't have numbers to hand, I would
not be surprised in the slightest if being obese increased the risk of breast
cancer much much more than heavy drinking. Of course, one of the first things
to do to lose weight is to cut back on alcohol consumption.

------
pbhjpbhj
On the whole it seems a good article in raising awareness that alcohol doesn't
just cause the almost universally known issues of mouth/throat cancers and
liver cirrhosis but also is linked to greater risk of breast cancer [and
presumably other not mentioned cancers]. However, it harps on around the
suggestion that moderate drinking might be beneficial, and scathes that some
studies included ex-drinkers in the "non-drinker" group and so were corrupted.
But the best conclusion appears to be this:

>"Stockwell and Fillmore analyzed decades’ worth of studies on alcohol and
heart disease. Once they excluded studies with ex-drinkers—which was most of
them—the heart benefits of alcohol largely disappeared. Since then, a host of
other studies have found that drinking does not provide any heart benefits.
(Some studies have found that drinking small amounts of alcohol—sometimes less
than one drink per day—can be beneficial for certain people at risk of heart
disease.) Robert Brewer, who runs an alcohol program at the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, says, “Studies do not support that there are
benefits of moderate drinking.” The Agriculture Department removed language
suggesting that alcohol may lower the risk of heart disease in the most recent
US Dietary Guidelines." //

Which quietly concedes that moderate alcohol use can be beneficial according
to some studies [that it doesn't discount, so are presumably sound enough they
can't fling mud at them easily]. The point it was heavily scathing against.

Good balance, kinda. But then the next paragraph goes stupid:

>"Jennie Connor, a preventive- and social-medicine professor at the University
of Otago in New Zealand who wrote one of the landmark papers linking alcohol
to cancer [says] “It’s addictive, like opioids. If you give medication to
people that could affect their unborn child or make them aggressive and hit
their wife, what kind of medicine is that? [...]" //

Yeah, right, now you lost me completely by trying to cast moderate alcohol use
as something that will _make_ me hit my wife and talking of it as a bad
medication. Currently I have a colon problem that makes tomatoes potentially
fatal, so now no-one can eat tomatoes because they're killers??

25% increase, 25% increase, the article screams but we're talking about heavy
use (3 drinks every day) and that increasing the likelihood of getting breast
cancer from 12% to 15%. Now that's a significant increase; reducing use will
be a good thing for most users; but I can't stand the twisting and turning,
the spin, to magnify the issue.

>Michael Siegel, a professor at the Boston University School of Public Health.
“How is it going to change policy or practice? It’s not. Even if it turns out
that there are true benefits, we’re not going to start recommending that
people who have never had alcohol before start drinking.” //

Wow, great, a professor in public health would not recommend something with
true benefits???

>There are far safer ways than drinking to reduce the risk of heart
disease—walking, for instance—that also won’t give you cancer. That’s why the
American Heart Association strongly warns people not to start drinking if they
don’t already. //

You can't walk _and_ have a glass of wine at the weekend?

I'm afraid if there's something good at the end then you'll have to point it
out to me, this piece just went of the deep end in lacking perspective and I
can no longer trust that it will give me useful advice on keeping alcohol as
part of my lifestyle.

This seems to be squarely in the "no one ever got sick from an innoculation"
camp of medicine; that the author knows better and so you should be carefully
manipulated to make sure you do what they believe is right rather than being
presented with the facts and treated as a rational being. Some will find that
acceptable.

~~~
wwweston
> Yeah, right, now you lost me completely by trying to cast moderate alcohol
> use as something that will _make_ me hit my wife

That's not what he says, though. He says alcohol _could_ have that effect.
Given that alcohol has notable connections to that effect, it's a reasonable
statement. One could argue it's only connected to alcohol _abuse_ , and that's
also a reasonable argument, but (a) it's not the only risk related to alcohol
consumption (the article notable focuses on cancer) and (b) there's the fact
that some portion of the population is at risk for alcohol abuse in a way they
are probably not at risk for, say, statin abuse.

> and talking of it as a bad medication.

If we're going to speak of health benefits of alcohol and talk about whether
professionals should recommend it, then it's reasonable to compare it to a
form of medication.

> You can't walk and have a glass of wine at the weekend?

The question here isn't whether you can do both. Obviously, anyone can. The
question is _what recommendations are likely to improve outcomes_.

The evidence for benefits of alcohol consumption doesn't seem clear. The
evidence for some risks does (even if many people who drink never experience
them).

So the only people you should tell to take a walk _and_ have a glass of wine
are the people who are already having the glass of wine or really really want
to for non-health related reasons.

(Or the people who can be confident something else will kill them first and
don't need to be unintoxicated in the meanwhile, I suppose.)

> this piece just went of the deep end in lacking perspective and I can no
> longer trust that it will give me useful advice on keeping alcohol as part
> of my lifestyle.

The perspective seems pretty straight on to me (and, fwiw, entirely consistent
with the advice I've gotten from a handful of doctors including two fancy
cardiologists).

Alcohol has risks. The article discusses some and reasons why they may not be
adequately appreciated. If that isn't useful as advice while forming an
opinion about alcohol as part of your lifestyle, maybe the problem is less the
article and more that you're not interested in making that decision based off
an understanding of the risks.

And yes, we all accept activities we know have risks, so if drinking is
something you enjoy enough you want to accept the measure of risk, fair
enough! I do the same with some my own choices. I don't tell myself I'm doing
it as part of a health regimen, though, when there are options that seem to
have clearer benefits and better risks profiles.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>"Alcohol has risks. The article discusses some and reasons why they may not
be adequately appreciated. If that isn't useful as advice while forming an
opinion about alcohol as part of your lifestyle, maybe the problem is less the
article and more that you're not interested in making that decision based off
an understanding of the risks."

I set about intending to share it as advice to those females in my life it
could help. It laid heavily in to the notion that moderate alcohol consumption
might have health benefits in other areas (heart) - strictly suggesting all
the researchers had been bought off by the alcohol lobby.

So then I was searching for the references to the studies excluding prior
users ... and viola the smallest confession that recent studies that they
don't cite contradict their diatribe.

Alcohol has risks in "public health" including violence, drink driving, etc.,
but they're not personal risks for a middle aged woman (say) and so are
irrelevant.

The professor who said basically that even if alcohol would benefit you they
wouldn't recommend it is looking at wider public health, fair enough, but that
doesn't help an individual make choices on their lifestyle/diet.

I don't mind drinking, I drink occasionally in part due to papers linking it
to better outcomes wrt heart disease.

------
elvecinodeabajo
Awesome post, full of links to references and raw data. Great job, Stephanie
Mencimer!

