
A comparison of population cancer risks between alcohol and tobacco - onetimemanytime
https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-019-6576-9
======
Err_Eek
I'll patiently wait until I see more physician consensus around this issue

[https://www.acsh.org/news/2018/08/24/john-ioannidis-aims-
his...](https://www.acsh.org/news/2018/08/24/john-ioannidis-aims-his-bazooka-
nutrition-science-13357)

Given the recent 180 degree turn on "eat fat => heart attack", I think some
seriously well designed studies are needed for all studies that make a strong
statement about what dietary choices one should make, especially for dietary
choices made by humans since forever.

~~~
tapland
Well. What exactly are you expecting in this case? It seems quite unlikely
that any study will conclude that alcohol = good. The glass of wine a day myth
has not really been supported by science, and everything seems to indicate
that alcohol is bad for you.

It's just a matter of how much damage is done, and a bottle of wine per week
is a lot.

~~~
Err_Eek
A bottle of wine has 8 standard units of alcohol, and the British NHS
recommends keeping the intake to < 14 units per week, so a bottle of wine per
week should be well within the _perfectly fine_ area.

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tomhoward
Results:

 _One bottle of wine per week is associated with an increased absolute
lifetime cancer risk for non-smokers of 1.0% (men) and 1.4% (women). The
overall absolute increase in cancer risk for one bottle of wine per week
equals that of five (men) or ten cigarettes per week (women)._

I.e., not very much and could well be explained by other factors, including
other lifestyle patterns, data inaccuracies (much of the data was from the UK
Government's Health Survey for England which involves an interview of about
8000 people), etc.

~~~
xiphias2
At this point at least DNA epigenetic age should be tested for any claim of
long term aging effects. For heavy drinking there was a research last year,
but I guess for 1 wine bottle per week it would be insignificant.

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-018-0233-4](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-018-0233-4)

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synctext
> "This allowed us to calculate the lifetime risk of cancer in alcohol-
> abstaining never smokers"

Does this mean they create a bias in their methodology if this population
subset has a healthier lifestyle? (interested scientist, not an expert)

~~~
tapland
On average people abstaining from alcohol do not have healthier lifestyles.
They include ex-alcoholics, people on various medications etc. That has
explained why people who drink moderately would be healthier than non-
drinkers, because the non-drinker group includes people who cannot drink.

~~~
azeotropic
I always assumed it was because teatotallers replaced alcohol with sugary
drinks.

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winchling
My understanding is that the major carcinogen from drinking is acetylaldehyde,
a metabolic product of alcohol consumption, not alcohol itself. Funnily enough
the body also gets acetylaldehyde from cigarette smoke. A way of reducing
build-up of this toxic compound, responsible for the sweet-smelling breath of
the heavily inebriated, is to supplement with N-acetylcysteine (NAC) at least
half an hour before drinking. This helps the liver to keep up with the
metabolic load. B vitamins also help.

However, it seems to me that (I'm not a doctor so don't take this as medical
fact or advice; I'd be grateful to be proved wrong) all forms of _visceral
pleasure_ act to dampen the immune system, at least slightly, at least
temporarily. Which would reduce the body's ability to destroy existing
precancerous cells. Not much the committed hedonist can do about that...

~~~
theNJR
Note that it MUST be taken prior to consumption:

"Pretreatment with NAC significantly protected against acute ethanol-induced
liver damage in a dose-independent manner. Correspondingly, pretreatment with
NAC significantly attenuated acute ethanol-induced lipid peroxidation and GSH
depletion and inhibited hepatic TNF-alpha mRNA expression. By contrast, post-
treatment with NAC aggravated ethanol-induced hepatic lipid peroxidation and
worsened acute ethanol-induced liver damage in a dose-dependent manner. Taken
together, NAC has a dual effect on acute ethanol-induced liver damage.
Pretreatment with NAC prevent from acute ethanol-induced liver damage via
counteracting ethanol-induced oxidative stress. When administered after
ethanol, NAC might behave as a pro-oxidant and aggravate acute ethanol-induced
liver damage."

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16439183](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16439183)

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marsrover
I’m pretty convinced that everything gives you cancer at this point.

~~~
huffmsa
It does. It's not that cancer or cancerous substances are "new", we've just
eliminated / managed the causes of death which used to kill us.

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hyperpape
While it’s worth taking this seriously if true, 5-10 cigarettes a week is
relatively little. A pack is 20 cigarettes and a heavy smoker might smoke a
pack a day (sometimes more).

You can see that in the actual reported increase in cancer risk: 1-1.5% total
increase. Definitely meaningful, but not what we associate with smoking.

~~~
onetimemanytime
>> _While it’s worth taking this seriously if true, 5-10 cigarettes a week is
relatively little. A pack is 20 cigarettes and a heavy smoker might smoke a
pack a day (sometimes more)._

What _if_ these 5-10 cigs a week are enough to screw a lot of things up? So
after the first x cigs the damage doesn't increase according to amount smoked?

~~~
hyperpape
Probably not true for cancer risk:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2223525/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2223525/)

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jakecopp
> One bottle of wine per week is associated with an increased absolute
> lifetime cancer risk for non-smokers of 1.0% (men) and 1.4% (women)

Is that 1% on top of whatever double digit percentage everyone is at risk of
cancer anyway?

I'll take the wine!

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krisroadruck
5 cigarettes per week? If you can get it that low why would you smoke at all?
I don't know anyone who smokes, but smokes less than several cigarettes per
day, most in the half-pack to pack range (10-20 per day).

~~~
i_am_proteus
When I quit smoking, I transitioned from a pack a day to a pack a week. I
smoked a pack a week for five years. It was a reasonable way to get some
nicotine and enjoy the social benefits of smoking (at the time, you met girls
outside the bar over a cigarette) without severe health effects.

I finally Quit after growing a beard and disliking the lingering smell of
stale smoke.

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superpermutat0r
I do not understand what absolute lifetime risk increase of 1% means. How many
more people die compared to what?

~~~
antirez
AFAIK it means that if the average person had 10% probably to die because of
cancer, by drinking the probability will be 10.1 (1 percent more).

~~~
antirez
Btw that would be a relative increase. They actually say absolute...

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headShrinker
If alcohol was a pill manufactured by a Pharma corporation there would be no
studies on its adverse affects and doctors would revere it as a miracle drug.

15 years ago the AMA made it a Public Health Initiative to shut down alcohol
consumption.

~~~
awinder
This is already a description of “how much more bad is drinking” because the
control group is largely drinking the same water and breathing the same air.
This is a pretty basic scientific concept.

As for boogeymanning scientists as a whole body, L.O.L. Clearly there wasn’t
some big scientific huddle where everyone bought into the idea of creating a
drug epidemic. It’s endlessly amusing to me the amount of tin foil people are
willing to apply to others.

