"...among 100 women who have less than one drink per week, about 17 will develop an alcohol-related cancer."
How does this insane number get unnoticed for so long. I really find it hard to believe. < One drink per day more dangerous than smoking a pack per day?
Edit: Ok, looked into the reference and it's a bit more subtle, though I can't find numbers for people not consuming anything, allthough one would think they'd get 0% alcohol related cancers.
"For example, a study of 226,162 individuals reported
that the absolute risk of developing any alcohol-related cancer over the lifespan of
a woman increases from approximately 16.5% (about 17 out of every 100 individuals)
for those who consume less than one drink per week, to 19.0% (19 out of every 100
individuals) for those who consume one drink daily on average to approximately
21.8% (about 22 out of every 100 individuals) for those who consume two drinks
daily on average (Figure 5). That is about five more women out of 100 who would
have developed cancer due to a higher level of alcohol consumption."
Pretty significant, although "less than one drink per day" is a bit vague.
ftrobro · 1h ago
> allthough one would think they'd get 0% alcohol related cancers
I assume "alcohol related" in this context means that alcohol consumption increases the risk for those types of cancers, but you might still get those types of cancers even if you have never consumed any alcohol. And "less than once drink per week" is assumed to be almost the same as never consuming any alcohol at all, so 17% is the risk for women who never consume any alcohol.
teekert · 1h ago
Ah yes that must be it. 17% of women get these cancers, which are cancers that you have a higher risk of when drinking, but in this case they are not caused by drinking. I though < 1 per day is still drinking 6 special Belgian beers of 8-10 % alcohol on a Saturday so I thought, that's still quite something. At least I'd be heavily hung over the next day. I expected the baseline to just be "non-drinking".
Very poorly written I'd say.
maltelau · 1h ago
In your quote, the number is "<1 per week", not "<1 per day"
asah · 2h ago
Hahaha there's the rub.
This data is self reported of course, and "one drink daily" are people who actually drink a lot more.
If you actually drink less than daily, very little to worry about AFAICT.
VagabundoP · 1h ago
Just the standard amount of worry then. For the standard person with the standard lifestyle.
PeterStuer · 2h ago
How did they establish causality, or is it just a correlation potentially resulting from hidden variables? E.g., I do not know many smokers that do not touch alcohol, but plenty of non smoking abstinates. I also know plenty of sedentary obese heavy drinkers, where a higher percentage of the teetotal lot are more health obsessed in other ways.
Gareth321 · 1h ago
They can't really. This data is almost always self-reported. They can attempt to eliminate common confounds but the data is very noisy. People have a lot of bias and inaccuracies when reporting the primary data. Even questions like "how many cigarettes per day/week/month/year do you smoke?" is subject to enormous inaccuracies. And the more questions re confounds which are asked, the more the noise, and the lower the number of questionnaires returned. And no matter how many confounds are included in the questionnaires, there are likely a thousand more which also matter. It's a fairly major issue in health research, and why we so often see headlines with conflicting findings every few years. See research into the health of eggs, for example. One should be highly skeptical of correlative health evidence at this point (and this is what most of the clickbait studies are). Instead, try to focus on the causative research where they identify specific genes or chemical mechanisms which cause outcomes. This is much more difficult, of course, and sparse.
spacebanana7 · 1h ago
I wish there was more causative research where nutrition was artificially changed in a highly managed population. For example in a prison or military barracks.
I suspect there's a lot we could learn about the health of eggs, for example, if we could just pay some prisoners to eat varying quantities of them for 20 years, then look at the development of their health.
laserdancepony · 50m ago
You should message Vault-Tec about that opportunity you seek, they might already have a suitable Vault for that.
iLoveOncall · 1h ago
I imagine it's because they count any cancer that could be caused by heavy-drinking as an "alcohol-related cancer", regardless of whether it was actually caused by alcohol or not.
FinnLobsien · 2h ago
If I recall correctly (and I might not), the idea that moderate drinking is healthy came from a faulty study where people who didn't drink at all were less healthy.
But the people who didn't drink at all often didn't drink because they self-excluded because of alcoholism or disease.
They weren't less healthy because they didn't drink, they didn't drink because they were less healthy.
dmurray · 1h ago
I think you're broadly correct. But it's not one "faulty study". Every attempt to do a broad population-based study of alcohol use vs health outcomes finds this effect.
Controlling for why people don't drink is difficult to do without introducing bias. So there are still two competing theories: either the non-drinkers were a less healthy cohort to begin with, or moderate drinking has net health benefits.
FinnLobsien · 1h ago
The current WHO and IARC guidance is that there's no safe level of alcohol consumption that doesn't affect health and that alcohol is a clear carcinogen.
I don't know how that could have health benefits.
HPsquared · 1h ago
I wonder if the same applies to exercise and physical activity in general.
FinnLobsien · 1h ago
Is anyone saying exercise is unhealthy? Not sure I follow the point
lwansbrough · 1h ago
Humans have been drinking alcohol for like 10,000 years. The real question is who cares if it’s healthy.
Caring about the health effects of casual drinking is like counting the calories in a cupcake. If it matters to you, it’s probably not for you.
echelon_musk · 1h ago
I care.
djmips · 1h ago
It's poison. If it never existed and someone tried to bring it to market today it would never fly. Should have skull and crossbones on it. Makes about as much sense as huffing gasoline.
themafia · 1h ago
> and someone tried to bring it to market today it would never fly
In a regulatory domain? Perhaps not; however, we did try prohibition. It didn't go well.
> Should have skull and crossbones on it.
Which didn't work. So some people go the idea to poison it. Then people learned to re-distill it to avoid the blindness it would otherwise cause.
> Makes about as much sense as huffing gasoline
Most people don't regularly drink to the kinds of excess that would make this an apt comparison.
TrololoTroll · 1h ago
>however, we did try prohibition. It didn't go well
... Because it was already there. The hypothetical would imply a world where people weren't already high functioning addicts
mettamage · 1h ago
Sure, but so is society on our psychological health in general. Apparently, we're so anxious that a lot of us subconsciously feel we need to drink in order to just have an actual conversation.
Social anxiety is the true poison in society. Without it, we wouldn't drink nearly as much.
I have nuanced takes that don't agree with the take that I just wrote, but I find there to be a kernel of truth in it. I've fought social anxiety for years, and started out clubbing sober when I was 17. I did start drinking around 18 but mostly out of curiosity. It was only around the age of 30 that I really noticed that by then I did it to alleviate social anxiety. It caught me off-guard since my teenage self would scoff at the idea of it. I'd never need alcohol to alleviate my social anxiety, I'd just grit through it and talk to whomever I want. I think I just became a bit comfortable and soft. It's easy-ish for me to switch back though due to the reference experiences I have being a teen, dealing with social anxiety sober. So that's a huge blessing. Not everyone is that lucky.
ddingus · 1h ago
Nah, it is just one of many wonders found in mother natures kitchen. Like all things, moderation is in your best life.
It makes far more sense than huffing gas.
It makes the most sense a couple maybe few times a year.
The worst thing to do is over hype the downsides. People tune out and then have no real guidance to draw from.
conartist6 · 1h ago
I admire your passion, but it's not such a strong argument. Lots of medicines are also poisons. Oxygen is kinda a poison. What alcohol is is a drug.
hypertele-Xii · 1h ago
It's poison... developed by fungi to kill bacteria. Largely irrelevant to humans.
average_r_user · 1h ago
In Italy, cigarette packs carry shocking pictures of diseased lungs, tumors, and other severe health effects, yet they fail to deter smokers. It’s essentially a cultural problem.
benterix · 1h ago
> yet they fail to deter smokers.
The existing ones, sure - you get used to it. But for non-smokers, that's a visible indicator of what you're bringing on yourself if you start smoking, so it has a deterring value. It helps you to present an abstract idea into something palpable that you can't ignore that easily.
dmurray · 1h ago
Something has deterred smokers: the overall rate of adults who smoke has fallen from 50% to 25% in the last 50 years [0] - the source gives measures by gender and birth cohort, but you can aggregate them any way you want to see a big drop off.
Maybe. But zyn is a thing breathing new life into tobacco companies
pixelpoet · 2h ago
I wish the popular and completely absurd phrase "drugs and alcohol" would become outdated.
Somehow alcohol always gets separate consideration and categorisation, while most people would laugh if asked "is moderate tobacco/meth/ecstasy/whatever use healthy?"
jasode · 1h ago
>Somehow alcohol always gets separate consideration and categorisation, while most people would laugh if asked "is moderate tobacco/meth/ecstasy/
The "drugs" of alcohol and caffeine are more deeply integrated into public social life. Wine is mentioned in the Bible. Beer is sold at family outings like baseball games. The White House serves alcohol at official state dinners. President Obama had the famous "beer summit" https://www.google.com/search?q=Obama+beer+summit&tbm=isch
Also, the existence of alcohol is caused by common natural processes. E.g. leaving apples or pears out on the kitchen counter too long and it naturally ferments which creates alcohol. I remember leaving some old pears in the kitchen and they eventually smelled like alcohol. I ate the pears and they definitely tasted like alcohol. The point is, alcohol can come into existence without even doing anything.
In contrast, the White House isn't handing out crystal meth or heroin at state dinners and there aren't any natural decaying processes that turns random food into ecstasy. Marijuana is natural but it isn't culturally accepted by the public. (President Clinton's "Yes, but I didn't inhale.")
Alcohol/caffeine have a lot of acceptable functional uses that the other drug categories don't have which is why society continues to talk about them as a separate class.
stinos · 1h ago
This is just the explanation of why it's "drugs and alcohol", and OP probably is well aware of that. The point is there's an argument to be made that even though history shaped this distinction it's harmful in some ways and progress should be made towards removing this partcular distinction and make it one based on science, e.g. a more fair classification based on toxicity/negative effects.
jasode · 1h ago
>and proghress should be made towards removing the distinction. [...] history shaped this distinction
The point I'm trying to make is that society can't make progress towards unifying alcohol into a category with fetanyl -- because society will continue to use alcohol in socially acceptable functions.
It's not just about the past. It's this ongoing use of alcohol that's very different from fetanyl that will continue to keep alcohol as a separate category in the public's mind. Our future behaviors will keep reinforcing the separate categories in future discussions. Yes, you can scientifically unify "alcohol is a drug" together with "fetanyl is a drug" ... but our deep cultural integration with alcohol prevents society from doing that. E.g. Do we expect the bride of a future wedding in 2026 to choose which wine to serve at the reception? Yes and behaviors like that means we'll continue to categorize alcohol as a separate thing from fetanyl in 2026. If the hired wedding planner tells the bride, "how can you order wine when it's in the same scientific category of toxic danger like fetanyl?!?", that planner will get fired.
socalgal2 · 1h ago
That science should take into account it positive effects on society at large. it’s possible society wouldn’t exist without alcohol. There are customs about drinking with new partners (tribe leaders, business leaders) because until you see them with their shields down you can’t trust them.
There’s also a lot of joy people get. Removing that joy might be a net negative over all. It’s like another said, cupcakes, ice cream, candy, donuts are bad for you but people get joy from them so we just encourage moderation
coldblues · 1h ago
As far as I understand, the aftereffects of alcohol are due to its poisonous effects on organs, receptors and neurons. Drugs act on receptors directly by binding to them or restricting binding.
imjonse · 1h ago
while the special treatment of alcohol is due to cultural,historical and commercial reasons, from a toxicology point of view it makes sense to treat them all separately. But I agree with your sentiment.
Dylan16807 · 1h ago
Moderate nicotine use is fine if you aren't using a carcinogenic method to get it into your body.
Moderate meth use, uh, what does moderate mean? But when I laugh it's more that I doubt the very premise.
Moderate ecstacy use, go for it.
carlosjobim · 1h ago
Because alcohol is not a medicine. Tobacco also gets excluded for that reason.
Stealthisbook · 40m ago
I remember the exploration of alcohol consumption stats from one of Michael Hobbes' podcasts and how hard it is to untangle both self-reporting and confounding factors. Like, the population of reported non-drinkers is dominated by both religious abstainers who may otherwise differ culturally from the broader population, and alcoholics who've needed to cut out drinking entirely
lm28469 · 1h ago
No worries, all the kids ditched alcohol a while ago and are on n2o these days. On my morning walks I see a few 3L+ tanks discarded around my block of flats, there are new ones almost every day
This newer work seems basically to be arguing that the effect on the lefthand size of the curve is because drinking alcohol is so common that people who drink nothing are likely to be in poor health already.
malablaster · 2h ago
You’d be hard pressed to convince me to consume a class 1 carcinogen in moderation for health benefits.
Dylan16807 · 1h ago
Class 1 just means "confirmed" with absolutely nothing stated about what the risk level is. You'd be hard pressed to convince me to make any decision based on that alone.
benbristow · 1h ago
I'll drink to that.
More state sponsored propoganda to make us miserable. They don't like you having a few drinks with friends and speaking truths. It makes you hard to control and govern.
carlosjobim · 1h ago
Looks like you've had a little much to think, mister.
ddingus · 1h ago
#BAM! Indeed, tip of the hat to you.
I want that on a t-shirt
gonzo41 · 1h ago
It's not about control. It's about money.
renegade-otter · 1h ago
I don't drink it for the taste. It makes problems go away until you wake up and the problems are still there.
deadbabe · 2h ago
There is no amount of alcohol that is good for you. It is a toxin that only harms your body. The rising popularity and creativity of mocktails shows that people can still have a fun drink that doesn’t involve poisoning their body.
And if you use alcohol for social lubrication, you only screw yourself over by never learning how to truly socialize and let go of inhibition naturally.
PeterStuer · 2h ago
Seeing the amount of sugar and sweeteners in the "mocktails" and alcohol free beers/wines, I'd say it most certainly does involve poisoning your body.
slau · 1h ago
If you dig a tiny bit into mixology, you'll notice the ludicrous amounts of sugar that goes into cocktails.
An espresso martini has 80% of your daily sugar intake. That's 25g of sugar. Moscow mule 75%, Sangria 70%. All of those in one single serving.
I'd wager most people don't stop at one drink.
Daiquiri has sugar. Espresso martini has sugar syrup. A gimlet has simple syrup. Irish coffee has sugar. Long Island Ice Tea has more sugar syrup than any single liquor. Mai Tai has simple syrup. Mojito has cane sugar.
Ekaros · 1h ago
Alcoholic wines also have massive range. Very dry ones do not have much, but once you get to medium and beyond they are in soft drink territory or even more...
I think normal cocktails can end up in similar place, especially if say juices are component.
deadbabe · 2h ago
There are sugar free mocktails.
FirmwareBurner · 1h ago
Like a glass of just water?
RandomLensman · 2h ago
Avoiding alcohol completely would need to exclude things other than just alcoholic drinks, I think.
bob1029 · 1h ago
Alcohol is essential in many cooking scenarios. It is a much more powerful solvent than water and can better extract essential oils, fats, etc.
raincole · 1h ago
Yeah but in most dishes a fair share of alcohol is vaporized during cooking.
agos · 52m ago
this is why I avoid ripe fruit, it only harms my body!
How does this insane number get unnoticed for so long. I really find it hard to believe. < One drink per day more dangerous than smoking a pack per day?
Edit: Ok, looked into the reference and it's a bit more subtle, though I can't find numbers for people not consuming anything, allthough one would think they'd get 0% alcohol related cancers.
"For example, a study of 226,162 individuals reported that the absolute risk of developing any alcohol-related cancer over the lifespan of a woman increases from approximately 16.5% (about 17 out of every 100 individuals) for those who consume less than one drink per week, to 19.0% (19 out of every 100 individuals) for those who consume one drink daily on average to approximately 21.8% (about 22 out of every 100 individuals) for those who consume two drinks daily on average (Figure 5). That is about five more women out of 100 who would have developed cancer due to a higher level of alcohol consumption."
Pretty significant, although "less than one drink per day" is a bit vague.
I assume "alcohol related" in this context means that alcohol consumption increases the risk for those types of cancers, but you might still get those types of cancers even if you have never consumed any alcohol. And "less than once drink per week" is assumed to be almost the same as never consuming any alcohol at all, so 17% is the risk for women who never consume any alcohol.
Very poorly written I'd say.
This data is self reported of course, and "one drink daily" are people who actually drink a lot more.
If you actually drink less than daily, very little to worry about AFAICT.
I suspect there's a lot we could learn about the health of eggs, for example, if we could just pay some prisoners to eat varying quantities of them for 20 years, then look at the development of their health.
But the people who didn't drink at all often didn't drink because they self-excluded because of alcoholism or disease.
They weren't less healthy because they didn't drink, they didn't drink because they were less healthy.
Controlling for why people don't drink is difficult to do without introducing bias. So there are still two competing theories: either the non-drinkers were a less healthy cohort to begin with, or moderate drinking has net health benefits.
I don't know how that could have health benefits.
Caring about the health effects of casual drinking is like counting the calories in a cupcake. If it matters to you, it’s probably not for you.
In a regulatory domain? Perhaps not; however, we did try prohibition. It didn't go well.
> Should have skull and crossbones on it.
Which didn't work. So some people go the idea to poison it. Then people learned to re-distill it to avoid the blindness it would otherwise cause.
> Makes about as much sense as huffing gasoline
Most people don't regularly drink to the kinds of excess that would make this an apt comparison.
... Because it was already there. The hypothetical would imply a world where people weren't already high functioning addicts
Social anxiety is the true poison in society. Without it, we wouldn't drink nearly as much.
I have nuanced takes that don't agree with the take that I just wrote, but I find there to be a kernel of truth in it. I've fought social anxiety for years, and started out clubbing sober when I was 17. I did start drinking around 18 but mostly out of curiosity. It was only around the age of 30 that I really noticed that by then I did it to alleviate social anxiety. It caught me off-guard since my teenage self would scoff at the idea of it. I'd never need alcohol to alleviate my social anxiety, I'd just grit through it and talk to whomever I want. I think I just became a bit comfortable and soft. It's easy-ish for me to switch back though due to the reference experiences I have being a teen, dealing with social anxiety sober. So that's a huge blessing. Not everyone is that lucky.
It makes far more sense than huffing gas.
It makes the most sense a couple maybe few times a year.
The worst thing to do is over hype the downsides. People tune out and then have no real guidance to draw from.
The existing ones, sure - you get used to it. But for non-smokers, that's a visible indicator of what you're bringing on yourself if you start smoking, so it has a deterring value. It helps you to present an abstract idea into something palpable that you can't ignore that easily.
[0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2566030/
Somehow alcohol always gets separate consideration and categorisation, while most people would laugh if asked "is moderate tobacco/meth/ecstasy/whatever use healthy?"
The "drugs" of alcohol and caffeine are more deeply integrated into public social life. Wine is mentioned in the Bible. Beer is sold at family outings like baseball games. The White House serves alcohol at official state dinners. President Obama had the famous "beer summit" https://www.google.com/search?q=Obama+beer+summit&tbm=isch
Also, the existence of alcohol is caused by common natural processes. E.g. leaving apples or pears out on the kitchen counter too long and it naturally ferments which creates alcohol. I remember leaving some old pears in the kitchen and they eventually smelled like alcohol. I ate the pears and they definitely tasted like alcohol. The point is, alcohol can come into existence without even doing anything.
In contrast, the White House isn't handing out crystal meth or heroin at state dinners and there aren't any natural decaying processes that turns random food into ecstasy. Marijuana is natural but it isn't culturally accepted by the public. (President Clinton's "Yes, but I didn't inhale.")
Alcohol/caffeine have a lot of acceptable functional uses that the other drug categories don't have which is why society continues to talk about them as a separate class.
The point I'm trying to make is that society can't make progress towards unifying alcohol into a category with fetanyl -- because society will continue to use alcohol in socially acceptable functions.
It's not just about the past. It's this ongoing use of alcohol that's very different from fetanyl that will continue to keep alcohol as a separate category in the public's mind. Our future behaviors will keep reinforcing the separate categories in future discussions. Yes, you can scientifically unify "alcohol is a drug" together with "fetanyl is a drug" ... but our deep cultural integration with alcohol prevents society from doing that. E.g. Do we expect the bride of a future wedding in 2026 to choose which wine to serve at the reception? Yes and behaviors like that means we'll continue to categorize alcohol as a separate thing from fetanyl in 2026. If the hired wedding planner tells the bride, "how can you order wine when it's in the same scientific category of toxic danger like fetanyl?!?", that planner will get fired.
https://longnow.org/talks/02022-slingerland/
There’s also a lot of joy people get. Removing that joy might be a net negative over all. It’s like another said, cupcakes, ice cream, candy, donuts are bad for you but people get joy from them so we just encourage moderation
Moderate meth use, uh, what does moderate mean? But when I laugh it's more that I doubt the very premise.
Moderate ecstacy use, go for it.
https://www.quickwhip.de/collections/miami-magic/products/mi...
This newer work seems basically to be arguing that the effect on the lefthand size of the curve is because drinking alcohol is so common that people who drink nothing are likely to be in poor health already.
More state sponsored propoganda to make us miserable. They don't like you having a few drinks with friends and speaking truths. It makes you hard to control and govern.
I want that on a t-shirt
And if you use alcohol for social lubrication, you only screw yourself over by never learning how to truly socialize and let go of inhibition naturally.
An espresso martini has 80% of your daily sugar intake. That's 25g of sugar. Moscow mule 75%, Sangria 70%. All of those in one single serving.
I'd wager most people don't stop at one drink.
Daiquiri has sugar. Espresso martini has sugar syrup. A gimlet has simple syrup. Irish coffee has sugar. Long Island Ice Tea has more sugar syrup than any single liquor. Mai Tai has simple syrup. Mojito has cane sugar.
I think normal cocktails can end up in similar place, especially if say juices are component.