A glass of wine a day is often touted as a healthy choice for your heart. Although there are warnings against using other substances like cigarettes, alcohol in moderation is usually considered good – but that can change.
The US Dietary Guidelines for Americans encourages people to avoid large amounts of alcohol and suggests sticking to two or fewer drinks a day for men and one or fewer drinks a day for women.
Still, The latest advice from US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy suggests that even small amounts of alcohol can be harmful and increase the risk of developing cancer.
“Alcohol is a well-established preventable cause of cancer and is responsible for about 100,000 cancer cases and 20,000 cancer deaths annually in the United States—more than 13,500 alcohol-related deaths annually in U.S. traffic accidents—yet most Americans are unaware of this risk,” the Surgeon General’s advisory states.
His advice points to studies that have found a clear link between alcohol consumption and a higher risk of developing seven types of cancer, including breast cancer.
“We now know that there is no safe level for alcohol consumption and that alcohol is a known carcinogen,” he says Ph.D. Faiz Bhoraprofessor of surgery and regional chief of surgery at Hackensack Meridian Health and Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine.
“Its mechanism of cell damage is well established. It causes oxidative stress and impairs DNA repair, among other mechanisms that lead to cell cycle dysregulation and cancer formation.”
The Surgeon General is urging makers of alcoholic beverages like beer and spirits to update warning labels to include cancer risk. Currently, these are mostly drinks that contain alcohol they warn against consumption by pregnant women and driving under the influence.
It would be difficult to find benefits from alcohol consumption.
Ph.D. Faiz Bhora
Department of Surgery at Hackensack Meridian Health and Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine
“More social and political pressures are preventing us from doing the right thing, which would actually be to put a warning label on a substance that is clearly toxic,” Bhora tells CNBC Make It.
“Shares of alcohol makers including Molson-Coors and Anheuser-Busch initially fell more than 1% after advisory,” CNBC reported.
Even previous claims that there are positive effects of a glass of red wine a day are questionable. Previous studies that have shown that small amounts of alcohol per day can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease refer to their methodology, according to The New York Times.
“It would be difficult to find benefits from alcohol consumption,” says Bhora. “Maybe stress reduction with impairment of some emotional abilities [but] I’m not even sure if that’s necessarily a good thing.”
“We’ve always heard these stories about 80- and 90-year-olds living healthy lives and they kind of attribute it to a glass of wine or whiskey. I’m not sure if there’s a real scientific correlation,” he said. he adds.
Alcohol consumption is deeply ingrained in our culture, says Bhora, and “people use it as a crutch for social interactions [and] for emotional reasons.” Still, people are now “very comfortable refusing alcohol at a restaurant or party for health reasons, and I think that’s a path that should be encouraged and supported as a first step.”
For starters, Bhora suggests that “moving away from the one-drink-a-day concept is good or safe,” he says. Try drinking alcohol only on the weekends if you’re cutting back, and slowly cut it out of your diet entirely if you’re prone to it, says Bhora.
“When many of my friends and colleagues who either stopped drinking alcohol or significantly reduced their consumption, [they] they find it liberating,” says Bhora.
“They no longer need it for social interactions, they have much clearer thoughts and in many cases they actually end up being much more productive.”
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