With the new year comes Dry January and a new Surgeon General’s advice on alcohol and cancer risk. It was once believed that drinking moderate amounts of alcohol was beneficial for the heart, but better research methods have disproved this. “Drinking less is a great way to be healthy,” said Dr. Timothy Naimi, director of the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria in British Columbia.
On Friday, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy called for updating the existing Surgeon General’s health warning labels on alcoholic beverages to include the risk of cancer. His proposal would require approval from Congress.
What are the harms of drinking alcohol?
Drinking alcohol increases the risk of several types of cancer, including colon, liver, breast, and mouth and throat. Alcohol breaks down in the body into a substance called acetaldehyde, which can damage your cells and prevent them from repairing themselves. Which creates conditions for cancer to flourish. Naimi said thousands of American deaths each year could be prevented if people followed government dietary guidelines.
Those guidelines recommend limiting men to two drinks or less per day and women to one or less per day. One drink is equivalent to approximately a 12-ounce can of beer, a 5-ounce glass of wine or a shot of liquor. According to Murthy’s Advice, there are approximately 100,000 alcohol-related cancer cases and approximately 20,000 alcohol-related cancer deaths annually in the United States.
Murthy posted on social media platform on Friday
What about moderate drinking?
The idea that moderate drinking has health benefits comes from incomplete studies comparing groups of people based on how much they drink. Typically, it was measured at a time. And none of the studies randomly assigned people to drink or not drink alcohol, so they couldn’t prove cause and effect.
People who drink less alcohol tend to have higher levels of education, higher incomes and better access to health care, Naimi said. “It turns out that when you adjust for those things, the benefits disappear,” he said. The second problem: Most studies did not include young people. About half of people who die from alcohol-related causes die before the age of 50.
“If you’re studying people who survived to middle age, didn’t quit because of any problem, and didn’t become heavy drinkers, that’s a very select group,” Naimi said. “This gives the impression of a benefit for moderate drinkers which is actually a statistical illusion.”
Other studies challenge the idea that alcohol has benefits. These studies compare people with the gene variant that makes drinking unpleasant to people without the gene variant. These types of people drink very little or not at all. One of these studies found that people with the gene variant had a lower risk of heart disease — another blow to the idea that alcohol protects people from heart problems.
What do the guidelines say?
Guidelines vary from country to country but the overall trend is towards drinking less. The United Kingdom, France, Denmark, Holland, and Australia recently reviewed new evidence and lowered their alcohol consumption recommendations. Ireland will require cancer warning labels on alcohol from 2026.
“The scientific consensus has changed due to the overwhelming evidence linking alcohol to more than 200 health conditions, including cancer, cardiovascular diseases and injuries,” said Carina Ferreira-Borges, regional advisor on alcohol at the World Health Organization’s regional office for Europe.
Naomi served on an advisory committee that wanted to reduce the US recommendation for men to one drink per day. That advice was considered and rejected when federal recommendations came out in 2020. “The simple message best supported by evidence is that, if you drink, it is better in terms of health to drink less,” Naimi said.
