Is alcohol carcinogenic?

[Skip]

This article implies a relationship between alcohol and cancer. Have never heard this claim before....

[Ltldogg]

Jeffn posted this earlier today adding to his thread on alcohol:

viewtopic.php?f=22&t=44058&p=539447#p539447

Alcohol has been listed as a carcinogenic for awhile now and suspected as one for way longer.

[Sagefemme]

The evidence for connection between alcohol consumption and breast cancer is pretty good.

[figlover]

A friend died of throat cancer a few years back. Non smoker, daily drinker though and only 64 years old. She always made fun of her drinking habit so what could one say about it in her presence? Hardly anyone listens to the warnings until it's too late.

[MikeInFL]

reports out there finding that very hot tea can cause throat cancer

[bbq]

FYI - Jeff linked to even more studies recently:

https://www.drmcdougall.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=44058

Light drinking including even one alcoholic drink a day is associated with increased risks of esophageal, gastric and colorectal cancer.

Here's the latest one from his posts:

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(17)32868-4/fulltext

The Nov 7 publication of Alcohol and Cancer: a Statement of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) emphasises the prominence of alcohol as a proven cause of many cancers. This view is not novel and comes exactly 30 years after a working group of the International Agency for Research on Cancer determined that alcoholic beverages were carcinogenic to humans. It has been echoed by other cancer societies since then but seemingly ignored by the wider medical community and by society. The influential endorsement by ASCO provides a powerful impetus to act on decades of evidence that alcohol harms health.

This particular one below should really hit home if our loved ones were still drinking:

The scale of the danger posed by alcohol is immense. Nearly 2 billion people consume alcoholic beverages regularly. All families and societies that consume alcohol are affected, with some populations, such as native Americans, at particularly high risk of harmful outcomes. Europe is the region of greatest consumption and has the heaviest burden of alcohol-related cancers.

How would I interpret that myself?

Blue Zones could get away with just a little bit of meat and alcohol etc. because of their overall dietary patterns in addition to there strong sense of community. I don't even live anywhere close to any Blue Zones myself and therefore staying away from alcohol could very well be an appropriate lifestyle choice for me.

[MikeInFL]

and what about something I would often hear a long time ago but not recently is that alcohol kills brain cells? remember that?

[bbq]

Of course I do remember that scene when Neo was having a drink:

http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0000749/quotes


https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/3d7e3e91-e2ae-4aff-9326-b9ee13a7d757

[petmomful]

I have been thinking a lot about this. One person I really respect is the journalist, Christopher Hitchens. I watch him debate on Youtube. He was British, but became an American citizen. He was a brilliant man, and had a brilliant career. He wrote lots of books and columns, and traveled the world. He was not afraid to say what he thought, even tho sometimes it seemed offensive to some people. (He was BIG against religion.) He appears to have had a lovely family and home. But the one thing it seems he did not do is take care of himself. He got overweight, smoked pretty heavily, and drank lots of whiskey. Someone asked him once why he drank so much and he said his biggest fear was being bored, so he stayed a bit sloshed all the time, or something to this effect. So he got some sort of throat cancer and died at age 62.

I have really been wondering why people just are not willing to take care of themselves; is it so hard to do? If your rich uncle died and left you a Mercedes, I bet you would put only the best oil and gas in it. It seems people forget that EVERYTHING they do in this life, they do in that one body that we have. Our entire society promotes ill health. Every commercial is about fast food or drugs. I sit in my chair and read McDougall books while my husband watches tv, and I see endless commercials for burgers, fries, coke, and Lipitor.

My husband smokes and drinks, and eats whatever he wants. (He is very thin.) All 4 of my kids smoke now, they are all adults. All of them drink. Now we are going to have a big holiday feast and my husband is bringing the turkey! I am bringing my own food.

I go to my grandkid's games, and they are selling candy bars, hot dogs, and soda at the concession stand. Everyone, even little kids, is walking around with sodas. It is quite disturbing to me. I think it is a combination of misinformation, and denial. I am the ONLY person I know who cares about what they eat, except for my son's step-daughter whom he has told me eats healthy now, for her looks. She is a high-school senior. In fact, my family thinks my eating habits are crazy!! I have to follow this WOE by myself, while my husband buys junk food, and does some baking for the holidays. It is not easy, but I am determined. It always amazes me when I read success stories, where the spouse comes home and says, "Honey," we are not going to eat animals anymore," and the spouse joins them on the diet. My husband would never do that. I worry about all of them, but there is nothing I can do but live by example. I wonder if my husband is going to face a lot of medical care in the near future, he is 63 and is being screened every year for cancer now. How am I going to be able to handle all of that if it happens? Am I going to let doctors do what they want to him, or am I going to have to research everything so they don't kill him? He already has high blood pressure, but does not care at all. He just takes his pill. He always seems to skate by unscathed. My son-in-law's dad just had his second stroke, and his mom has dementia. They are deteriorating right before our eyes, but will not consider a diet change, according to my son-in-law. It is downright scary!

I just don't get it! I will stop ranting now, and thanks for listening! We have to stay strong!

[bbq]

The $64,000 question is, were they drinking because they're depressed or were they depressed because of the alcohol?

We're supposed to learn self-regulation when we're still very young. If that mission weren't accomplished early on, it's gonna be disastrous afterwards since we tend to use substance abuse as a tool for emotional self-regulation. Sometimes it's tobacco and/or alcohol, others might prefer recreational drugs, of course there's a little something called SOS that could be found almost everywhere thanks to the omnipresence of junk.

I learned a lot from watching Dr. Carol Westby's lectures and it's so funny when she's talking about McDonald's:

https://catalog.pesi.com/speaker/carol-westby-6814

Telling Tales: Personal Event Narratives and Life Stories.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27679843
http://scihub22266oqcxt.onion.link/10.1044/2016_LSHSS-15-0073

As always conventional medicine could only offer very little (i.e. nothing) for alcoholics, time to take a look at nutrition as well as some functional foods like kudzu root:

https://www.drmcdougall.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=55705#p563843

Dr Abram Hoffer MD - Niacin and Alcoholism, Cofounder of AA Took Niacin For The Rest of his Life
http://youtu.be/l0NXbSucXx0

Dr Abram Hoffer and Bill W Alcoholics Anonymous Niacin for treating alcoholics
http://youtu.be/lSttuUeVlo8

The Treatment of Alcoholism with Vitamin B3
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jonathan_Prousky/publication/269929064_The_Treatment_of_Alcoholism_with_Vitamin_B_3/links/549977600cf22a8313961daa/The-Treatment-of-Alcoholism-with-Vitamin-B-3.pdf

Vitamin B3 for Depression: Case Report and Review of the Literature
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jonathan_Prousky/publication/287922529_Vitamin_B3_for_depression_Case_report_and_review_of_the_literature/links/573f092408ae9ace84133864/Vitamin-B3-for-depression-Case-report-and-review-of-the-literature.pdf

The Role of Vitamins B3 and C in the Treatment of Histadelia
http://orthomolecular.org/library/jom/2002/pdf/2002-v17n01-p017.pdf

Treatment Protocol for Alcoholism
http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v01n06.shtml

The Vitamin Cure for Alcoholism: Orthomolecular Treatment of Addictions
https://www.amazon.com/Vitamin-Cure-Alcoholism-Orthomolecular-Addictions-ebook/dp/B01EVXAF6A

[bbq]

Drinking Alcohol Raises Cancer Risk by Causing Irreversible DNA Damage
http://www.newsweek.com/drinking-alcohol-could-raise-cancer-risk-permanently-changing-dna-study-finds-770097

Alcohol and cancer: This is how booze damages DNA inside cells
http://www.cruk.cam.ac.uk/news/latest-news/alcohol-and-cancer-how-booze-damages-dna-inside-cells

Alcohol and endogenous aldehydes damage chromosomes and mutate stem cells
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25154

Totally NOT cool at all, why even bother?