Tag Archives: cancer

Regular alcohol consumption linked to increased cancer risk

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Here we go again. Now it appears that if you’re a regular to heavy drinker, you have more chance of developing cancer. And not just a single type, either. Alcohol has been linked to cancer of the breast, liver, colon, pancreas, mouth, throat, larynx, esophagus, and (recently) lungs.

For some of these cancers, such as lung, larynx and colorectal, the cancer risk only sets in when people drink heavily—three or four drinks a day on a regular basis. But just one drink a day raises the risk for cancers of the mouth and esophagus, several studies show.

And the risk of breast cancer starts to rise with as few as three drinks a week, according to the U.K.’s Million Women Study, one of more than 100 studies linking alcohol consumption and breast cancer.

Wall Street Journal: Raising the Chance of Some Cancers With Two Drinks a Day (‘ware the WSJ.com paywall!)

Will this make me drink less beer? Probably not. Just like when there was a study that showed that moderate consumption of alcohol reduced the risk of heart disease, I didn’t start drinking more.

In all things: moderation.

Engineering a cancer-fighting beer

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Resveratrol is getting a lot of press lately. It is the miracle compound which apparently allows the French to enjoy a cuisine loaded with saturated fats and yet avoid heart disease. Its cancer-fighting properties have also been documented.

Some researchers at Rice University are trying to genetically engineer some brewing yeast in order to create beer loaded with resveratrol.

ComputerWorld: University researchers developing cancer-fighting beer

[University of] Wisconsin researchers had noted that adding small doses of resveratrol to the diet of middle-aged mice significantly slows their aging and keeps their hearts healthy. And they added that giving high doses to invertebrates extends their life spans, and high doses also stave off premature death in mice fed a high-fat diet.

[Taylor] Stevenson said that the Rice research group, most of the members of which aren’t old enough to legally drink alcoholic beverages, came up with the idea of adding resveratrol to beer during a casual conversation about potential projects to undertake. “The idea is that it may have greater effects [in beer than in wine],” he added. “The amount of red wine you’d need to drink to get the same results they get with rats in labs is about half a bottle a day.”

He explained that the amount of resveratrol in wine varies from bottle to bottle, since it depends on growing conditions for the grapes and other variables. The researchers felt they could design a beer with higher and more consistent concentrations of the cancer-fighting chemical.

(via Scribal Terror (via Wired (via ComputerWorld)))