Therese Bevers, MD, the medical director of MD Anderson’s Cancer Prevention Center, believes “it is important to remember that every time you drink, you increase your cancer risk. As with cigarettes and processed meat, there is no safe amount of alcohol,” she says. According to Victoria Lee, a senior clinical dietitian at MD Anderson, men and women who choose to drink have different serving recommendations because of how their bodies respond to and break down alcohol “Women are generally smaller and break down alcohol more slowly than men,” Lee says.
Alcohol affects men and women differently both immediately and in the long run. The CDC reports that even if a man and woman drink the same amount of alcohol, the woman will usually have a higher blood alcohol level. And not only do women usually experience the immediate effects of alcohol more quickly than men, but they are also at a higher risk for alcohol’s long-term health effects.
Women need to be more cautious about drinking any amount of alcohol because the alcohol is even more likely to cause cancer in women than in men. Research has shown that women who drink even 1 drink per day have a 5-9% higher chance of developing breast cancer, compared with women who do not drink. The risk is even higher for women who drink more. One reason may be that alcohol affects the amounts of certain sex hormones circulating in the body. For women who have had hormone receptor-positive breast cancer, seven or more weekly drinks increased the chances of having a new cancer diagnosed in the other breast from about 5% to about 10%.
Does drinking less help reduce cancer risk, or does the only benefit come from not drinking at all? “When it comes to your cancer risk, the less you drink, the better,” Bevers says. “We know for certain cancers, like breast cancer, the risk increases with each additional drink,” she says. Interested in drinking less alcohol? Lee suggests trying nonalcoholic beer or wine, opting for a mocktail or cocktail with only a splash of alcohol and making several days a week alcohol free.
Epidemiologic research shows that people who use both alcohol and tobacco have much greater risks of developing cancers of the oral cavity, pharynx, larynx, and esophagus than people who use either alcohol or tobacco alone. In fact, for oral and pharyngeal cancers, the risks associated with using both alcohol and tobacco are multiplicative; that is, they are greater than would be expected from adding the individual risks associated with alcohol and tobacco together. Lee says alcohol may make cells more sensitive to other substances that cause cancer.
