Is drinking wine as bad for you as smoking cigarettes? Study examines cancer risk

What's best for you: drink a bottle of wine every week or smoke 10 cigarettes?

You probably have not answered this question well.

According to a new study, women's cancer risk is the same for everyone.

The cancer risk badociated with cigarette smoking is fairly well known, but "the number of cancers attributed to alcohol is poorly understood by the public," according to the study recently published in the journal BMC Public Health. In fact, a survey conducted in 2017 by the American Society of Clinical Oncology found that 70% of Americans did not know that alcohol consumption could cause cancer.

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Smoking is responsible for 7 million deaths a year worldwide, and it is estimated that two-thirds of smokers should die from their habit, according to the BMJ. According to BMJ, about 3.3 million deaths occur each year because of the harmful use of alcohol, which corresponds to 5.9% of all deaths in the world.

To raise public awareness of the issue of alcohol-related cancer, researchers at Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, Bangor University and the University of Southampton have compared the risk of cancer badociated with drinking wine at risk. of cancer badociated with smoking.

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Based on data from Cancer Research UK and other sources, the scientists concluded "that if 1,000 men and 1,000 non-smoking women drank a bottle of wine a week, about 10 men and 14 additional women could develop cancer during their lifetime. ; equivalent to lifetime cancer risk of a man who smokes five cigarettes a week and a woman of 10 who smokes. "

But the bad news does not stop there. When wine consumption increases to three bottles per week, or about half a bottle a day, "about 19 men and 36 women can develop alcohol-related cancer."

Does this mean that drinking wine is as bad for you as smoking? No, said the researchers.

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They were "absolutely aware that this study does not say that drinking alcohol in moderation is equivalent to smoking. Smoking kills up to two-thirds of its users and cancer is just one of many serious health consequences. This study deals only with cancer risk in isolation. "

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However, the National Cancer Institute considers alcohol as a known human carcinogen, or a carcinogen.

Alcohol consumption has long been linked to the development of head and neck cancer, esophageal cancer, liver cancer, bad cancer and colorectal cancer.

You can read the full study on the BMC Public Health website.

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