Ladies, it's time to rethink this daily consumption of alcohol: Alcohol can increase the risk of breast cancer

SYDNEY: Drinking an alcoholic beverage a day and being overweight can increase the risk of bad cancer, warns a study of more than two lakh women.

"This means that as a result, even relatively low preventable proportions translate into a large number of preventable bad cancers," said Maarit Laaksonen of the University of New South Wales in Australia.

Over the next decade, alcohol use will result in a 13% increase in the number of bad cancers in pre-menopausal women and 6% in postmenopausal bad cancer. Overweight or obesity will contribute 13% of cases.

Together, these modifiable risk factors – regular alcohol consumption and excessive weight gain – will cause nearly 30,000 cases of bad cancer over the next decade, the study published in the International Journal of Cancer.

In addition, the use of menopausal hormone therapy accounted for 7% of postmenopausal bad cancers, of which more than 90% was due to long-term use.

Similarly, long-term use of oral contraceptives accounted for 7% of bad cancers before menopause.

However, it is not recommended for women to limit their use of oral contraceptives because they actually protect against cancer and offer long-term protection against endometrial and ovarian cancers, suggesting that the potential benefits, including reproductive benefits, outweigh the harms, added Laaksonen adding that further studies are needed to confirm the results.

Maintaining a healthy weight and not consuming alcohol regularly could help prevent thousands of cases of bad cancer, he suggested.