Are you one of them who can make all types of reasons just to consume hard drinks? Then this article is a must for you. As we have seen in our previous article that heavy amounts of alcohol seem to shrink the brain, however, there appears to be an extra disadvantage.
According to a latest study, heavy drinkers of beer and spirits seem to experience an increased chance of developing cancer in contrast to the vast population. This study was conducted by Dr. Andrea Benedetti of McGill University, Dr. Marie-Elise Parent of INRS-Institut Armand Frappier and Dr. Jack Siemiatycki of the Université de Montréal along with cancer researchers.
By and large, experts seemed to have found a noteworthy relationship between heavy intake of beer and six different types of cancers. However, moderate drinking i.e. less than daily intake and wine consumption did not explain similar effects.
Lead author of the study, and an assistant professor at McGill’s Departments of Medicine and of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health, Benedetti stated that, “We looked at the data in two ways. We compared people who drank heavily to our reference group, who abstained or drank only very occasionally. We also looked for trends across our categories: non-drinkers, weekly drinkers and daily drinkers.â€
The study findings revealed that people who consumed a lot of hard drinks were believed to have undergone the risk of developing oesophageal cancer sevenfold, colon cancer by approximately 80% and even lung cancer by nearly 50%.
The results seemed to be mind-blowing. “We saw increased risk for esophageal cancer, stomach cancer, colon cancer, liver cancer, pancreatic cancer, lung cancer and prostate cancer. The strongest risk was for esophageal and liver cancer,†elucidates Benedetti.
“This study crystallizes many strands of evidence from different studies on different types of cancer and alcohol consumption,†says Dr. Jack Siematycki, professor, Canada Research Chair and Guzzo Chair in Environment and Cancer, at the Université de Montréal.
Benedetti further claimed that, “Lifetime interviews were conducted with people about their job histories, and detailed information about all the things they could have been exposed to was collected. As it turns out, the data also included information about non-occupational factors such as drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, diet and socio-economic status, among others.â€
She continued, “For the most part we showed that light drinkers were less affected or not affected at all. It is people who drink every day or multiple times a day who are at risk. This adds to the growing body of evidence that heavy drinking is extremely unhealthy in so many ways. Cancer very much included.â€
Benedetti was of the opinion that this information appears to be a bonus as they utilized them which were first collected for a huge professional cancer study conducted in Montreal in the 1980s.
The findings have been published in the journal Cancer Detection and Prevention.