Your happy hour habits could raise your cancer risk
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. We all know cigarettes cause cancer. The memo on booze hasn’t reached everyone.
Doctors say many people are surprised to learn alcohol raises the risk of certain cancers, such as liver, colorectal and breast cancer. And cancer patients say they aren’t always aware of the increased risk until after they have been diagnosed. As awareness increases—the former U.S.
surgeon general recently called for adding warning labels on alcoholic beverages—more people are rethinking their drinking habits. On social-media sites like Reddit, cancer patients talk about replacing alcohol with cannabis, although this, too, has health issues. Others opt for mocktails or nothing at all.
“I drank my whole 20s. I was at events and happy hours every night," says Lauren Nostro, a 35-year-old creative strategist who lives in Buffalo, N.Y., and used to work in the music industry. After being diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer at the age of 30, she knew she needed to make some changes.
Three years ago, she stopped drinking. Before she was diagnosed with breast cancer she says she was unaware that alcohol was a risk factor. “When you actually learn about the negative effects of alcohol, especially as it relates to women and cancer, there’s no justification for me to want to do it," she says.
“It’s like, why even?" Alcohol directly contributes to roughly 100,000 cancer cases a year in the U.S., and 20,000 annual deaths. It increases the risk of seven cancers. For some—like liver, head and neck, and colorectal cancer—the increased risk comes with moderate to heavy drinking.
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