Friday, April 18, 2008
Drinking alcohol raises breast cancer risk

We all know I like my wine, I'm a complete wine addict and until this very morning I was okay with it. Until, of course, I read an article in which research shows even having one to two alcoholic drinks in a day can raise your risks of certain types of breast cancer.

"While the studies do not prove cause and effect, they lend plausibility to growing evidence implicating drinking as a risk factor for breast cancer, says Elizabeth Platz, ScD, a specialist in cancer prevention at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health."

Given the high rate of cancer in Delaware, where I live, and in my family history reading reports like this is alarming. When you put all these factors in the same bowl of likelihood then your risks appear ready to overflow, right?
The researchers reviewed data on 184,418 postmenopausal women, who answered questions about how much alcohol and what type of alcohol they drank each day. They were followed for an average of seven years.

Overall, moderate drinking raised the risk of developing breast cancer, regardless of whether a woman's preference was for beer, wine, or hard liquor. And the more she drank, the greater the risk.
Aw hell.

In other reports, we hear how a glass of wine a day is good for your heart. So how do you weigh the risks? Which studies should take precedence? This I do not know and even my assumptions should be taken lightly because I lack any type of medical background.

I suppose the biggest argument would be regarding your other behavior. When it comes to heart disease there are a plethora of preventive measures you can take to lower your risks. Whereas with breast cancer...well..not so much, unless maybe this means not drinking alcohol is your only preventive measure.

Decisions, decisions.

SOURCE

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6:59 AM
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