If I stop drinking does that decrease risk of cancer?
I’ve been drinking for 7 years. Typicall I’ve only drank 3-4 drinks a year. If I stop drinking now, would that help decrease chances of cancer? If it does will it take a long time?
Don’t take this the wrong way, but if you’re worried about getting cancer from 3-4 drinks per year, it sounds like you might be dealing with a fair bit of anxiety.
Stress caused by anxiety is bad for your health and a possible cancer risk, and almost certainly worse for you than 3-4 drinks a year. I don’t want you to now be anxious about your anxiety, but this might be a good thing to focus on to improve your general quality of life (and possibly reduce your cancer risk in the process).
You could start by talking to a doctor or other medical professional about it, or try finding a therapist in your area. The therapist search on https://www.psychologytoday.com/ is a good place to look, or try an online service like Better Help.
[edit: corrected overstatement about stress being a major cancer risk]
Fair question, and looks like I overstated that link.
Chronic stress affects your immune system (via cortisol, long term inflammation) and that is no bueno for all sorts of health outcomes, including likely making it harder to fight off tumours.
But to my surprise, there doesn’t actually seem to be solid evidence of a causal link between stress and increased risk of developing cancer.
If you are referring to the J curve (that the lowest point is those who drink a little), it's usually explained that those who don't drink at all usually do so because of poor health.
You drink 3-4 time a year? It would change absolutely nothing for you stopping drinking. Getting cancer is a game of probability. Risk factors increase the probability (do not necessarily cause cancer). Your 4 drinks don't change anything, don't worry. Thing is different if you drink 3 drinks a day...
Alcohol, similar to eating red meat, smoking, sunlight, smoked food, etc a cancer risk, but it does not always cause cancer. Given that you lifetime chance of developing cancer is around 50%, a 0.5% increased chance of cancer is fairly insignificant on an individual level (but from a public health standpoint it might be), but a 20% increase is.
A small amount of alcohol like this presents a fairly insignificant risk. There is no truly safe level, but you would have to drink a lot for a significantly increase in cancer risk. At that point you are at a far higher risk of other forms of poisoning. Even just drunkenness itself highly increase your risk of major falls, car crashes, even house fires. With alcohol, cancer is the least of it's problems.
There are some large, easily avoidable cancer risks in daily life, like sunlight exposure, which can be prevented with sunscreen. Whenever you hear that "X causes cancer", always find out how big the effect is, it could be almost insignificant like eating red meat, or a huge risk, like smoking or sunburns .
That's really not a lot of drinking. I guess technically, yes, it would decrease the risk but your risk is already really low at 3-4 servings of alcohol per year.
it might. but the difference would be absolutely marginal. also there's a line between reasonably moderating your life not to die of cancer at 30 and worrying about everything and micromanaging every single aspect of your life to minimize your risk of cancer, which could ironically increase it. i know you didnt say anything like that, but many keep reading that x thing causes cancer and cut it out of their lives, then read that y causes it too and so on, just be reasonable
True enough, but you should try to not worry about cancer as much. Not saying don't stop drinking; only good things can come out of not drinking alcohol, but stress and anxiety are also pretty bad for your health. If this is as bad as it looks, you might wanna talk to a professional.
Note that moderate intake of alcohol can be beneficial to health.
More than 100 prospective studies show an inverse association between light to moderate drinking and risk of heart attack, ischemic (clot-caused) stroke, peripheral vascular disease, sudden cardiac death, and death from all cardiovascular causes.
But if you're only considering cancer, then as some of the other answers suggested, cutting alcohol intake to zero could reduce the risk of getting cancer, although the reduction is likely very small that's neglectable.
The better conclusion is "people who drink in moderation have a decreased risk of cancer", which is different. Causation is hard to prove, especially when we can only ethically do observational studies. It's likely that people who drink in moderation are more likely to make healthy choices in other areas of their life or have other factors that reduce risk.
Drinking alcohol doesn't cause cancer. It destroys your liver. And it would need more like 4 times a week (depending on how much you drink every night).
Lol. Okay. Your risk of getting cancer doubles (or becomes three times) if you drink 1,5l of beer or half a liter of wine daily?! four and a half cans/small bottles of beer each day? who does that? at that point i'd be afraid of becoming an alcoholic.
Only if you're a White Lab Rat. Anything gives them cancer. Otherwise, unless your drinks are in excess of a gallon per glass I don't think you've a worry.
True enough, but you should try to not worry about cancer as much. Not saying don't stop drinking; only good things can come out of not drinking alcohol, but stress and anxiety are also pretty bad for your health. If this is as bad as it looks, you might wanna talk to a professional.