That Happened!

In a world that is literally built around having at least a glass of wine a night, this may be classified as silly, even sexist. New studies are showing that women who drink moderately, even as little as one alcoholic drink per day, are increasing their risk for cancer. In fact, alcohol may be causing up to thirteen percent of all female cancers.

“That’s the take-home message,” said Naomi E. Allen of the University of Oxford, who led the study. “If you are regularly drinking even one drink per day, that’s increasing your risk for cancer.”

For years people around the world have been looking for ways to justify drinking, and the medical community followed suit. A drink a day has been shown to improve heart function, in addition to being a well known social lubricant. That said, it comes as a shock to many that United Kingdom researchers found alcohol to increase the risk of breast, liver, and digestive cancer in women.

Of course the question now is whether or not that risk is overrun by the mental lift associated with booze; it is well known that depression and anxiety can cause cancer as well. While the cardiovascular benefits may be outweighed by the risk of cancer, science hasn’t been able to put happiness into a statistic yet, and many people will bank on that.

“It’s a level of consumption that generally has been found in scientific studies to be associated with a relatively low risk of harms,” said Robert D. Brewer of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “But low risk does not mean no risk.”

The study is being published March 4 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute