We talk to our Chief Medical Advisor, Professor Paul Wallace to find out the facts about alcohol and breast cancer.
When asked to name the main health effects of drinking too much alcohol, many people will first say liver disease. Others will mention heart disease. Some will name mental health issues. Cancers are often low down on the public’s alcohol effects list.
But they shouldn’t be – especially breast cancer.
It is clear from a number of large scale studies that there is a link between alcohol consumption and cancer. Globally, one in five (21.6%) of all alcohol-related deaths are due to cancer. (1) And breast cancer is the most common cancer among women (2) and second only to lung cancer as a cause of cancer death in women. (3)
Professor Paul Wallace, Drinkaware’s Chief Medical Advisor, believes that more people should know that alcohol can increase women’s risk of getting breast cancer.
“My impression is that my patients don’t know about the link between alcohol and breast cancer any more than they do about the association between alcohol and fertility. We can do more to increase awareness.”
We spoke to Professor Wallace to get the facts about alcohol and breast cancer and learnt that:
- There is a lot of evidence to suggest that alcohol increases the risk of developing breast cancer.
- Drinking alcohol does not mean you will get breast cancer, it means your risk of developing it will be increased.
- How much you drink over your lifetime is what increases the risk.
Although alcohol does increase the risk, taken with all the other factors, its contribution to overall causation of breast cancer is estimated to be about 4%. The advice is that if you do regularly drink it should be within the government’s lower risk guidelines.
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