Drinking’s Cancer Link Is Underrated — Especially by Women
The connection between alcohol and breast cancer is particularly alarming. And doctors don’t talk about it enough.
Slow down.
Photographer: Johannes Simon/Getty ImagesNow that the vast majority of Americans don’t smoke, it’s hard to know what we’re supposed to do about the recent news that 40% of cancer cases are preventable. Drinking alcohol is one of the top risk factors — and yet doctors aren’t talking to patients about its connection to cancer.
Alcohol was third behind obesity and smoking among the “modifiable” risk factors according to this new study. You can’t walk into a doctor’s office without being put on a scale, and everyone knows smoking causes cancer, but drinking a glass of wine or two every night? Not long ago, that was considered healthy — due, researchers now say, to a systematic error in several widely publicized earlier studies.