No Alcohol

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Anchor lead: Avoiding the development of cancer may also mean avoiding alcohol, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Don’t drink alcohol. That’s the take home from recently released guidelines from the American Cancer Society on reducing one’s risk for cancer. William Nelson, director of the Kimmel Cancer Society at Johns Hopkins, says previous data notwithstanding, the bulk of the evidence seems to support this.

Nelson: If you see people who report on a survey that they only consume low or moderate amounts of alcohol and they have lower risks for cardiovascular disease or cancer is that because of the alcohol they drink or is that because of the kind of person that they are? I think the game goes around to low or moderate alcohol consumption and I think the challenge to making the recommendations is its difficult to know whether it’s the alcohol itself or the lifestyle that one has selected. With that in mind most of the data do line up that alcohol itself is not helpful to you in its physiology vis a vis cancer risk.    :35

At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.