For a long time, there were few types of cancer directly associated with alcohol, which made people paralyzed by the carcinogenic effects of alcohol. It seems that the harm of alcohol can be left behind by boasting of a good liver. However, research and tracking in recent years have revealed that the cancers caused by alcohol are not limited to liver cancer, but are caused by everything from the digestive tract to the respiratory tract to the skin. The full blossom of cancer rates RehmJ et al. made a statistic in the 2014 World Cancer Report – 3.5% of cancers are caused by alcohol, while one in every 30 cancer deaths is caused by alcohol. And, the risk of alcohol-caused cancer is increasing in recent years, with 5.5% of cancers already caused by alcohol in 2012 alone (5.8% of cancer deaths). As if these numbers weren’t enough of a wake-up call for drinkers, a bunch of recent experimental results follow. In August 2015, a prospective cohort study that counted 88,084 women and 47,881 men over 30 years of follow-up found an irrefutable linear relationship between alcohol and cancer occurrence. In another similar study, researchers found an associated risk of 1.13 (women) and 1.26 (men) for the development of some cancers (colorectal, female breast, oral cavity, pharynx, larynx, liver, and esophagus). Other researchers used cohort studies to verify the types of cancers associated with alcohol consumption and found that subjects who drank heavily (>3 times a day) were more likely to develop five types of cancer compared to non-drinkers: upper gastrointestinal/respiratory cancers, lung cancer, female breast cancer, colorectal tumors, and melanoma. Subjects who consumed light to moderate amounts of alcohol were more likely to develop the remaining four tumors listed above, except for lung cancer. Other tumors are not related to alcohol consumption? Don’t be naive, another study counted 486538 cancer cases in 572 experiments and found that compared to non-drinkers and light to moderate drinkers, heavy drinkers had an associated risk of 5.13 for oral cancer and nasopharyngeal cancer, 4.95 for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, 1.44 for colorectal cancer, 2.65 for laryngeal cancer, 1.61 for breast cancer, 1.21 for stomach cancer, 2.07 for liver cancer, and 2.07 for bladder cancer. Similar results can be seen in prostate cancer and melanoma. Look at this result, it’s almost a clean sweep. How many other tumors can be said to be unrelated to alcohol? Mechanisms of alcohol carcinogenesis The IARC has long classified alcohol as a class 1 carcinogen along with its primary metabolite formaldehyde, with the highest level of evidence of carcinogenicity in both humans and animals. The specific mechanism by which alcohol causes cancer varies depending on the type of cancer. For example, in liver carcinogenesis, alcohol causes cirrhosis first, while in upper gastrointestinal tract tumors, it is mainly due to the conversion of ethanol to acetaldehyde in saliva, which causes the concentration of acetaldehyde in saliva to reach 10-100 times that in blood. In addition to the direct carcinogenic effect of alcoholic acetaldehyde, alcohol can also promote the production of large amounts of oxygen radicals under the action of cytochrome P450, which can cause extensive mutations in DNA and methylation and acetylation of histones. At the same time, alcohol can reduce the concentration of retinoic acid, which leads to excessive cell proliferation and differentiation, thus making it more susceptible to carcinogenesis. Alcohol can also affect the effects of hormones, such as elevating estradiol levels, which is one of the causes of cancers of the female reproductive system, such as breast cancer. It can do more harm than good There are now commercially available advertisements that promote a range of benefits such as softening blood vessels and lowering blood pressure with alcohol. But this is still controversial in academic circles. Although an article in The Lancet a few months ago claimed that small amounts of alcohol had some effect on reducing the incidence of cardiovascular disease, another study published in the journal Nature later showed that alcohol consumption had no effect on cardiovascular disease rates. Other national and international studies have claimed that even small amounts of alcohol can be harmful to cardiovascular disease. Even if small amounts of alcohol were to reduce the incidence of cardiovascular disease, the average drinker would be less likely to have a myocardial infarction (risk ratio of 0.76) and more likely to have alcohol-related cancer and trauma (risk ratios of 1.51 and 1.29, respectively), which would do more harm than good. Unfortunately, at present, alcohol consumption is similar to smoking in that medical research findings do not produce utility that rivals the former due to the propaganda of large corporations and the influence of a large chain of interests. Companies may not care about how many cancers their products can induce and how many medical resources they consume, but from the perspective of preventive medicine, medical institutions at all levels can try to replace the previous “drinking alcohol hurts the liver” with detailed propaganda about alcohol causing cancer. At the same time, social welfare intervention is also indispensable, for example, Bill Gates led, attracted the participation of political and business circles of bigwigs to refuse second-hand smoke activities, there are good results.