For a long time, there were very few types of cancer that were directly linked to alcohol, which paralyzed people from thinking about the carcinogenic effects of alcohol. It seemed that by boasting of a “good liver”, the dangers of alcohol could be forgotten. However, in recent years, research and tracking has revealed that the cancers caused by alcohol are not limited to liver cancer, but range from digestive tract to respiratory tract to skin. The full blossom of cancer rates RehmJ et al. in the 2014 World Cancer Report made a statistic – 3.5% of cancers are caused by alcohol, and one in 30 cancer deaths is caused by alcohol. And, the risk of alcohol-induced cancers has been increasing in recent years, with 5.5% of cancers already being caused by alcohol in 2012 alone (5.8% of cancer deaths). As if these statistics weren’t enough of a wake-up call for good drinkers, there’s a bunch of recent experimental results to follow. A prospective cohort study tallying data from 88,084 women and 47,881 men followed for up to 30 years found an irrefutable linear relationship between alcohol and cancer development. In another similar study, researchers found an associated risk of 1.13 (women) and 1.26 (men) for the occurrence of alcohol and a number of cancers (colorectal, female breast, oral cavity, pharyngeal, laryngeal, liver, and esophageal). Other researchers have used cohort studies to validate the types of cancers associated with alcohol consumption and found that subjects who consumed large amounts of alcohol (>3 times per day) were more likely to develop five types of cancers compared to non-drinkers: upper gastrointestinal/respiratory cancers, lung cancers, female breast cancers, colorectal tumors, and melanomas. Subjects who were light to moderate drinkers were more likely to develop the remaining four tumors, except for lung cancer. So the other tumors have nothing to do with drinking? Don’t be naive, another study counted 486,538 cancer cases in 572 experiments, and the results showed that compared to non-drinkers and light-to-moderate drinkers, heavy drinkers had an associated risk of 5.13 for oral and nasopharyngeal cancers, 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 bladder cancer, and 1.21 for liver cancer. 2.07, bladder cancer 2.64, pancreatic cancer 1.19, and lung cancer 1.15. Similar results can be seen in prostate cancer and melanoma. Look at the results, it’s almost a clean sweep. How many other tumors can be said to be unrelated to alcohol? Alcohol’s Mechanisms of Cancer The IARC has long classified alcohol, along with its primary metabolite formaldehyde, as a Group 1 carcinogen, 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 hepatocarcinogenesis, alcohol causes cirrhosis of the liver first, while in upper gastrointestinal tract tumors, it is mainly due to the conversion of ethanol into acetaldehyde in saliva, which makes the concentration of acetaldehyde in saliva 10-100 times higher than that in the blood, thus leading to cancerous lesions in the upper gastrointestinal tract. In addition to the direct carcinogenic effect of alcohol acetaldehyde, alcohol can also promote the massive generation of oxygen free radicals under the action of cytochrome P450, which can cause extensive mutation of DNA as well as 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, and therefore more prone to cancer. Alcohol can also affect the effects of hormones, such as boosting estradiol levels, which is one of the reasons why cancers of the female reproductive system, such as breast cancer, occur. More harm than good There are now advertisements on the market that promote a range of benefits such as alcohol softening blood vessels and lowering blood pressure. However, this point is still controversial in the academic community, although a few months ago the Lancet published an article that small amounts of alcohol consumption has a certain effect on reducing the incidence of cardiovascular disease, but then another study published in the journal “Nature” showed that alcohol consumption has no effect on the incidence of cardiovascular disease. Other national and international studies have claimed that even small amounts of alcohol are harmful to cardiovascular disease. Taking a step back, even if a small amount of alcohol can reduce the incidence of cardiovascular disease, the chance of myocardial infarction decreases in average drinkers (risk ratio of 0.76), while the chance of alcohol-related cancers and the incidence of trauma increases (risk ratio of 1.51 and 1.29, respectively), i.e., the harms outweigh the benefits. Unfortunately, at the moment, alcohol consumption is similar to smoking, and the medical findings do not produce a utility that rivals the former due to the propaganda of large corporations and the influence of large profit chains. Enterprises 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 hurts the liver” with a more detailed publicity on the cancer-causing effects of alcohol. At the same time, the intervention of social welfare is also indispensable, for example, Bill Gates led, attracted big names from all walks of life to participate in the refusal of second-hand smoke activities, there are good results.