Alcohol increases risk of BC but helps survivors live longer

Lol Pattysmiles. Me too.

Hooray!!! For quite awhile after my diagnosis, I gave up drinking completely. Since Chritmas, I've begun enjoying wine again but feeling guilty. This means "guilt be gone"!

I'm with you, VR.  Probably shaved a couple of years off with all the guilt I have when I drink wine out of the country.

I am the first one who would like to believe my love for red wine isn't a problem!  However, this leaves more questions than answers for me.  For instance, if your risk of heart disease is low, and your health profile excellent otherwise, what is the relationship to BC risk and longevity?  This is taking a lot of unhealthy people into account, no?

Oh, my...I've been feeling guilty every time I drink more than one glass of wine at a sitting--which isn't very often!  I even cut my wine with water (my "jesus" drink) to stretch it out...

I like this article!  Not that I'm going to go out and drink 2+drinks every friday night.  As soon as I heard my dx, I stopped completely and immediately lost 8 lbs all from my waist and hips, and I see the relationship for me in weight gain and alcohol consumption.

It's nice to know I can toast to my daughter's 31 b.d. in two days without that niggling feeling that I'm hurting myself.

Cheers!

I can start drinking again hallaluya!

What is safe to drink? I like beer, good beer

I think I posted a link somewhere on one of these alcohol threads that also indicated something similar, but it did not mention cardio health, just longer survival.

If you do a search here on alcohol (there will be lots of posts), I am sure you can locate it.

Dr. Kattlove is a retired medical oncologist and someone posted his blog here.  I read it periodically.

This link was search for "alcohol" on his blog:  http://kattlovecancerblog.blogspot.com/search?q=alcohol

two of his blogs are very interesting.

1.

Drinking and Breast Cancer

Last week the newspapers were splashed with articles on the link between drinking alcohol and cancer, in particular breast cancer. Well, we have always known this. Many studies have shown that the more a woman drinks, the more she risks developing breast cancer.

But now a new study that drew the press’s attention has appeared. Although this study merely confirms what we already know, the newspapers emphasized that even one drink a day may be too much. That is a scary conclusion to draw from the weak evidence of this article.

First the study. It is called the Million Women Study. It began in 1996. From then till 2001 a total of 1.3 million middle-aged women (average 53) who attended breast cancer screening clinics in the United Kingdom were asked to fill out a questionnaire that asked among many questions, how much do you drink. They were also weighed and measured and asked about diet, exercise, hormone treatment, smoking, birth control, as well. An interesting fact – also a dilemma – was that the women who drank were different from those that didn’t. They were slimmer, exercised more and were more likely to be on hormone replacement therapy.

All the women were carefully watched and checked to see if they had developed cancer. On average, they were followed for 7 years. In general, women who drank developed more cancers. About 2 percent of these women developed breast cancer. More women who drank developed breast cancer than did women who abstained. Women who took around one drink a day increased their breast cancer risk by 10%. More than two drinks a day and their risk went up by 25%. Why this happens isn’t known. There is no well- accepted biologic explanation for this.

So what is a woman to do? Not drink? Certainly I would recommend keeping drinking at a moderate level – one per day – a glass of wine, beer or a shot of spirits (scotch, bourbon, gin, vodka, etc.). This will increase the risk a bit. This means a woman needs to counteract this by lowering her risk in other ways. Now there are many ways to do this. Exercise, keep slim (the women in the study were, on averge, overweight), and stay away from progesterone hormone replacement (estrogen is probably OK).

One other thing to consider. In almost every study of drinking, it turns out that a drink a day lowers a person’s risk of dying. Also, no biologic reason for this. It may have something to do with protecting the heart. And forget about red wine versus white wine or hard liquor. It is just the alcohol that really matters. And of course, staying fit is a sure way to lower a person’s death rate.

So, there are risks in life. Breast cancer is one of them for women. But the trade off may be better heart health. All this means that as long as a woman realizes she are in control of most of the risks, chooses them carefully and takes good care of her body, she doesn’t have to give up a lot.

And

2.

What about your risk of dying from breast cancer?

Many things increase a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer. Some she can control, others she can’t. Uncontrollable items are, starting periods at a young age, ending them at a late age, having few or no babies and having them late in life. Of course, the biggest uncontrollable gorilla in the room is what a woman inherits from her parents, but I’m not going to talk about that this time.

High-risk items a woman can control are, whether if she has a baby she doesn’t nurse, whether she takes hormones after menopause, gets fat or drinks too much.

Another important question is, if a woman gets breast cancer, how these factors affect her chance of surviving the cancer. It turns out that most of these don’t hurt her chances and some my even help.

We know this because of research done by some British researchers that was published in this month’s Journal of Clinical Oncology. The Brits looked at the history of some 4500 women with breast cancer and matched them with some of the risk factors I mentioned above.

It turns out that survival in women with most of these risk factors is not affected. That is, if a woman who began her periods early, or ended them late, or took hormones developed breast cancer, she did as well as women without these issues. In fact, the women who took hormones may have fared better with their breast cancers than women who stayed away from them. This makes sense because these women tend to develop hormone sensitive breast cancers that are generally less aggressive and more easily treated – as long as they are caught early.

Big surprise was with alcohol. Although drinking increases a woman’s chance of developing breast cancer, women who drank had better outcomes – were less likely to die of their cancer - than women who kept away from the stuff. The researchers couldn’t explain this but weren’t recommending trips to the local pubs; they couldn’t be sure this finding would hold up if more studies were done. Still, there’s no harm in a drink or two and it might get a woman through some rough spots.

One risk factor was dangerous – obesity. The more overweight a woman was, the more likely she was to die of her breast cancer. So take this to heart and keep slim – even if you have to cut down on the booze.

In addition, women with any of these risk factors should be especially sure to get their mammograms. Even heavy drinking won’t help if the cancer is caught too late.

One thing struck me while reading wallycat's post...  it said that the women who drank were more likely to take hormone replacement therapy than the women who didn't.  So, knowing what we know now about HRT, perhaps it was the HRT that tipped the balance?  Just a thought.

Anyway, I'm becoming convinced that - if we wait long enough - studies always come full circle and that which was considered bad for us will transform into something good and then morph back to something bad and so on.  So, CHEERS!  I'm going to enjoy my once-weekly glass of wine now without guilt.