Drinking Alcohol!

We all have so many balls in the air while going through this, it is not an easy ride. When I see the number of ladies on this site who don't drink, live healthy loves, do not smoke AND end up here anyway it only makes things more confusing. My dx was early Dec. And I have had maybe 5 lite beers in that time. I do not plan on quitting but will be extremely mindful of consumption and will enjoy in moderation. I am er+ so that is a fact that will unfortunately always be at the forefront. I am going to exercise more regularly and attempt a healthier life but I will not go to the extremes of dropping alcohol and sugar completely

Thank you, TB90!

To your comments, I have no crystal ball here, but will offer up some information.

First off, there is no question that there is a link between breast cancer and alcohol. There have been enough studies done to show without any doubt that alcohol consumption increases the risk of breast cancer. But what the studies have also shown is that the amount of risk increase is small.

A 2017 meta-analysis of breast cancer-alcohol research that looked at 16 studies done on pre-menopausal women and 34 studies done on post-menopausal women found that consuming one small (well, self-reported as "small") alcoholic beverage a day increased breast cancer risk by 5% in pre-menopausal women and 9% in post-menopausal women. In other words, a post-menopausal woman who is high risk - let's say she has a 20% risk (over the rest of her lifetime) to develop breast cancer (or a new primary, for those of us previously diagnosed) - and who consumes small drink daily, increases her risk to 22%.

As for recurrence, which of course is relevant to all of us who've already had breast cancer, the studies are all over the map although the most recent studies seem to show no negative impact from moderate alcohol consumption. The following study, from last year, actually found a positive impact (i.e. a lower recurrence rate) for those who consume alcohol.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6015986/#!po=45.2381

Given the mixed results from all the studies, my oncologist had no concern when I asked about drinking wine. When I raised the question, he asked if I liked wine. I replied that I did, to which he said "Then drink it". He did however go on to say that while alcohol doesprovide heart health benefits, those benefits may be less than previously thought, and alcohol does have a number of other negative health impacts. So his advice, from a general health perspective, was to limit consumption to 2-3 times a week.

Cheers to that! 🥂