Is your nightly cocktail hurting your health?
A woman walks into a bar . . . it sounds like the beginning of a joke, but these days it can also be the start of a serious discussion about the health pros and cons of drinking alcohol. For many midlife women, the drink that was once thought to be harmless or even beneficial to your health is now a source of concern.In February, new research gave more ammunition to the experts who think the woman who walks into a bar should walk right out. The Million Women Study—the largest ever to examine alcohol and midlife women—showed that alcohol (whether it’s beer or wine or the hard stuff) is linked to upticks in mouth, throat, rectal, liver and breast cancers, even if you’re having only one drink a day. “One drink every day increases your risk of getting breast cancer by age 75 from 9.5 percent to 10.6 percent; three a day and you’re up to 12.8 percent,” says researcher Naomi E. Allen, PhD, of the University of Oxford. One reason: Alcohol breaks down into acetaldehyde, a probable carcinogen that can damage cell DNA. In addition, alcohol may decrease the B vitamin folate that might help repair that DNA. Drinking also raises estrogen levels and may sensitize receptors in breast tissue, and both effects could promote cancer growth.
But one drink a day also helps fend off heart disease, which is a bigger threat to most midlife women than cancer. “Your chance of dying of cardiovascular disease is about ten times greater than your chance of dying of breast cancer,” says David J. Hanson, PhD, of the State University of New York in Potsdam. Compared with abstainers, one-drink-a-day women are better off when it comes to heart attacks, heart failure (a type of advanced heart disease) and strokes. Alcohol helps your heart by boosting HDL (good) cholesterol and thinning the blood, so it’s less likely to clot and block a blood vessel. What this adds up to: Women who average up to one serving of alcohol per day live longer than women who drink more than one serving or nothing at all. Hanson concludes, “The average woman can drink one a day with considerable confidence.”
But the picture changes if you regularly down more than one. Two-plus drinks can damage your cardiovascular system. They increase your risk of heart attack and stroke by bumping up blood pressure and triglycerides, and also harm the heart’s tissues and electrical system, which could cause irregular heartbeats and heart failure.
Suppose, however, that you’re not typically a big drinker, but one evening you have three or four drinks over several hours? “If you keep hydrated, it’s probably not going to harm you,” says Mary-Anne Enoch, MD, of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, in Rockville, Maryland. But the less often you splurge, the better. And when you indulge, it’s a good idea to follow it up with a few dry days. In general, experts say, one drink means one drink; you’re not doing yourself any favors by imbibing more.
If you are concerned because cancer is in your medical history, you might consider making alcohol an occasional choice, as Karen K. Collins, RD, of the American Institute for Cancer Research, suggests. Ask your doctor. Heart failure and high blood pressure are two more reasons to seek medical advice.
Is alcohol a health tonic? No. A poison? No. One of life’s little pleasures? We’ll go with that.
What constitutes one drink a day?
a | 12 fluid ounces of regular Beer, about 5% alcohol (light beer, about 4.2%)
b | 5 fluid ounces of Wine, about 12% alcohol
c | 1.5 fluid ounce shot of 80 proof Spirits, about 40% alcohol