Author:
Dr. Zheng, Ph.D., University of Hong Kong
Dr. Lu, Ph.D., University of Bern, Switzerland
Is moderate drinking good for our health?
Is drinking safe?
Some people blush when they drink, so can he drink?
Speaking of the Spring Festival, the most important thing is reunion, and wine is generally indispensable on the reunion table. So are you ready to start enjoying the New Year's Eve dinner?
Wait a minute! Do you know that alcohol has been listed as a "Class I" carcinogen by the World Health Organization? The so-called "Class I" carcinogens refer to substances that have been proved to be carcinogenic, and aflatoxin, formaldehyde and tobacco are also listed as "Class I" carcinogens. Besides, drinking alcohol can lead to many health problems, including alcoholic hepatitis, tuberculosis, cerebral infarction and cardiovascular diseases!
"What? I am a great China with a long history of "wine culture". Now you're telling me that drinking alcohol can cause cancer? I don't believe it! "
For many people who drink, this kind of resistance is understandable, so needless to say, just go directly to the data. As early as 1988, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has defined alcohol as a carcinogen. According to the data of 20 12, the proportion of cancer caused by alcohol accounts for 5.5% of all cancer patients in the world, so the proportion of death caused by alcohol accounts for 5.8% of all cancer deaths (that is, 1 out of every 18 cancer patients is caused by drinking, and 65,438 out of every 19 cancer deaths are caused by drinking). The research conducted by the World Cancer Foundation/American Institute for Cancer Research and the International Agency for Research on Cancer has drawn a clear conclusion: drinking wine, whether it is red wine or white wine or beer and fruit wine, is directly related to oral cancer, pharyngeal cancer, laryngeal cancer, liver cancer, esophageal cancer, breast cancer and colorectal cancer.
If men drink 28g a day, which is about 2 cans of beer, and women drink 14g and beer 1 can, their risk of oral cancer and pharyngeal cancer is 1.8 times that of non-drinkers, and their risk of esophageal cancer will increase 1.3-5 times. Female friends should pay more attention. Alcohol has been proved to increase the risk of breast cancer. If you consume about 10 grams of alcohol (about half a can of beer) every day, your risk of breast cancer will increase by 5%, and if you are a postmenopausal woman, your risk will increase by 9%. If you pay attention to people who love to drink around you, do some of them often find cancer in these parts? In addition, drinking alcohol can also cause various diseases of digestive system, nervous system and cardiovascular system. According to the statistics of The Lancet, at least 2.8 million people died of drinking in 20 16 years, and it has become one of the main killers of people aged 15-49. For all diseases, the more you drink, the higher the risk.
What harm does alcohol do to our health? Let's see how the wine we drink is first. After alcohol enters our body, it will undergo a metabolic process from alcohol to acetaldehyde and then to acetic acid. Alcohol is an ingredient that paralyzes the nerves and makes people "cool"; Among them, acetaldehyde is the most harmful component, which is the direct cause of "drinking is harmful to health" (formaldehyde and acetaldehyde are similar substances, I believe everyone has heard of its harm), and it is also the reason for relaxing blood vessels and causing blushing. Acetaldehyde itself is a carcinogen. If it is not metabolized in time, acetaldehyde will destroy DNA everywhere in the cell and cause various mutations.
In addition, in the process of alcohol metabolism, a large number of free radicals will be produced, which will also oxidize DNA in cells, and protein and lipids will destroy the function of cells. Moreover, in the process of alcohol fermentation, wine may be doped with other carcinogens, such as ammonium nitrite and phenolic hydrocarbons.
Then you may ask me, it may be true that you get sick after drinking too much, but how do you hear that drinking a little wine every day is good for your health? Yes, there are rumors, for example, drinking a glass of red wine every day can protect our hearts, and drinking red wine even has cosmetic effects? In fact, the famous medical magazine The Lancet published an article in April 20 18. By summarizing the research of 5999 12 individuals from 19 countries, it is shown that there seems to be a drinking threshold. As long as it does not exceed this threshold, moderate drinking may be good for your health. The most powerful evidence of comrades who advocate drinking is this J curve. According to this curve, drinking less than 100g per week is harmless to health and can also reduce the mortality caused by cardiovascular diseases. This news excited countless wine lovers and shouted, "Scientists have said that moderate drinking is good for health!"
But for these wine lovers, the good times didn't last long, and the time to hit the face came soon. In August of 20 18, The Lancet magazine published the largest and most authoritative research on drinking, and analyzed the research and analysis of men and women from 95 countries and regions around the world. The age ranged from 5 to 95, with more than 28 million people and 650,000 registered cases in 27 years. After eliminating the interference factors and optimizing the algorithm and model, it is obvious that the safety value of alcohol is zero.
In other words, every drop of wine is harmful to our health. The more we drink, the more harmful it is to our health.
When you see the above two completely exclusive conclusions, you will definitely ask: "One moment this study finds that drinking is good, and the next moment it says that drinking is not good at all. Which one should I listen to? " Then why is the result so different? It is not only you but also scientists who have this curiosity. 202 1 1 Professor Yang Jian from the University of Queensland, Australia found this reason.
Simply put, these different conclusions mainly come from the "error" in the experimental process. Usually, studies such as epidemiology can only focus on people and make statistical analysis by collecting reports from these disciplines. The mistake lies in this "person". Team Yang Jian analyzed the survey data of more than 450,000 people in the British Biobank. Interestingly, among them, 14488 said in the report that they were good young people who never touched alcohol. However, some of them were soon slapped by their medical reports. Because according to the follow-up questionnaire survey and hospital records, at least 10% of these 3,000 people have a history of drinking and suffer from diseases related to drinking, such as alcoholic hepatitis or alcohol dependence syndrome. Some people said to drink it now, but later they filled in a big "0" when asked about their drinking amount. 15.6% people did not record their real drinking amount truthfully, especially heavy drinkers. Such an obvious "false positive" will of course directly affect the final analysis result. They also found a big bug. According to the previous survey report, people who drank less than 10 years ago had a higher incidence rate than those who drank as much or even more than in the past! Does it mean that drinking and abstinence are more likely to get sick and drinking is healthier? Of course not. After digging deep into the reasons, it is found that the main reasons for these people to reduce drinking are "illness" and "doctor's advice". So the high prevalence rate here is the cause of drinking less, not the result. When they considered all these mistakes and corrected them, the J curve was ruthlessly broken into a straight line.
Of course, all these studies on alcohol and people's health are not only out of curiosity, but more importantly, the results of these studies also allow us to further examine the existing alcohol control policies and daily alcohol advertising. If we can't publicize the idea that drinking is harmful to the public, or even publicize the wrong idea that drinking is for health and drinking is to protect the heart, it will be very unfavorable to the health of our people. For smoking, the cigarette case is clearly marked "Smoking is harmful to health", so for drinking, can we also see the words "Drinking is harmful to health" on the bottle one day? Therefore, the purpose of making this video is that when the Spring Festival is approaching, we hope to convey a scientific voice to everyone while enjoying the wonderful moment of reunion: drinking is not safe, and no small amount of drinking is beneficial to the body. I also hope that we can advocate everyone to change our wine-persuading culture, do what we can and live a healthy Year of the Ox together! !
Off-topic:
We often say that northerners are delicious, especially Liangshan heroes in Shandong. Is it true?/You don't say. Is there any scientific basis? Hey, don't say, there are really studies that give us such an answer. By analyzing the variation frequency and distribution of several key sites of acetaldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH2) in human body, China Metabolic Analysis Project in 2020 found that northerners have stronger alcohol metabolism than southerners, so they can drink better. Some ethnic minorities have the strongest alcohol metabolism, and the top three belong to Tibetans, Mongolians and Yi people respectively. Surprisingly, the data of Shandong people are not outstanding. Fujian people and Cantonese people from the south are at the bottom. If we want to compare the drinking capacity of China people and people of other races, I'm afraid the result will disappoint you. The ability of China people to eliminate alcohol is obviously lower than that of Europeans and Africans, so drinking the same amount of alcohol will lead to the accumulation of more acetaldehyde in our bodies, which will lead to a higher risk of cancer. So, drink less!
Off-topic:
Of course, we often hear people say, "My father and my grandfather usually have two cups when they are free, and they are still in good health!" " . Of course, this example exists. These research results are based on the analysis of the population, the average effect of the population is also counted, and the risks are also discussed. When we talk about the increased risk of various diseases caused by drinking, it doesn't mean that everyone who drinks will get sick because of drinking. You won't get cancer if you don't drink. Drinking alcohol will increase the cancer risk of 1%. Of course, there is a high probability that you will fall into the lucky 99%, but every 1% falls on every family and every patient is 100%.
Others question whether you can't get cancer without drinking. Aren't you sick? Do you understand the fun of drinking? Yes, for some people, they can get pleasure from drinking, but they may not know that drinking is harmful, so our task is to convey this message. If they know, they will decide to drink after weighing their own situation, and then one day they will not get sick. It is also possible that after reading this article, they realized that alcohol is harmful to their health and decided to give up drinking after seeing their family around them. What we hope to do is to tell you this fact. It is better to make wise decisions than to get involved in your own body.
References:
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2. Risk threshold of drinking: A comprehensive analysis of the data of 5999 912 individual participants of current drinkers in 83 prospective studies. The Lancet 39 1, 15 13- 1523, doi:10.16/s0140.
3. Collaborator, g. b. d. a. 195 countries and regions, 1990-20 16: Systematic analysis of global disease burden research 20 16. The Lancet 392, 10 15- 1035, doi:10.10/s 0140-6736 (.
4. Genome-wide analysis of behavioral characteristics is easily affected by false positives and vertical changes. Nat Commun 12，6450，doi: 10. 1038/s 4 1467-020-20237-6(202 1)。
5. 10588 China map analysis of individual deep genome sequence. Cell Res 30，7 17-73 1，doi: 10. 1038/s 4 1422-020-0322-9(2020)。