This morning the NYTimes reported the Surgeon General called for warning labels on alcohol. For those without a subscription here’s the key info: For [men, women], the absolute risk of developing an alcohol-related cancer increases from about [10, 11.3] percent for those who consume less than one drink a week to [11.4, 13.1] percent for those who have a drink every day on average. It rises to [13, 15.3] percent for those who have two drinks a day on average. My wife does cancer research (not related to this study) and I asked her why the data does not seem to show that 0 drinks = 0 additional risks. Her three points were that self-reported behaviors are fraught with uncertainty and that they are reporting an average number of drinks. Someone who only drinks every two months but binge drinks 7 drinks in that one night may be adding additional stress. Final point is that public health studies are very difficult to isolate certain behaviors. Personally I’m at about one drink a day (self-reported 😬) but if I go up to two drinks a day my likelihood of cancer increases by ~1%. Please don’t take this as refuting the data or consequences, trying to put it in a context that applies to my life if I choose to drink occasionally. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/03/health/alcohol-surgeon-general-warning.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Posted by WhiskyRanked at 2025-01-03 16:37:39 UTC