Cancer Research UK : Alcohol and cancer

Alcohol and cancer

There is no doubt that alcohol can cause seven types of cancer.
The more you cut down on alcohol, the more you reduce your risk of cancer.
There is limited risk if you only drink a little - such as one small drink a day for women or two for men.
You don’t need to be drunk to increase your risk.
Drinking and smoking together are even worse for you.

The consequences of drinking too much alcohol go well beyond the evening’s embarrassing antics or the morning’s hangover. Scientific studies have confirmed that alcohol can also cause cancer.

Obviously, not everyone who drinks will develop cancer. But on the whole, scientists have found that cancer is more common in people who drink alcohol than people who don’t.

Test your knowledge

How much do you know about the effects of alcohol?

Which cancers are affected?

Drinking alcohol can increase your risk of:

Mouth cancer
Pharyngeal cancer (upper throat)
Oesophageal cancer (food pipe)
Laryngeal cancer (voice box)
Breast cancer
Bowel cancer
Liver cancer

Every year, alcohol causes about 6% of cancer deaths in the UK, killing over 9,000 people.

Along with smoking, alcohol causes the vast majority of mouth and food pipe cancers. In the last decade, mouth cancer has become much more common and this may be because of higher levels of drinking.

As little as 3 units a day can increase the risk of mouth, throat, food pipe, breast and bowel cancers.

Can light drinking increase the risk of cancer?

Alcohol can increase the risk of cancer at levels far too low to make an average person drunk. It’s not just people who have ‘drinking problems’ who have higher risks.

As little as 3 units a day can increase the risk of mouth, throat, food pipe, breast and bowel cancers. That’s the amount in one pint of premium lager or a large glass of wine!

Alcohol has a weaker effect on the risk of breast cancer than on other cancers, but it starts having an effect at a lower level.

What about heavy drinking?

The more alcohol you drink, the higher your risk of developing cancer. Heavy drinking can cause cirrhosis of the liver, which can in turn cause liver cancer.

Heavy drinking can also cause heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, stomach ulcers, pancreatitis and, of course, injuries.

Are there safe limits?

There is limited risk if you only drink a little, such as:

one small drink a day for women (about two units a day).
two small drinks a day for men (about three to four units a day).

But remember that:

your risk increases the more you drink, and
some drinks may contain more alcohol than you imagine.

There is no doubt that alcohol can cause seven types of cancer

Which is worse: binge drinking or spreading my drinking across the week?

Research tells us that the total amount of alcohol you drink over time has a much bigger effect on cancer risk than when or how it is drunk.

People are more likely to develop cancer if they drink a lot of alcohol, no matter whether they save it up and drink it in one go, or drink it steadily over a week.

Does drinking matter if you smoke?

People who smoke and drink multiply the damage they receive, because tobacco and alcohol work together to damage the cells of the body. Alcohol makes it easier for the mouth and throat to absorb the cancer-causing chemicals in tobacco.

Studies have found that, on average, people who smoke and drink are up to 50 times more likely to get some types of cancer than people who neither smoke nor drink.

Do all types of alcohol increase the risk of cancer?

All types of alcohol increase the risk of cancer, even red wine. It is the alcohol itself that does the damage, regardless of whether it is in the form of beer, wine or spirits.

Elsewhere in this section, you can read about whether alcohol has any benefits for your health.

Why are women recommended to drink less than men?

The slightly different recommendations for men and women are based on biological differences between the two sexes.

A woman’s liver produces less of an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase that breaks down alcohol. So alcohol stays in a woman’s body for longer.
There is some evidence that drinking just one unit of alcohol a day can significantly increase the risk of breast cancer. Smaller bodies can absorb less alcohol than large ones and on average, women are smaller than men.
Because of their curvy shape, women also tend to have more body fat and less body water than men. This means that any alcohol a woman drinks becomes more concentrated in her body that it would be in a man of the same size.