Jun 18, 2008
Alcohol Causes Cancer
It’s quite illuminating that the following study has not yet reached the wider media. Without wishing to be too cynical, I do wonder whether that’s because the journal in which the work is published does not use a highly aggressive press office and marketing machine like so many other medical journals, which never seem to be out of the news. The results in this paper are just as important and the implications perhaps even more far reaching than many other results that attract instantaneous (under embargo) media attention. Anyway, take a look and judge for yourself, oh and let me know afterwards if you think the headline for this post is way off mark.
Alcohol blamed for oral cancer risk – A large-scale statistical analysis of mouth and throat cancer incidence over a long period of time has looked at possible correlations between exposure to industrial chemicals, dust and alcoholic beverages in a wide variety of individuals in different occupations across Finland. The perhaps surprising conclusion drawn is that alcohol consumption rather than industrial chemicals or dusts is the critical factor associated with this form of cancer. Get the full story in this week’s edition of my SpectroscopyNOW column here.
I suppose it’s a little ironic that in the same edition of Spec Now, I’m also writing about how to make beer taste fresher and last longer on the shelf. NMR spectroscopy, and a chromatography sniff test have yielded results that could help brewers improve the flavour and shelf-life of beer thanks to work by scientists in Venezuela. The team has identified alpha-dicarbonyls as important compounds that reduce beer’s flavour and point to a new approach to brewing beer that stays fresher, longer. Take a sip here…
Meanwhile, another subject of mixed messages regarding health benefits is that perennial favourite chocolate. To maintain the seductive and lustrous brown gloss of chocolate, so enticing to chocoholics the world over, food technologists must find a way to prevent fat bloom from forming on the surface and turning the surface an unappealing grey. Now, scientists from Canada and Sweden have found new clues to understanding the microstructure of chocolate and what happens when it turns grey with age. More…
Finally, some straight chemistry with absolutely no hint of biomedicine, health, or pharmaceutical implications (yet). A novel structure studied using X-ray crystallography hints at the possibility of a carbon atom that, at first site seems to be a little different from the conventional textbook view. Could the oldest rule of organic chemistry have been broken at last, or is low atomic separation being equated too keenly with the presence of a bond, or could there be something else afoot, as Steve Bachrach suggests? Read on…
"Deceived Wisdom: Why What You Thought Was Right Is Wrong" from David Bradley. Available now on 
Yes, I have a true story to share, of how we allowed Alcohol to severely damange/destroy our health.
AND very easily done too !!!!!!!!
Let me know, if you’d like to receive it……..about 1 1/2 pgs………
Many thanks.
/sjg
Guys, you’re right. It was a shoddy experiment in tabloidism, which has generated more useful comments and insights (such as your own) than previous more tempered headlines ever have ;-)
I don’t think the headline is necessarily warranted, David. The thing all these studies leave out is the relative magnitude of the effect. Yeah, they say there’s a correlation between the occupations that tend to drink more with the occupations that tend to get oral cancers more, but even if their correlation is .99, how many more are we talking about? Considering the extensive amount of assumptions they’re making, if the increase in relative risk is smaller than the variation between the two groups, I can’t really say it amounts to much, and I’m pretty certain that if they had found a 5-fold increase or something like that, their abstract would have been shouting that out.
The media isn’t reporting it because they don’t get statistics, at all. They’ll report “Alcohol causes cancer” but they won’t report, “There’s a statistically-significant correlation between age-matched occupational estimates of alcohol exposure and ….blah blah blah”.
Alcohol consumption is likely to cause oral cancer through complex mechanisms.
* Alcohol is an analgesic, it rises pain threshold, the person doesnot feel minor irritations in the mouth like sharp tooth or mucous folds which may come between teeth while munching. Ignored chronic irritations are one of the causes of cancer of mouth.
*Alcohol is an antiseptic. In any form it kills millions of cells especially nerve cells. Because we have trillons of cells the loss is not noticed. Body tries to regenerate the replace the lost cells. Somewhare in the cascade if the control mechanism if impaired the cells overgrow and cause the CANCER (afterall cancer is uncontrolled growth).
* Alcohol is an immunosuppresent. It supresses the white blood cells which removes the abnormal /cancer cells as and when they are formed at their own cost.(this happens in the body constantly normally).
*Alcohol is a good solvent. It enhances the diffuse of digested food products into the blood via the barrier called mucous membrane of the gastrointestinal tract which selectively disallows some of the harmful(?) products’
* Alcohol is toxic to liver where the toxins entering the blood are detoxified.
* Finally stess plays an important role in causing cancer.(destrssing the mind and body boosts immunity.
*However aetiology of cancer is not this simple.
@Pat I think you’re right. But, I don’t think I was advising anyone to give up alcohol, I certainly don’t intend to, although I have cut down this week in preparation for an imminent dinner dance, party, event