Teenage girls that drink alcohol are about five times more likely to develop what's often a precursor to breast cancer.

When we go to get something checked and the results come back benign, that’s usually a positive prognosis.  But if you get a benign prognosis and you’re a teenaged girl that drinks alcohol, a “benign” prognosis may be a bad prognosis.

According to a recent study conducted by researchers from the Washington University School of Medicine, young women who drink an average of 6.5 alcoholic beverages a week are five and a half times more likely to develop a condition called benign breast disease.  Benign breast disease, or fibrocystic breast disease, is similar to breast cancer in that it’s characterized by breast pain, discomfort, nipple discharge and lump formation, but unlike breast cancer, the lumps that form are usually non-life threatening.

At least, until now.  Because according to the study’s lead researcher, Graham Colditz, benign breast disease is a warning sign for eventual breast cancer development.

Colditz and his colleagues discovered this after looking into the health surveys of over 9,000 “tweens” and teenagers between the ages of nine and 15 years old.  Parts of the survey asked how often the girls drank alcohol and whether or not they’d been diagnosed with benign breast disease.

Reporting in the May issue of the journal Pediatrics, the St. Louis-based researchers found a relationship between benign breast disease diagnosis and the amount the girls drank.  The more they drank, the more likely they were to be diagnosed with benign breast disease.

Besides alcohol, other risk factors for fibrocystic breast disease include a high fat diet, excessive consumption of caffeine and whether there’s a family history of the disease.

Now, before you cast off this study by saying, “I know my daughter and there’s no way she drinks alcohol,” permit me to tell you a short story that a friend of mine recently told me.  A true story.

A friend of mine lives in New Hampshire and works as a substitute teacher at a local junior high school.  As a substitute teacher, it comes as no surprise that the kids are pretty unruly when he’s leading the classroom, as the word “substitute” has long been loosely translated by students to meaning, “Hey, the regular teacher is gone, so I can get away with more!!”

But what did come as a surprise was the recent arrest of an eighth grade girl due to underage drinking. Apparently, throughout the school year, she had been sneaking alcohol into the school by combining beer and soda pop, sipping her beverage throughout the day like it was nothing out of the ordinary.  The smell of beer on her breath finally did her in.

Moral of the story:  Don’t automatically assume your son or daughter isn’t drinking.  Because the father of this girl was stunned, even though 11 percent of underage drinkers take their first drink in the eighth grade.

For the sake of your kids’ short and long term health, remind them about the dangers of alcohol consumption—even if you’ve had the conversation dozens of times.  Remain ever vigilant of what they’re doing and with whom.

It’s a matter of life and death.

Sources:
sciencedaily.com
pubs.niaaa.nih.gov
health.google.com

Researchers say a man's weight affects his risk for liver disease if he's a heavy drinker.

Most of us know that when you drink in excess, it not only does a number on your liver, but it does a number on your waistline.

Hey, they don’t call them “beer bellies” for nothing.

But many people drink alcohol when they’re already overweight.  These people, obviously, aren’t immune to weight gain; they’re just as prone to pack on the pounds as thin people who drink lots of alcohol are.

But where things get really dicey for people who drink a lot and are overweight is the toll it puts on their liver.  Because according to research published in the British Medical Journal, excessive alcohol consumption harms the liver of people who are obese far more than it harms the liver of people who are in a healthy weight range.

Researchers from the University of Glasgow in Scotland discovered this liver/libation link after looking at the health profiles of approximately 9,600 men in two separate studies, one beginning in 1965, the other in 1970.  All the men were followed into the year 2007.

Overall, about 450 men died, most of the deaths attributed to complications from liver disease.  But when researchers looked into cancer registries and hospital admissions, they found that the likelihood of their being plagued with liver disease depended largely on the amount of alcohol the men drank in a typical week and what their weight was.

For instance, while heavy drinking, healthy weight men were three times more likely to have liver disease than their normal weight, non-drinking counterparts, that’s nothing compared to heavy drinking obese men.  For them, their risk of liver disease was 19 times higher compared to thin-as-a-rail lushes (i.e. the researchers defined “heavy drinking” as drinking 15 alcoholic beverages in a week).

Researchers aren’t sure why, exactly, alcoholic obese men are so much more at risk for liver disease than thin alcoholic men, but they have some theories.

One of them is that because excess weight puts a heavy toll (pardon the pun) on the liver, the toll is compounded when alcohol is brought into the equation.  The liver has to clear the body of toxins, and when the liver is weighed down by excess fat accumulation, it’s working in overdrive.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, the researchers conclude, “New perspectives on the risk of liver disease may need to be considered for people who are overweight and consume alcohol.”

The general consensus in the health world is that people should drink no more than two alcoholic beverages per day.  But as the researchers indicate, that may be too much for people who are overweight.

Stay tuned for what, if any, new recommendations result from health officials following this truly eye opening study.

Sources:
newsmaxhealth.com

Alcohol intake impacts Dementia Risk, study concludes.

In a recent posting, I talked about the importance of moderation in all things and used prostate cancer as an example.  How something like alcohol could be beneficial to avoiding the deadly disease when drunk in moderation, but how it can actually increase the chances of getting it when taken in excess.

Well, finding that “booze balance” also applies to dementia, for according to a new report, moderate alcohol consumption can stave off the brain disease, but it can trigger dementia if drunk in excess.

The Wake Forest University study looked at over 3,000 healthy men and women over the age of 75.  Each of the participants were part of a larger study, called the Gingko Evaluation of Memory Study.  Through this study, the researchers were able to identify which participants had zero cognitive impairment and those who had mild cognitive impairment (a number of different tests were run to determine this).  None of the participants had full-fledged dementia at the study’s outset (only about 500 of them had mild cognitive impairment; the rest were quite brain healthy).

Through questionnaires, the researchers then determined what each participant’s drinking behavior was.  In other words, were they stone-cold sober (zero drinks over the course of a week), sporadic drinkers (one to seven per week, moderate drinkers (eight to 14) or heavy drinkers (14 or more).

Here’s what they discovered at the conclusion of the six-year study:  First, about 500 of the participants went on to be diagnosed with full-fledged dementia, which is a pretty good percentage of the total (about 12 percent).  But the study’s real takeaway was how much the participants drank or didn’t drink and whether or not dementia was their fate.

They found that those who drank moderate amounts of alcohol were much less likely to be among those diagnosed with dementia – 40 percent less likely, in fact – compared to those who were heavy drinkers or light drinkers.

But what about between the heavy drinkers and light drinkers?  Which one fared better there?  You guessed it – the light drinkers.
While the light drinkers were more likely to be diagnosed with dementia than the moderate drinkers, heavy drinkers were twice as likely to be diagnosed with dementia as the light drinkers.

In other words, if you’re debating between too much or too little, you’re definitely better off going the “too little” route.

The study will eventually be published, but the findings were presented at the International Association Conference for Alzheimer’s in Vienna, Austria on July 13.

Now, this study defines “moderate” as between eight and 14 drinks.  If you ask me, that’s a bit much, especially if that amount is in the 12-14 range week after week.  As I wrote in my piece about moderation, I define moderate drinking as 1 to 2 glasses of wine per day, preferably one.  And I stand behind that.  It’s fine to have more than seven glasses of wine per week occasionally, but it shouldn’t go much further than eight to 10.

Source:
msnbc.msn.com

Tax season is now past, but this time of year always reminds me of one of Benjamin Franklin’s many popular proverbs, the guarantee that everyone in life would go through two things: death and taxes.

While death and taxes are undeniable, when it comes to our mortality, we can all make choices that put off the inevitable (not so with taxes, unfortunately). 

In 2000, 18 percent of the deaths in the United States were attributable to tobacco and 4 percent were attributable to alcohol.  The grim statistics are similar in the United Kingdom.  Smoking cigarettes is the leading cause of preventable death in the UK, and in 2006, 13.4 deaths out of 100,000 were alcohol related – a rate that nearly doubles the 1991 alcohol-related death rate.

If this weren’t enough, a new study presented at the European Cancer Conference in Barcelona, Spain indicates that consuming three or more alcoholic beverages a day can increase a woman’s chance of getting breast cancer as much as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day does.

The study involved approximately 70,000 women from various ethnic backgrounds, all living in the United States, tracing their medical history for 20+ years.  By 2004, more than 2,800 of the participating women were diagnosed with some form of breast cancer.  The revealing aspect of these diagnoses, though, was looking at their daily habits.  What the researchers found was that women who consumed three or more alcoholic drinks daily – whether those drinks were beer, wine or liquor – were 30 percent more likely to contract breast cancer than women who drank one or two.  Those women had a 10 percent higher risk.

The researchers don’t dispute the health benefits red wine has with regard to cardiovascular disease, but can understand how some might find the dichotomy of findings troublesome.  They speculate that the cardiovascular benefit of red wine has more to do with what characterizes the social drinker, i.e. those that consume alcohol sparingly or in moderate amounts.

The researchers aren’t calling for women to abandon alcohol altogether.  By and large, according to the statistics, women drink alcohol less frequently than men, and death as a result of alcohol is higher in men than it is in women.  Nevertheless, alcohol-related death rates among women has more than doubled since 1991 – going from 7.2 to 14.8 per 100,000 – in the 35 to 54 age bracket.  As such, these kinds of statistics, in combination with the researchers’ findings, ought to lend a renewed sense of importance to a phrase we all know but perhaps haven’t always lived by:  please drink responsibly.