"1 cup a day, 7 cups a week" or "7 cups once a week"?

Drinking alcohol is one of the risk factors for cancer, especially gastrointestinal cancers, such as esophageal cancer, liver cancer, and colorectal cancer
.

A study published by the well-known medical journal "The Lancet-Oncology" shows that 4.

In daily drinking, some people will drink small amounts and many times, while some people will drink a lot of alcohol at a time
.

In the case of the same total alcohol consumption, "1 cup a day, 7 cups a week" and "1 time a week, 7 cups once", which way of drinking is more likely to increase the risk of cancer?

Recently, a study published in JAMA Network Open, a sub-issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, explored this issue
.

The results of the study found that as long as it is drinking, regardless of the frequency and amount of alcohol consumed, it is associated with an increased risk of gastrointestinal cancer; compared to the amount of alcohol consumed, the high frequency of drinking may be more likely to increase the risk of gastrointestinal cancer

The researchers analyzed data from the South Korean National Health Insurance System (NHIS) and included more than 11 million subjects.
Their average age was 54.
6 years and 52.
2% were women
.

At the beginning of the study, the researchers collected the subjects’ age, gender, height, weight, smoking status, exercise volume, blood pressure, blood lipids and other information, and counted the subjects’ drinking frequency and amount of alcohol each time in the previous year.
Information
.

According to the total amount of alcohol consumed each week, the researchers divided the subjects into 4 categories: non-drinkers (0 g/week), light drinkers (0 g/week-104 g/week), moderate drinkers ( 105 g/week-209 g/week) and alcoholics (≥210 g/week)
.

In addition, researchers follow up subjects once a year to update relevant information and count the incidence of gastrointestinal cancers, including esophageal cancer, stomach cancer, colorectal cancer, bile duct cancer, pancreatic cancer, and liver cancer
.

Statistics found that 40.
3% of the subjects drank alcohol, including 23.
7% of light drinkers, 9.
5% of moderate drinkers, and 7.
1% of alcoholics
.

Compared with non-drinkers, alcoholics tend to be younger (52.

During the average follow-up period of 6.
4 years, a total of 319,202 (2.
7%) subjects suffered from gastrointestinal cancer
.

After adjusting for the influence of other factors, the researchers found that drinking was associated with an increased risk of gastrointestinal cancer; as the frequency of drinking increased, the risk of gastrointestinal cancer gradually increased
.

Compared with non-drinkers, light drinking, moderate drinking, and alcohol abuse are associated with a 4%, 14%, and 28% increase in gastrointestinal cancer risk; drinking 2 times, 3 times, 4 times, and 5 times a week , 6, and 7, respectively, were associated with a 6%, 14%, 20%, 26%, 34%, and 39% increase in the risk of gastrointestinal cancer
.

Even if subjects who drink similar amounts of alcohol have different drinking frequency, there is a difference in the increased risk of gastrointestinal cancer
.

Compared with non-drinkers, light drinkers drink 1-2 times, 2-3 times, and 4-7 times a week, which are associated with a 2%, 16%, and 9% increase in gastrointestinal cancer risk; moderate Alcohol drinkers drink 1-2 times, 2-3 times and 4-7 times a week, which are associated with a 3%, 19% and 24% increase in gastrointestinal cancer risk; alcoholics drink 1-2 times a week, 2 -3 times and 4-7 times, respectively, are associated with a 1%, 12%, and 41% increase in the risk of gastrointestinal cancer
.

Researchers analyzed that when the total amount of alcohol consumed is similar, drinking small amounts and multiple times is more likely to increase the risk of gastrointestinal cancer than low frequency and large amounts of alcohol, which may be related to a variety of biological mechanisms
.

For example, after alcohol enters the human body, it is metabolized and digested to produce acetaldehyde.

Since the study was an observational study, it only showed the association between the frequency and amount of alcohol consumed and the risk of gastrointestinal cancer, but did not indicate a causal relationship
.

Moreover, the study also has some limitations, such as the dependence of alcohol consumption on the recall of subjects, etc.

At the end of the study, it was mentioned that the study found that compared with low-frequency and heavy drinking, small and repeated drinking may be a more important risk factor for gastrointestinal cancer
.

People should pay attention to their drinking habits, not only to reduce the amount of drinking, but also to reduce the frequency of drinking

Researchers pointed out that drinking alcohol is harmful to health
.

More and more studies have found that drinking is related to more than 200 health problems including infectious diseases, cancer, cardiovascular diseases, gastrointestinal diseases, neuropsychiatric diseases and injuries

Reference

[1] Jung Eun Yoo, et al.

[2] More frequent alcohol consumption ups risk for GI cancers.
Retrieved Aug 24 ,2021,from https://medicalxpress.
com/news/2021-08-frequent-alcohol-consumption-ups-gi.
html

[3] In GI Cancer Risk, Does Alcohol Frequency or Quantity Matter More?— Gastrointestinal cancer risk increased linearly with frequency of consumption, Korean study found.
Retrieved Aug 24 ,2021,from https:// othercancers/94097