Dr. Sanjay Gupta

What benefits can you get from just drinking less?

We'll get into it after a short break.

Okay, Ed, back to your question on how much of a difference it could make to decrease cancer risk if you drink less or even become abstinent.

First of all, let's start with some basic facts about the correlation between alcohol and cancer.

What exactly is going on here?

In terms of context, alcohol ranks third in terms of preventable causes of cancer in the United States.

There is a well-established link between drinking and cancer risk for certain types of cancer, including breast cancer, colorectal, esophageal, liver, mouth, throat, and voice box.

Now, this increased risk of cancer is associated with all types of alcohol, in case you're curious.

And perhaps no surprise, the risk does increase with greater consumption.

So those are the basic facts.

Next point, how does alcohol actually increase the cancer risk?

Well, the root cause of cancer are DNA mutations, which lead cells to grow out of control and then maybe spread to other parts of the body.

What alcohol does is it interferes with cell cycles.

It triggers long-term inflammation, and it damages DNA directly.

Alcohol can also affect hormone levels, including that of estrogen, which plays a particular role, for example, in breast cancer development.

Cells in our mouth can absorb cancer-causing chemicals, carcinogens, more easily when we drink alcohol.

So there's plenty of evidence in terms of the impact of alcohol on certain types of cancers, and even more and more information about the mechanisms that make it so.

But the question is, can quitting or cutting back bring it down?

Now, the headline is, studies show that cutting back on alcohol, going dry, can decrease the risk of cancer.

But it might take a while.