Sarah Wakeman

And for pretty much every cancer, once you get to the moderate category, we start seeing increases.

And there's what we call a dose-response relationship.

So the more you drink, the higher your risk of cancer.

There's only a few cancers that the risk seems to increase even at that very low level, and breast cancer is one of those.

And then esophageal cancer is one of those.

So there are certain cancers where even a small amount of alcohol will increase your risk.

Yeah.

So colon cancer, we're seeing that in a lot of young men.

Liver cancer, yeah.

Prostate cancer, which is obviously a male cancer, we don't think of as much as being sort of an alcohol-sensitive cancer.

But most cancers, because the way alcohol impacts your risk of cancer is not really on a specific organ outside of the liver.

Right.

It's really about how it changes our DNA.

So it's about inflammation and what are called reactive oxygen species that sort of change our cells and increase the risk over time of the mutations that lead to cancer.

If you're drinking two of those glasses, yeah, you'd be in the heavy category.

Okay.

Which would surprise most people, right?

Like that for many people is very normal.

Yeah, so it varies by cancer, but roughly we're talking like a 40% increase in cancer depending on the cancer type.

And the more you drink, the more that's going to go up.