Mthandazo Ndlovu
This week will focus on breast cancer and how alcohol, drugs and other substances of abuse can contribute to one developing breast cancer.
Research consistently shows that drinking alcoholic beverages beer, wine, and liquor increases a woman’s risk of hormone-receptor-positive breast cancer.
Alcohol can increase levels of oestrogen and other hormones associated with hormone-receptor-positive breast cancer. Alcohol also may increase breast cancer risk by damaging DNA in cells.
Alcohol is the common term for ethanol or ethyl alcohol, a chemical substance found in alcoholic beverages such as beer, hard cider, malt liquor, wines, and distilled spirits (liquor).
Alcohol is produced by the fermentation of sugars and starches by yeast.
Alcohol is also found in some medicines, mouthwashes, and household products.
Compared to women who don’t drink at all, women who have three alcoholic drinks per week have a 15% higher risk of breast cancer.
Experts estimate that the risk of breast cancer goes up another 10% for each additional drink women regularly have each day.
Teen and tween girls aged 9 to 15 who drink three to five drinks a week have three times the risk of developing benign breast lumps. (Certain categories of non-cancerous breast lumps are associated with a higher risk of breast cancer later in life.)
The emerging of these unguided parties of the youth of today termed “Vuzu” simply means that all future health budgets will go to dealing with breast cancer looking at the amounts of alcohol the girl child has exposed themselves, in each one of their sip they are triggering the hormone receptor positive breast cancer.
It is not only the teens affected but also the adult group of women in our society who are exposing themselves to too much alcohol intake. In your next sip consider your health.
While only a few studies have been done on drinking alcohol and the risk of recurrence, a 2009 study found that drinking even a few alcoholic beverages per week (three to four drinks) increased the risk of breast cancer coming back in women who’d been diagnosed with early-stage disease.
The bottom line is that regularly drinking alcohol can harm your health, even if you don’t binge drink or get drunk.
All types of alcohol count. One drink equals 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine, or 1,5 ounces of hard liquor.
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