I’ve been drinking for 7 years. Typicall I’ve only drank 3-4 drinks a year. If I stop drinking now, would that help decrease chances of cancer? If it does will it take a long time?

  • jet@hackertalks.com
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    1 year ago

    I’m going to assume you mean 3-4 drinks per week and not per year. If its per year, your not a drinker (unless these are multiday black out binges).

    Alcohol is hard on your liver, so reducing that stress will help your liver stay healthy. Alcohol is processed into fructose, and then into sugar into your blood stream. Cancer cells are typically defined as having mitochondrial dysfunction… meaning they can’t eat fat/ketones. Cancer cells can only eat Sugar in the blood stream. If you have cancer and you have excessive sugar in your blood your feeding it!

    So yes, if you reduce alcohol consumption, you reduce your cancer risk because there is less food for baby cancer to eat to grow into a big threat.

  • KuchiKopi@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    3-4 drinks per year won’t affect your cancer risk. Unless you’ve been drinking radium or something.

  • nikt@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Don’t take this the wrong way, but if you’re worried about getting cancer from 3-4 drinks per year, it sounds like you might be dealing with a fair bit of anxiety.

    Stress caused by anxiety is bad for your health and a possible cancer risk, and almost certainly worse for you than 3-4 drinks a year. I don’t want you to now be anxious about your anxiety, but this might be a good thing to focus on to improve your general quality of life (and possibly reduce your cancer risk in the process).

    You could start by talking to a doctor or other medical professional about it, or try finding a therapist in your area. The therapist search on https://www.psychologytoday.com/ is a good place to look, or try an online service like Better Help.

    [edit: corrected overstatement about stress being a major cancer risk]

    • CALIGVLA@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      Stress caused by anxiety is a major cancer risk, definitely much more so than 3-4 drinks a year.

      Oh great, another thing to be anxious about. My anxiety is going so out of control it’s going meta now.

  • 6mementomori@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    it might. but the difference would be absolutely marginal. also there’s a line between reasonably moderating your life not to die of cancer at 30 and worrying about everything and micromanaging every single aspect of your life to minimize your risk of cancer, which could ironically increase it. i know you didnt say anything like that, but many keep reading that x thing causes cancer and cut it out of their lives, then read that y causes it too and so on, just be reasonable