Drinking alcohol can affect your health. The effects are:

Moderate drinking was once thought to be good for the heart, but better research methods have put a damper on that idea.

“Reducing the amount you drink is a great way to become healthier,” says Dr. Timothy Naimi, director of the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria in British Columbia.

On Friday, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy called for updating existing standards. Surgeon General's Health Warning Label on Alcohol-Containing Beverages Including cancer risk. His proposal would require parliamentary approval.

Alcohol consumption increases the risk of several types of cancer, including those of the colon, liver, breast, mouth and throat. Alcohol is broken down in the body into a substance called acetaldehyde, which can damage cells and prevent cell repair. This creates the conditions for cancer to grow.

Naimi said thousands of deaths a year in the United States could be prevented if people followed the government's dietary guidelines.

These guidelines recommend that men limit themselves to no more than two drinks per day, and women to no more than one drink per day. One drink is equivalent to one 12-ounce can of beer, one 5-ounce glass of wine, or one shot of liquor.

According to Murthy's recommendations, there are approximately 100,000 alcohol-related cancer cases and 20,000 alcohol-related cancer deaths each year in the United States.

“When considering whether or not to drink alcohol, or how much to drink, please keep in mind that less is more when it comes to cancer risk,” Murthy wrote on social media platform X on Friday. Ta.

The idea that drinking in moderation has health benefits stems from incomplete research comparing groups of people by how much they drink. This is usually measured at one point in time. And because none of the studies randomly assigned people to drink or not, they couldn't prove cause and effect.

People who report drinking alcohol in moderation tend to be better educated, have higher incomes and have better access to health care, Naimi said.

“We found that when you adjust those things, you tend to lose the advantage,” he said.

Another problem: Most studies didn't include young people. Almost half of people who die from alcohol-related causes die before age 50.

“If you're studying people who survived into middle age and didn't stop drinking because of problems and didn't become heavy drinkers, that's a very select group,” Naimi says. “It makes it seem like there are benefits for moderate drinkers, but it’s actually a statistical illusion.”

Some studies challenge the idea that alcohol has benefits. These studies compare people with a genetic mutation that makes drinking alcohol unpleasant to people without the genetic mutation. People with this mutation tend to drink very little or not at all. One of these studies found that people with the gene mutation had a lower risk of heart disease. This dealt another blow to the idea that alcohol protects people from heart disease.

Guidelines vary widely from country to country, but the overall trend is to drink less.

The UK, France, Denmark, the Netherlands and Australia recently lowered their recommended drinking limits after considering new evidence. Ireland will require cancer warning labels on alcohol from 2026.

Carina Ferreira Borges, Regional Advisor on Alcohol at the World Health Organization's Regional Office for Europe, said: “Overwhelming evidence links alcohol to more than 200 health conditions, including cancer, cardiovascular disease and injuries, leading to a growing scientific consensus. has changed,” he said.

Naimi served on an advisory committee that called for lowering the recommendation for men in the United States to one drink a day. This advice was considered but rejected when the federal government issued its recommendations in 2020.

“The simple message best supported by the evidence is that when it comes to health, if you're going to drink, it's better to drink less,” Naimi says.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Science and Education Media Group. AP is solely responsible for all content.