Breast Cancer: October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and the Drink Less for Your Breasts social media campaign stands out like a red flag against a cheerful tide of pink ribbons, especially those printed on alcoholic beverage labels. We should all know that alcohol increases the risk of breast cancer.
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The social media campaign, which has just been launched after debuting in February, is aimed at young women and appears to be the first of its kind in the US. A video, featured in a Facebook ad, shows a young woman dancing in a nightclub with a cocktail in her hand. She smiles as she heads to the bathroom to take a break, but when she looks in the mirror, instead of her vibrant dark locks, she sees a grim, bald version of herself. Horrified, she reaches up to touch her hair as her reflection reaches out from the mirror and places her hand over her cocktail glass. “Alcohol increases your risk of breast cancer,” a female announcer says. “Drink less for your breasts.”.
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The campaign is also designed around “edu-grams,” or educational Instagrams, which relay information to encourage women to cut back on their alcohol consumption, then link to the campaign website for more details. There’s no specific cutoff for what “less” means and no push for abstinence, but based on previous epidemiological studies, the Drink Less campaign estimates that over time, even one drink a day — the limit recommended by the U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Women — increases cancer risk by 14%. (A person’s overall risk is also shaped by other factors, so the increase would be more significant for someone with a family history of breast cancer.)
The Drink Less for Your Breasts website provides the definition of a drink: 14 grams of alcohol, which usually means one beer, one glass of wine, or one shot of spirits, such as gin or whiskey. One shot of a fortified drink counts as more than one drink. The campaign’s conclusion is posted on their website: “You can’t control things like being born female or your genes or when you have your period, all of which increase your risk of breast cancer. But you can control how much you drink. So why not control what you can?”
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According to a 2020 analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only one in four women ages 15 to 44 know that alcohol is a risk factor for breast cancer. Priscilla Martinez, who leads the Drink Less campaign, would like to change that. “My goal was to prevent a young woman who drinks alcohol, as many women do, from finding out in 20 years that she has breast cancer and wondering why,” says Martinez, a public health researcher who typically studies racial and ethnic health disparities related to alcohol at the Alcohol Research Group, a nonprofit organization based in Emeryville, California.
About 250,000 women in the U.S. were diagnosed with breast cancer in 2018 (the most recent statistic) and 42,465 died from it. This makes breast cancer the second most common cancer (after skin cancer) and the second deadliest (after lung cancer) in women.
Oncologist Noelle LoConte of the University of Wisconsin has long believed that the alcohol-cancer connection doesn't get enough attention—even among oncologists.
Alcohol increases the risk of head, neck, esophageal, liver, and colon cancers, in addition to breast cancer, possibly because of the way it is metabolized. Ethanol undergoes a biochemical reaction that produces acetaldehyde, which is then broken down by another enzyme called aldehyde dehydrogenase and eliminated from the body. Some people, particularly those of East Asian descent, have a less active form of the enzyme, which allows acetaldehyde—a probable human carcinogen—to circulate more in the body, potentially putting them at greater risk of cancer. Acetaldehyde can damage DNA, causing changes that can lead to cancer.
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Alcohol also increases estrogen levels, creating a particular risk of a type of breast cancer known as estrogen receptor-positive, in which estrogen fuels tumor growth
The American Cancer Society acknowledges the link between alcohol and breast cancer, as does a Surgeon General's report on addiction. The alcohol industry doesn't dispute that either. "Many lifestyle choices carry potential risks, and alcohol consumption is no exception," says a spokesperson for the Distilled Spirits Council.
“Cancer is a complex disease. Studies have found that heavy alcohol consumption is associated with an increased risk of certain types of cancer, and some have also reported an association between moderate alcohol consumption and an increased risk of breast cancer. Women who have questions about alcohol consumption should talk to their doctor who can determine what is best for them based on their individual risk factors, such as family history, genetics and lifestyle,” the spokesperson explains.
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The Drink Less campaign is funded by the California Breast Cancer Research Program, a state program funded by tobacco taxes and donations. In 2019, the policy research advisory group decided to target awareness of alcohol as a risk factor for breast cancer in young women.
Planning for the social media campaign began just as the pandemic imposed a global lockdown. As the pandemic continued, alcohol consumption increased, especially among women. Heavy drinking days among women, defined as four or more drinks within a few hours, increased by 41 percent, according to a RAND Corporation study. (The study compared a baseline survey of 1,540 adults conducted in spring 2019 with their responses during a follow-up in spring 2020.)
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But resisting alcohol consumption is not simple. As the United States found during a disastrous period of prohibition from 1920 to 1933, opposition to alcohol is not popular. When Sharima Rasanayagam, chief scientist for the Breast Cancer Prevention Partners in San Francisco, talks about environmental causes of breast cancer, her audience is enthusiastic—until she mentions alcohol. “People like to drink, and they don’t like to hear about it,” she says. She tells them that quantity matters: “At least drink less.”
With information from wired.com and https://drinklessforyourbreasts.org/
