Alcoholics beware! Alcohol causes more than just liver cancer!

For people who love to drink, wine is the "main course" every night, and the real food is just the "side dish". A meal takes an hour or so, drinking old wine and watching TV is really comfortable. If you want to tell them about the harm of drinking, the response you usually get is particularly disdainful: It's okay, I only drank a little, I don't feel uncomfortable, but it doesn't matter to drink! Even if you "think calmly", the harm of drinking in the concept of most people is limited to "damage to the stomach" and "damage to the liver". Is this really the case?

The truth is far more terrible than you can imagine!

In recent years, many studies and follow-up surveys have found that alcohol is not only closely related to liver cancer, but also increases the risk of upper gastrointestinal/respiratory tract cancer, lung cancer, female breast cancer, colorectal tumors, melanoma and other cancers. It is simply a "cancer-promoting expert"!

How does alcohol cause cancer?

It is currently believed that the specific mechanism of alcohol-induced cancer is quite complex. Alcohol itself is not a direct carcinogen, but its metabolites acetaldehyde and reactive oxygen species (ROS) can promote the development of cancer, and its cancer-promoting mechanism varies depending on the type of cancer.

Liver cancer

In the development of liver cancer, people who drink heavily or for a long time may develop alcoholic hepatitis, fatty liver and alcoholic cirrhosis.

This is because after alcohol enters the human body, it is mainly decomposed and metabolized in the liver. The toxicity of alcohol to liver cells causes liver cells to have obstacles in the decomposition and metabolism of fatty acids, causing fat deposition in the liver and resulting in fatty liver. The more alcohol is consumed, the more severe the fatty liver becomes, which in turn causes liver fibrosis, cirrhosis, and liver cancer. If hepatitis patients continue to drink heavily, it will greatly accelerate the formation and development of cirrhosis and promote the occurrence of liver cancer.

Upper gastrointestinal/respiratory tract cancer

In upper gastrointestinal tumors, it is mainly because ethanol is converted into acetaldehyde in saliva, which increases the concentration of acetaldehyde in saliva, thus easily inducing cancer of the upper gastrointestinal tract (oropharynx, larynx, esophagus, and stomach).

In addition to the direct carcinogenicity of acetaldehyde, a product of alcohol metabolites, the large amount of oxygen free radicals produced by alcohol metabolism under the action of cytochrome P450 is also one of the pathogenic factors.

Breast cancer

Alcohol can affect hormone levels, such as increasing estradiol levels, which is one of the causes of breast cancer in women.

Does blushing after drinking mean you can drink?

About one-third of East Asians will blush when drinking alcohol, a symptom called "Asian Flush". People who have a blushing reaction to drinking alcohol have a defect in the gene of the enzyme that metabolizes alcohol, which causes a large amount of toxic acetaldehyde to accumulate in the body, causing blood vessels to dilate and cause a blushing reaction. To put it bluntly, it is acetaldehyde poisoning.

Therefore, people who get red in the face when drinking should undoubtedly try to avoid drinking, because for them drinking is "chronic suicide."