Dr indu bansal is Director, Radiation Oncology at Narayana Superspeciality Hospital , Gurugram

Different types of beer, wine, or malt liquor can have very different amounts of alcohol content. It’s important to know how much alcohol your drink contains.  In the US, one standard drink (or one alcoholic drink equivalent) contains roughly 14 grams of pure alcohol, which is found in: 4.2% alcohol content: some light beers, 12 ounces of regular beer, which is usually about 5% alcohol, 5 ounces of wine, which is typically about 12% alcohol, 1.5 ounces of distilled spirits, which is about 40% alcohol.

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse & Alcoholism (NIAAA) defines moderate drinking as up to four alcoholic drinks for men and three for women in any single day and a maximum of 14 drinks for men and seven drinks for women per week.

There are various health problems associated with alcohol intake as depression, dementia, mental health problems, alcoholic hepatitis, anemia, arrhythmias, cirrhosis, fatty liver, gout,  high blood pressure, nerve damage, seizures, stroke, chronic disease of the heart muscle, known as cardiomyopathy, some types of cancer. All types of alcoholic drinks, including red and white wine, beer, cocktails, and liquor, are linked with cancer. The more you drink, the higher your cancer risk.

There is consistent evidence that alcohol is a carcinogen. 3.5 % of all cancer-related deaths were because of alcohol consumption. 5.5 % of all new cancer occurrences and 5.8 % of all cancer deaths worldwide were attributable to drinking alcohol. But in spite of this only 13% of people understand that cancer is one of the health risks associated with alcohol consumption. Ignorance is a lot like alcohol. The more you have of it, the less you can see its effect on you.

There is evidence that alcohol consumption increases the risk of seven different types of cancers — that of the mouth, throat, voice box, esophagus, bowel, liver and breast. Whereas smoking is linked to at least 15 types of cancer, the most common being lung cancer.  It may also increase the risk of cancers of the skin, pancreas and prostate. Even low levels of drinking (up to two drinks a day) were associated with an 8 to 23 % higher risk of prostate cancer when compared to no drinking. Alcohol is thought to be the cause of between 5% to 11% of all breast cancer cases.

A recent BMC Public Health study suggest that the cigarette equivalent of a bottle of wine is five cigarettes for men and ten for women. The authors estimate that in non-smoking men, the absolute lifetime risk of cancer-that is, the risk of developing cancer during one’s lifetime-associated with drinking one bottle of wine per week is 1.0%. For women, it is 1.4%. Thus, if 1,000 men and 1,000 women each drank one bottle of wine per week, around 10 extra men and 14 extra women may develop cancer at some point in their life. In men, this risk appears to be associated primarily with cancers of the gastrointestinal tract, whereas in women, 55% of cases appear to be associated with breast cancer. The authors also found that drinking three bottles of wine per week  — a level known to increase the risks of a wide range of different health problems — was associated with an increase of absolute lifetime cancer risk to 1.9% in men and 3.6% in womeny. This is equivalent to smoking roughly eight cigarettes per week for men and 23 cigarettes per week for women.

We all know drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness. Drunk never looks good. So, please take a pause and think. Less drinking more thinking. Try a big cup of sobriety — now that’s a good stuff. Wake up with no hangover.