Even Small Amounts of Alcohol Can Cause Cancer, Surgeon General Says

TIME

Alcohol is a leading cause of cancer, a risk that should be clearly labeled on drinks Americans consume, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy proposed on Friday.

Transcript

00:00The harm of drinking alcohol is that it is a carcinogen, the chemical alcohol, ETH,

00:05you know, on its own, ethyl alcohol. And it can, you know, cause mutations in cells

00:12and it can cause cell damage, which we know can lead to, you know, cancer growth.

00:17So you want to minimize whatever you're going to do to damage your cells and mutate your cells.

00:21I think this has been a long time coming. I think they're just trying to get this

00:25information out to the general public that, you know, again, if you're going to drink,

00:28you have to be aware that there are health risks associated with it besides the

00:32common ones that everyone is familiar with. So I think having that reminder or that label

00:36right there in front of the bottle is just to be a little bit more mindful that, okay,

00:41I'm drinking, I'm still going to enjoy my drink, but I'm aware that it could potentially,

00:46you know, cause my body some harm and maybe I want to minimize how much I'm really doing of this.

00:51You know, there's been some studies with red wine and maybe some cardiovascular benefit,

00:55but I think as a whole, you know, the balancing, if you're going to get cardiovascular benefit,

01:00it's better to do it with exercise and with diet rather than, you know, drinking red wine.

01:04We used to say moderate drinking is okay. You know, one drink per day for women,

01:09two drinks per day for men. You know, that was kind of the, what the doctors were kind of

01:14preaching to their patients for many years. I think that's changed now. I do not tell my,

01:19I tell them moderate drinking is, you know, maybe one a week, maybe two a week. If that,

01:24you know, if you want to, if you want to get some alcohol, I think daily drinking,

01:28again, this is my opinion, is not a safe thing to do anymore now that we know the full dangers of it.

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