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Showing posts from October, 2017

Update on wine and breast cancer

With breast cancer awareness month upon us again, it’s fair to ask what we have learned about prevention and treatment, and for wine drinkers, it remains a confusing picture. It’s clear that heavy alcohol consumption increases risk, not so certain whether moderation – especially wine – is all that bad; it might even be good. On one hand, the message from the medical community is unambiguous: any level of drinking increases the odds of developing breast cancer. On the other hand, at moderate levels of drinking, cancer risk is extremely difficult to measure with confidence, even more so with wine. Here’s why I think a daily glass or two of red wine with dinner is still a healthy choice:    A recent study from the University of California San Diego [1] looked at survival and recurrence after breast cancer treatment, finding that light drinking had no correlation. Moderate alcohol intake was “protective against all-cause mortality” in non-obese women.    There appears to be no breas