wine and health

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 app...

A recent headline announcing the results of another study examining the role of alcohol and risk of breast cancer proclaimed that even a glass of wine a day “can significantly increase a woman’s cancer risk.” The connection between drinking and breast cancer has been a troublesome one, the thorn among the rosés, if you’ll pardon the metaphor. It’s not that I mean to make light of all this well-intentioned alarm bell ringing, but the way I see it research on wine and breast cancer just keeps repeating the same mistakes. When it comes to the question of wine and breast cancer, most studies still get it wrong. That’s one reason why I can’t help but be a little bit cynical every October, when pink ribbons start sprouting everywhere, from lapels to football jerseys to cereal boxes. Increased awareness is laudable, but I wonder if these efforts do more to make us feel good than they do to actually make a difference for women with breast cancer. Case in point: the Komen Foundation, with ...