The theme of this year’s European Action on Alcohol Week, 20 – 24 November is ‘Alcohol and Cancer’. Given that 900 people will be diagnosed with an alcoholrelated cancer in Ireland this year, it’s an important conversation to have. Despite this, awareness of the link between alcohol and cancer is very poor

LGBTI+ Community and Cancer Risk

In Ireland, drinking harmfully has become the norm for many people but awareness of the risks is low with just 16% of women aged 15-24 aware that alcohol can cause breast cancer.

Evidence shows that alcohol increases your risk of cancer, irrespective of the type of drink so it doesn’t matter if you drink beer, wine or spirits – the risks remain the same. In fact, alcohol has been shown to cause at least seven di. erent types of cancer: mouth, larynx, throat, oesophagus, liver, bowel and breast cancer (in women). Gay and bisexual men are at greater risk of these types of cancer as their alcohol intake is higher generally and binge drinking is more common.

For women, the main risk factors for breast cancer are getting older, whether or not you have had children, or if you are older when you fi rst give birth. Being overweight after menopause, smoking and drinking alcohol are other factors that may add to this risk. Even low levels of alcohol consumption ( just over 1 standard drink per day) can increase a woman’s risk.

Alcohol can often be used as a coping mechanism – a pattern well described by one woman in research carried out for GLEN and BeLonGTo, “I would say I drank excessively to be able to cope with going into straight environments, pretending to be something I wasn’t. That for me was very hard and I suppose with misuse of alcohol, you’re able to cope, it takes the edge off . I suppose most weekends I probably would have drank too much. But again like that, it dulls the senses and just gets you through what ordinarily would have been a very difficult time” (Female, 47).

Dr. Marie Laffoy, Assistant National Director, HSE’s National Cancer Control Programme says that “while alcohol is only one of many risk factors in relation to cancer, the fact is that regularly drinking any amount of alcohol increases cancer risk. The first step is to be aware of how much you drink. The drinks calculator onaskaboutalchol.iecan be used to find out how your drinking is impacting your health. If you do drink, you can take action to reduce your risk of cancer by sticking to the low risk guidelines. There’s plenty of support and advice onaskaboutalcohol.ieto get you started.”

Drinking guidelines

Drinking too much and too often can cause damage to your physical and mental health in the short and long term.

For healthy adults aged 18 – 65, the low-risk guidelines are currently 17 standard drinks for men and 11 standard drinks for women spread across a week with two to three alcohol free days.

For further information on standard drinks and low-risk drinking guidelines, please visit askaboutalcohol.ie and use the drinks calculator to assess your drinking.