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I’m not sure exactly how one could do a prospective study on the question of drinking and cancer, but I am sure you can find thousands of articles on the topic. As I have written in the past, if you wish to do literature searches that are somewhat better than just Google, use PubMed or Google Scholar. Both of these will take you to peer-reviewed articles on anything, as opposed to “just googling” it. My search today for “drinking + cancer” on PubMed found 16,377 articles. By contrast, a standard Google search for the same two words found 295 million hits. Narrowing the view to drinking and prostate cancer at PubMed gets us to 523 articles, and “drinking alcohol prostate cancer” finds 317.
My impetus for writing this post is two-fold. First, I think that the question itself is one of the most common I am asked in my regular clinic, so it seems to be of some interest to many men. If the woman/wife who accompanies the patient asks, I am usually alerted to this being an ongoing “issue” for the man with prostate cancer. Second, I was reminded to think about the topic by yet another article that appeared in one of the journals I follow. This most recent publication was from the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study that evaluated 47,568 cancer free men from 1986-2012 during which time 5,182 (10.9%) developed prostate cancer. They started off 90% caucasian at an average age of 55, and not exercising much. (~9-12 MET-h/week which is the equivalent of walking for 3-4 hours 3 times a week at 3 miles/hr). The results of the study as stated in the abstract are:
Total alcohol intake among patients with prostate cancer was not associated with progression to lethal prostate cancer (any v none: HR, 0.99 [95% CI, 0.57 to 1.72]), whereas moderate red wine intake was associated with a lower risk (any v none: HR, 0.50 [95% CI, 0.29 to 0.86]; Ptrend = .05). Compared with none, 15 to 30 g/d of total alcohol after prostate cancer diagnosis was associated with a lower risk of death (HR, 0.71 [95% CI, 0.50 to 1.00]), as was red wine (any v none: HR, 0.74 [95% CI, 0.57 to 0.97]; P trend = .007).
A quick look at some of the other articles in the PubMed search seems to support this conclusion. For example a study in Finnish twins found similar protection from light alcohol intake while heavy drinking increased risk. A meta-analysis of 27 studies also reported a slight protective effect of an occasional drink:
Note that a glass of wine or 12 oz of beer contains 14 g of EtOH. so that the “occasional” drinker in the above graph has a drink every 1-2 weeks.
Feel free to do you own research on the other articles, but my recommendation is that it is OK to have one drink a week (maybe even good for you) and probably red wine would be the best choice. But you should incorporate exercise into the formula and only let yourself have this if you have done 50+ minutes of vigorous exercise at least 3 times during the week. Otherwise, you are kidding yourself about “doing everything you can” to stave off the grim reaper.
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