drinking

Does drinking alcohol cause cancer? Learn about the risks

Source: www.mskcc.org Author: Jim Stallard, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center The public is largely unaware of the link between alcohol consumption and increased cancer risk. Mixed messages from experts may have added to the confusion. There is strong and consistent evidence that drinking alcohol increases your risk of developing a cancer, based on a growing body of research. Alcohol is estimated to account for 6% of cancer cases in the U.S. — more than 75,000 per year — and nearly 19,000 cancer deaths, according to the American Cancer Society. Alcohol is the third biggest controllable risk factor for the disease, after tobacco smoking and excess weight. But most Americans aren’t aware of this link, thanks to seemingly contradictory research and mixed messaging from public health experts. A study published in 2023 found widespread mistaken beliefs that the risk varies by beverage type, with the lowest cancer risk assigned to wine. Another study published in 2021 showed that nearly 70% of people did not even know that alcohol was a cancer risk factor. It’s disturbing that most people aren’t aware of the connection,” says Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) psychologist Jennifer Hay, PhD, who studies how people perceive various cancer risks. “It’s startling, given that many members of the general population are genuinely concerned about their cancer risks. We clearly have a lot of work to do to raise awareness and change the perception.” More cancers could be prevented, she says, if people fully understood the risks of [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2024-01-04T09:57:07-07:00January, 2024|Oral Cancer News|

Taste, smell dysfunction may persist after HNSCC treatment for longer than survivors anticipate

Source: www.oncologynurseadvisor.com Author: Bette Weinstein Kaplan Many people who survive squamous cell cancers of the head and neck (HNSCC) experience difficulty eating and drinking. The problem goes beyond the survivors’ active disease state and into recovery, where it continues to negatively affect their quality of life. HNSCC is the seventh most common cancer worldwide. These cancers are usually found in the oral cavity, pharynx, and larynx. Although often attributed to alcohol and tobacco use in the past, many malignancies seen today result from exposure to the human papillomavirus (HPV). Treatment plans for HNSCC include combination regimens such as chemoradiation or single therapy such as surgery or radiation by itself. Taste dysfunction is one of the most common adverse effects patients report after treatment, and it has a significant impact on patients’ quality of life. M. Yanina Pepino, PhD, professor of Food Science and Human Nutrition at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and her colleagues recently conducted a study on the long-term effects of HNSCC treatment. Their goal was to determine when and if senses of taste and smell fully recover after treatment is completed. Most sensory evaluation studies reported the difficulty in taste and smell should be expected to resolve within several months after cessation of treatment; however, many survivors report continued taste dysfunction more than 6 months after treatment completion. For this study, Dr Pepino and her group recruited 40 survivors of HNSCC who had been treated with radiation therapy between 6 months and 10 years prior to recruitment. [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2021-07-19T19:39:05-07:00July, 2021|Oral Cancer News|

Head-and-neck surgeons buoyant about new, just-right robot

Source: newsroom.uw.edu Author: Brian Donohue You know how great it feels when someone makes a pie or cake just for you? University of Washington Medicine head and neck surgeons have been feeling that kind of love lately, and on Feb. 5 they shared the first slice, so to speak, with patient Steven Higley. Surgical assistants work near patient Steven Higley on Feb. 5. Lead surgeon Jeff Houlton is obscured by the robotics. The cake in this story is actually a da Vinci robotic-assist system built especially for head and neck procedures. It is easier to maneuver than the robotic device they’ve used for the past decade, which was designed for operations to the chest and abdomen. Higley underwent surgery to have a cancerous tonsil and part of his throat removed. Sitting at a console a few feet from the patient, Dr. Jeff Houlton manipulated the miniature surgical tools emanating from the robot’s single port, positioned just outside Higley’s open mouth. It was UW Medicine’s first trans-oral surgery with the new tool. “If you think about laparoscopic surgery in the belly area, robotics provides the advantage of multiple mechanical arms approaching from different angles,” Houlton said. “But it’s a challenge to have three robotic arms that all need to go through a patient’s mouth. With this machine, the three arms are designed to come through one garden hose-like entry port and then articulate out from there. “Pretty interesting, though, that in the past 10 years we built a nationally [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2021-02-12T18:43:12-07:00February, 2021|Oral Cancer News|

Should we be drinking less?

Source: www.nytimes.com Author: Anahad O’Connor Can a daily drink or two lead to better health? For many years, the federal government’s influential dietary guidelines implied as much, saying there was evidence that moderate drinking could lower the risk of heart disease and reduce mortality. But now a committee of scientists that is helping to update the latest edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans is taking a harder stance on alcohol. The committee said in a recent conference call that it plans to recommend that men and women who drink limit themselves to a single serving of wine, beer or liquor per day. Do not drink because you think it will make you healthier, the committee says: It won’t. And it maintains that drinking less is generally better for health than drinking more. That message is a departure from previous guidelines, which since 1980 have defined “moderate” drinking as up to two drinks a day for men and one for women. Government agencies have also long defined a standard drink as 12 ounces of regular beer, five ounces of wine, or one and a half ounces of distilled spirits (40 percent alcohol), amounts often exceeded in Americans’ typical “drink.” Between 1990 and 2010, many editions of the guidelines, which are updated every five years, discouraged heavy drinking and warned pregnant women and people with certain medical conditions not to drink. But they also noted that moderate drinking was linked to fewer heart attacks and lower mortality. The 2010 guidelines mentioned [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2020-07-10T07:46:57-07:00July, 2020|Oral Cancer News|

Flossing and going to the dentist linked to lower risk of oral cancer

Source: www.livescience.com Author: Yasemin Saplakoglu, Staff Writer Regularly flossing and going to the dentist may be tied to a lower risk of oral cancer. That's according to findings presented March 31, here at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) annual meeting. In the new study, researchers analyzed the dental health behaviors of patients who were diagnosed with oral cancer between 2011 and 2014 at the ear, nose and throat clinic at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center. The patients' behaviors were compared to those of non-cancer patients who came to the clinic for other reasons, such as dizziness or an earache. [7 Odd Things That Raise Your Risk of Cancer (and 1 That Doesn't)] All of the patients in the study had responded to a survey that included questions about how often they flossed, how often they went to the dentist, how sexually active they were and if they smoked or drank alcohol. Oral cancer can be divided into two categories: those driven by the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus (HPV) and those that aren't, said lead study author Jitesh Shewale, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. (Smoking and drinking are both risk factors for non-HPV oral cancers.) After adjusting for factors such as age, gender, socioeconomic status and race, the researchers found that oral HPV-negative people who went to the dentist less than once a year had nearly twice the risk of developing oral cancer than those who went once [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2019-04-02T11:40:32-07:00April, 2019|Oral Cancer News|

Robot that can cut out hard-to-reach throat tumours through patients’ mouths: Pioneering operation reduces need for chemo and radiotherapy

Source: www.dailymail.co.uk Author: Fiona McCrae, Roger Dobson British surgeons are using a cutting-edge robot to remove difficult-to-reach throat tumours – through the mouths of patients. The pioneering operation is designed to dramatically reduce the need for gruelling radiotherapy and chemotherapy, which can leave patients unable to swallow and dependent on a feeding tube for life. With growing numbers of people developing throat cancer, it is more important than ever to have a range of effective treatments that lessen the impact on quality of life, says Asit Arora, consultant head and neck surgeon at Guy’s & St Thomas’ NHS Trust in London. Once most common in elderly people with a history of drinking and smoking, rates of head and neck cancers have soared by 31 per cent in the past 25 years and are now as common in people in their 50s as in those in their 80s. The 90 minute operation is designed to dramatically reduce the need for gruelling radiotherapy and chemotherapy, which can leave patients unable to swallow and dependent on a feeding tube for life Much of the rise is attributed to HPV – a range of viruses that can be passed on during intimate and sexual contact. At least 80 per cent of the adult population carries some kinds of HPV on their skin, although most will never know it. In some cases, HPV can cause skin or genital warts, and other types are a known cause of cervical and anal cancers. HPV can [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2019-03-11T13:59:53-07:00March, 2019|Oral Cancer News|

Dad-of-two, 35, dies after being told he was too young to have throat cancer

Source: www.mirror.co.ukAuthor: Amber Hicks Ryan Greenan went to his doctor in Edinburgh in September after he started having trouble swallowing, eating and drinking. The 35-year-old from Scotland was advised his symptoms were most likely caused by reflux and anxiety, reports the Scotsman , despite his family having a history of throat cancer. Ryan's sister Kerry, 33, said her brother took this diagnosis at face value "because the general advice was that oesophageal cancer only really affected older people". However, the symptoms persisted and Ryan started to rapidly lose weight before collapsing at work in December. He was taken to hospital and it was then that a tumour was discovered in his throat and he was diagnosed with cancer on December 28. There was more heartache when it was revealed it had also spread to his lungs and liver and there was nothing that could be done to save him. Three weeks later Ryan sadly died. His sister is now calling on doctors to thoroughly test for the illness, even in younger patients. Kerry told the Scotsman : “When Ryan first went to the doctor, he was told it was anxiety and that he was too young for it to be cancer because he was only 35. “He just took that as his diagnosis and didn’t go back because the general advice was that oesophageal cancer only really affected older people. “If it had been picked up earlier, they could have operated, they could have given him chemotherapy, but after three months it had spread, there was [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2019-02-05T12:55:53-07:00February, 2019|Oral Cancer News|

Restaging raises hope against HPV oral cancer

Source: atlantajewishtimes.timesofisrael.com Author: Cady Schulman Jason Mendelsohn was diagnosed with Stage 4 tonsil cancer from HPV in 2014 after finding just one bump on his neck. He survived thanks to a variety of treatments, including a radical tonsillectomy and neck dissection to remove 42 lymph nodes, seven weeks of chemotherapy, radiation and a feeding tube. But if Mendelsohn’s cancer had been discovered today, just four years later, it would have been classified as Stage 1. That’s because HPV-related oral cancers now have a high survival rate through a better response to treatment, said Meryl Kaufman, a speech pathologist specializing in head and neck cancer management who worked for Emory University’s department of head and neck surgery for 10 years. “Cancer staging is taking into account the HPV-related cancers,” said Kaufman, who now owns her own practice. “It was kind of all lumped together. The survival rates for people who have HPV-related cancers are much higher than the typical head and neck cancers associated with smoking and drinking.” For Mendelsohn, finding out that patients with HPV-related cancers likely face easier treatments and higher success rates made him extremely happy. “If I was diagnosed and I heard Stage 1 instead of Stage 4, while it’s still cancer, it would make me feel like I could beat it,” said Mendelsohn, who made a video for his children a month after his diagnosis with advice for their lives after he was gone. “When I hear Stage 4 to Stage 1, I think people have [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2018-05-07T13:07:45-07:00May, 2018|Oral Cancer News|

Chronic heartburn might increase chance of neck, head cancers

Source: www.upi.com Author: HealthDay News Millions of American seniors suffer the discomfort of chronic acid reflux. Now, new research suggests the condition might raise their odds for even more dangerous foes -- head and neck cancers. The research can't prove cause-and-effect, and the odds of any one person with chronic heartburn developing one of these relatively rare cancers remains low, experts noted. But the study of nearly 28,000 Americans over the age of 65 did show a heightened risk. Overall, a history of gastroesophageal reflux disease -- the clinical term for chronic heartburn -- was linked to nearly triple the odds of developing cancers of the voice box (larynx); about a 2.5 greater odds for cancers of the pharynx (top of the throat); a doubling of risk for cancers of the tonsils; and a 40 percent higher odds for cancers in the sinuses. Head and neck cancers of the respiratory and upper digestive tracts cause more than 360,000 deaths worldwide each year, the researchers noted. The new study was led by Dr. Edward McCoul, of the Ochsner Clinic Foundation in New Orleans, and published Thursday in the journal JAMA Otolaryngology Head & Neck Surgery. One gastroenterologist said the findings aren't surprising, given what's known about the effect of acid reflux on sensitive tissues. "Reflux material from the stomach can rise high in to the esophagus, the food tube between the mouth and the stomach," explained Dr. Anthony Starpoli. He said the same juices "can invade the throat, sinus passages and [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2017-12-22T21:58:58-07:00December, 2017|Oral Cancer News|

Teens drink less if they know alcohol causes cancer — but most don’t — study finds

Source: http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/ Author: Tim Williams, Education Reporter Teens are less likely to drink if they know that alcohol is a major cause of cancer, but most are unaware of the link, a South Australian study has found. More than 2800 school students aged 12-17 were surveyed about their drinking behaviour by Adelaide University and South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI) researchers. Those aged 14-17 were deterred from drinking if they knew about the link between alcohol and cancer, but only 28 per cent of students were aware of the connection. Parental disapproval was another deterrent, while smoking and approval from friends resulted in higher rates of drinking. Most students had tried alcohol by age 16 and a third drank at least occasionally. Wealthy students were more likely to drink. Cancer Council SA chief executive Lincoln Size said there was clear evidence drinking caused cancers of the mouth, pharynx, larynx and oesophagus, as well as bowel cancer in men and breast cancer in women. It likely raised the risk of liver cancer and bowel cancer in women too. “Any level of alcohol consumption increases the risk of developing an alcohol-related cancer; the level of risk increases in line with the level of consumption,” he said. “This latest evidence highlights the need to educate young people about the consequences of alcohol consumption and for parents to demonstrate responsible drinking behaviour. “We need to get the message through that what may be considered harmless fun actually has lifelong consequences.” Lead author [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2017-07-20T09:05:48-07:00July, 2017|Oral Cancer News|