Alcohol and Processed Meat can boost your Cancer Risk

Alcohol, processed meats, such as hot dogs, ham, and bacon, and excess weight all may raise a person’s risk of stomach cancer, a new review finds.
Further, the risk seems to increase as a person drinks more alcohol, or eats more processed meats or gains more weight, the review states.
The review concludes that in the United States, about one in seven stomach cancer cases could be prevented if people did not drink more than three alcoholic drinks a day, did not eat processed meat and maintained a healthy weight. That’s approximately 4,000 stomach cancer cases every year.
“This is the first report to find strong evidence of these links,” said Alice Bender, head of nutrition programs at the cancer institute. “There are things we can do to lower our risk for cancer. There are choices we make every day that can make a difference.”
• Three or more alcoholic drinks per day every day increases risk of stomach cancer. A standard drink is 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine or 1.5 ounces of distilled spirits, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
• For every 1.8 ounces of processed meat eaten every day, the equivalent of one hot dog or two slices of bologna, the risk of cancer in the lower stomach rises by 18 percent.
• Every five-unit increase in body mass index, BMI, a ratio of weight to height, causes a 23 percent increased risk of cancer in the upper stomach.
Stomach cancer is the fifth most common cancer worldwide and the third most common cause of death by cancer, the report stated. Just last October, the World Health Organization determined that processed meat can cause cancer.