Department Of Health Research Shows Women Are Unaware Of Link Between Alcohol And Breast Cancer Risk

New research from the Department of Health's Know Your Limits campaign reveals that the vast majority of UK women (82%) don't realise alcohol consumption can increase the risk of developing breast cancer.

According to the General Household Survey, around 4 million women drink more than the NHS recommended daily limit of 2-3 units of alcohol, equivalent to one large glass of wine a day (250ml at ABV 12%). [1]

We know that regularly drinking alcohol can slightly increase the risk of developing breast cancer and the risk increases the more you drink. Drinking, on average, one unit of alcohol per day increases a woman's risk of breast cancer by about 6%. This risk increases by a further 6% for each additional unit of alcohol consumed on a daily basis. For example, a woman who drinks two units per day each and every day of her adult life would increase her risk of breast cancer by about 12%. [2]

Unlike many other established breast cancer risk factors, alcohol consumption is something we can change. The important message is for women to be aware of how many units of alcohol they are consuming and to drink in moderation.

Dr Sarah Cant, Policy Manager at Breakthrough Breast Cancer, said:

"Drinking moderate or high levels of any type of alcoholic drink has many health consequences, including an increased chance of developing breast cancer.

"Although many factors might affect our risk of getting breast cancer, limiting how much we drink is one thing we can do to try to reduce that risk - it's never too late to change your drinking habits."

Drinking alcohol is one of the few identified risk factors for developing breast cancer. We don't yet know all the causes of the disease but it's thought to be a combination of hormonal, genetic, lifestyle and environmental factors. For most women, the biggest risk factor for developing breast cancer is increasing age.

The earlier breast cancer is detected, the better the chances of successful treatment. It's important for all women to be breast aware and to attend NHS Breast Screening appointments if they are over 50.

More information about breast cancer risk factors can be found here

To find out more about the Know Your Limits campaign visit http://www.units.nhs.uk

[1] The 'around 4 million' figure is based on 21,119,500 women aged 16 and over in England (ONS 2006 population estimates). General Household Survey data shows that in 2006, 20% of English women drank more than 14 units in the week (using the new methodology). Using this, the Know Your Limits campaign estimates that 4,223,900 women aged 16 or over exceeded the 14 units in 2006.

[2] These figures are estimates and reflect the incidence of breast cancer in the UK population and the size of alcoholic units in the UK.

Notes

- For more information about the established, possible and doubtful risk factors for breast cancer, Breakthrough Breast Cancer has published the BMA award-winning booklet, Breast Cancer Risk Factors: The Facts. Copies can be obtained by calling the Breakthrough Information Line on 08080 100 200 or can be downloaded here

- At the moment we don't have enough information or the means to prevent breast cancer. That's why Breakthrough Breast Cancer has launched the Breakthrough Generations Study, in partnership with The Institute of Cancer Research. This is the largest, most comprehensive investigation into the causes of breast cancer in the UK. Involving 100,000 women over the next 40 years, the study aims to provide the most detailed information yet on what causes breast cancer and as a result, give an understanding of how the disease can be prevented in the first place. If you would like more information about the Breakthrough Generations Study, please visit http://www.breakthroughgenerations.org.uk.

Source
Rachel Pilkington
Assistant PR Officer
http://www.breakthroughgenerations.org.uk

Excess Drinking Shrinks the Brain

The more alcohol you drink, the more your brain shrinks, a new study has found.

"The take-home message is that, if you drink a lot, you're going to hurt your brain," said Rajesh Miranda, an associate professor of neuroscience and experimental therapeutics at the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine. "This is something we knew, but this is a huge study that quantifies that."

"It's not surprising that alcohol would cause shrinkage of the brain. That kind of thing has been observed in animal models and smaller studies," Miranda added. "The surprising thing is that they 1/8the study authors 3/8 showed that even low levels of drinking are not protective, as people had seen in other cases."

The findings are published in the October issue of the Archives of Neurology.

Brain volume decreases naturally as people age, at a rate of about 1.9 per cent per decade. At the same time, the brain acquires white matter lesions as it gets older. Both of these changes also accompany dementia and cognitive decline, according to background information in the study.

Moderate levels of alcohol consumption have been linked with a decreased risk of cardiovascular disease, leading researchers to hypothesize that restrained tippling might also slow declines in brain volume. Previous studies have also found that drinking alcohol in moderation is associated with improved cognitive function and a decreased risk of Alzheimer's disease.

For the new study, led by Carol Ann Paul, of Wellesley College in Massachusetts, researchers conducted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and health exams on 1,839 adults (average age 60) participating in the Framingham Offspring Study between 1999 and 2001. None of the participants had evidence of clinical dementia or had suffered a stroke.

The men and women were asked how much alcohol they drank each week, then were classified as abstainers, former drinkers, or low (one to seven drinks per week), moderate (eight to 14 drinks per week) or high consumers of alcohol (more than 14 drinks a week).

Most participants (almost 38 per cent of men and more than 44 per cent of women) fell into the "low-consumption" category. Men were more likely than women to report being moderate or heavy drinkers.

Alcohol had no protective affect on the normal, age-related shrinkage in brain volume, the researchers found.

To the contrary, the more a person drank, the more their brain volume diminished. This relationship was somewhat more pronounced in women, although women tended to be lighter drinkers.

The gender difference could be explained by biological factors, namely that alcohol is absorbed faster in women and they tend to feel the effects of alcohol more than men, the researchers said.

More information

The http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/dementia.html U.S. National Library of Medicine has more on dementia.

SOURCES: Rajesh Miranda, Ph.D., associate professor, neuroscience and experimental therapeutics, Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine; October 2008 Archives of Neurology
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Drunkeness

Drunkenness, in its most common usage, is the state of being intoxicated by consumption of ethyl alcohol to a degree that mental and physical facilities are noticeably impaired. Common symptoms may include slurred speech, impaired balance, poor coordination, flushed face, reddened eyes and uncharacteristic behavior..

For more information about the topic Drunkenness, read the full article at Wikipedia.org, or see the following related articles:
Blood alcohol content — Blood alcohol content (or blood alcohol concentration), often abbreviated BAC, is the concentration of alcohol in blood, measured, by volume, as a ... > read more

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Alcohol, Memory Blackouts and the Brain

Alcohol, Memory Blackouts and the Brain
by National Institute of Health

Alcohol primarily interferes with the ability to form new long-term memories, leaving intact previously established long-term memories and the ability to keep new information active in memory for brief periods. As the amount of alcohol consumed increases, so does the magnitude of the memory impairments. Large amounts of alcohol, particularly if consumed rapidly, can produce partial or complete blackouts, which are periods of memory loss for events that transpired while a person was drinking. Blackouts are much more common among social drinkers - including college drinkers - than was previously assumed, and have been found to encompass events ranging from conversations to intercourse. Mechanisms underlying alcohol-induced memory impairments include disruption of activity in the hippocampus, a brain region that plays a central role in the formation of new auotbiographical memories.

Read more about this article.

For immediate help online with alcoholism please contact us at The Sober Village or any of the many resources of the Sober Sources Network.

More about online recovery

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, almost 2 million people this year will find themselves entering some kind of rehabilitation for abuse of various drugs or alcohol. In the past 70 years or so, these alcoholics and addicts would have left various rehabilitation institutions to then begin a lifetime of meetings in church basements with fellow addicts or alcoholics, there to find the support and encouragement to continue their life clean and sober.

Well, now, in spite of fears about Internet addiction, major recovery organizations have been using the Internet to help and support individuals recovering from their affliction. An increasing number of support groups are springing up all over web with one goal: to provide online, 24/7 support for people recovering from some form of substance abuse.

Typically, the online venues focus on the 12-step recovery approach – the recovery program outlined by Bill Wilson and Bob Smith, the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous. It’s a popular program and, it seems, there is now a 12-step program tied to every possible substance abuse or behavior even including Nicotine Anonymous! Instead of holding daily or weekly meetings however, more and more of these 12-step groups are turning their attention to providing online chat, web forum, and list server-based recovery groups. The Internet is being used to connect similarly afflicted individuals and groups from all over the world. Over the world wide web, recovery meetings are no longer of an hour’s duration in a church basement, groups now meet for 24 hours a day with members checking in and out at will or as needed.

Alcoholics Anonymous, the oldest of the recovery groups, now offers meetings using email list servers, VoIP, and chat. AA provides online meetings in 33 different countries and hosts them in more than 10 different languages!

Narcotics Anonymous, has more than 20 internationally accessible email meetings and Cocaine Anonymous offers 6 internationally accessible email meetings.

Of course, for every benefit of online meetings, there are also some risks. The use of chat protocols, for example, opens up a portal to the user’s PC that may expose them to risk of being “hacked.” Email-based list servers also pose the problem of how to remain “anonymous” when the entire virtual room can see your email address.

Too, there are also hazards from various unscrupulous recovery organizations that prey on individuals in early recovery or their families. Over the Internet, they seem like legitimate organizations, but they are not always. As with most Internet-based activities, various fraud, email harvesting, and identity theft schemes abound. But even in those cases, Internet-based solutions emerge. One organization, All Addictions Anonymous Watch, for example, focuses on keeping a watchful eye on some of the less scrupulous efforts to exploit recovering individuals.

Exploiting Internet technology may prove to be a great boon to people trying to shake addictions. It has truly become Addiction Recovery 2.0. Nonetheless, family members and recovering individuals would be wise to keep stick to the major and best known recovery organizations (e.g AA, NA, CA) and, if they choose to participate online, they should get a Yahoo!, Gmail, or Hotmail mailbox using a pseudonym to keep themselves truly “anonymous”.

About the Author

Kurt is a recovered substance abuser and now is a freelance writer of business and travel articles. His recovery was aided online by CA Online and All Addictions Anonymous Watch.

Mental Attitude

MENTAL ATTITUDE

Success is in the blood. There are men whom fate can never keep down they march forward in a jaunty manner, and take by divine right the best of everything that the earth affords. But their success is not attained by means of the Samuel Smiles-Connecticut policy. They do not lie in wait, nor scheme, nor fawn, nor seek to adapt their sails to catch the breeze of popular favor. Still, they are ever alert and alive to any good that may come their way, and when it comes they simply appropriate it, and tarrying not, move steadily on.

Good health! Whenever you go out of doors, draw the chin in, carry the crown of the head high, and fill the lungs to the utmost; drink in the sunshine; greet your friends with a smile, and put soul into every hand-clasp.

Do not fear being misunderstood; and never waste a moment thinking about your enemies. Try to fix firmly in your own mind what you would like to do, and then without violence of direction you will move straight to the goal.

Fear is the rock on which we split, and hate the shoal on which many a barque is stranded. When we become fearful, the judgment is as unreliable as the compass of a ship whose hold is full of iron ore; when we hate, we have unshipped the rudder; and if ever we stop to meditate on what the gossips say, we have allowed a hawser to foul the screw.

Keep your mind on the great and splendid thing you would like to do; and then, as the days go gliding by, you will find yourself unconsciously seizing the opportunities that are required for the fulfillment of your desire, just as the coral insect takes from the running tide the elements that it needs. Picture in your mind the able, earnest, useful person you desire to be, and the thought that you hold is hourly transforming you into that particular individual you so admire.

Thought is supreme, and to think is often better than to do.

Preserve a right mental attitude the attitude of courage, frankness and good cheer.

Darwin and Spencer have told us that this is the method of Creation. Each animal has evolved the parts it needed and desired. The horse is fleet because he wishes to be; the bird flies because it desires to; the duck has a web foot because it wants to swim. All things come through desire and every sincere prayer is answered. We become like that on which our hearts are fixed.

Many people know this, but they do not know it thoroughly enough so that it shapes their lives. We want friends, so we scheme and chase 'cross lots after strong people, and lie in wait for good folks or alleged good folks hoping to be able to attach ourselves to them. The only way to secure friends is to be one. And before you are fit for friendship you must be able to do without it. That is to say, you must have sufficient self-reliance to take care of yourself, and then out of the surplus of your energy you can do for others.

The individual who craves friendship, and yet desires a self-centered spirit more, will never lack for friends.

If you would have friends, cultivate solitude instead of society. Drink in the ozone; bathe in the sunshine; and out in the silent night, under the stars, say to yourself again and yet again, "I am a part of all my eyes behold!" And the feeling then will come to you that you are no mere interloper between earth and heaven; but you are a necessary part of the whole. No harm can come to you that does not come to all, and if you shall go down it can only be amid a wreck of worlds.

Like old Job, that which we fear will surely come upon us. By a wrong mental attitude we have set in motion a train of events that ends in disaster. People who die in middle life from disease, almost without exception, are those who have been preparing for death. The acute tragic condition is simply the result of a chronic state of mind a culmination of a series of events.

Character is the result of two things, mental attitude, and the way we spend our time. It is what we think and what we do that make us what we are.

By laying hold on the forces of the universe, you are strong with them. And when you realize this, all else is easy, for in your arteries will course red corpuscles, and in your heart the determined resolution is born to do and to be. Carry your chin in and the crown of your head high. We are gods in the chrysalis.

Excecutives and Addiction

After 30 years in printing, Alex Maysura thought he'd honed an effective business- development strategy.

“I would take customers out for a three-martini lunch and I would have nine,” said Maysura, 56. “I found I had a talent for drinking. ... I closed business deals that way. I did more business at the bar and the golf course than I did any other way.”

Maysura, owner of University Printing Services, a 20- person shop in Detroit, had lost touch with reality.

“You think you are in control with all events in your life. Drinking was good for business, and I had a successful company. Once 9-11 hit, my business went down the tubes. I was left with just my drinking.”

A 52-year-old executive of a major bank in Southeast Michigan who wishes to remain anonymous developed his drinking habit over cocktail lunches with clients. In the beginning, it was three times a week. Eventually it turned into two to three drinks a day, which continued for the next 10 years.

By 2004, he was up to nearly a quart of Jack Daniel's a night.

“I always was one who suffered from stress,” he said. “As I went through a job transfer and a promotion, the added job and social responsibilities led to me to pour myself that additional drink or two at home.”

But like the other alcoholic business professionals interviewed for this story, he was convinced that his drinking could be self-managed.

“I woke up one morning with the shakes. I needed to medicate myself or have another drink to get through the day,” he said. “I didn't want to go to work with alcohol on my breath, so I took antidepressants. I became cross-addicted.”

"Even the Dog Knows!"

Like others suffering from addiction, executives struggle with a loss of control. What sets them apart, though, is their common unwillingness to seek and accept help, said Tom Ghena, administrative director of Henry Ford Behavioral Health-Maplegrove Center in West Bloomfield Township.

Executives often delay care because they are embarrassed, worry treatment will be discovered and the revelation will hurt their careers. Rather than take the risk, they opt to manage the problem on their own.

“By the time many executives seek help, they've either been admitted to a hospital for emergency treatment or told by their company to seek help or be fired,” said Denise Bertin-Epp, president and chief nursing officer of Brighton Hospital.

“There is not a lot of education around addiction, and many people don't understand the issues surrounding it,” Bertin-Epp said. “There's a huge stereotype. People believe they choose that lifestyle or they are weak.”

But addiction is a disease that can be inherited, Christensen said. As such, people need a variety of tactics to beat it.

Treatment often includes an initial assessment, detoxification, outpatient drug treatment and inpatient care that can range from two weeks to three months, said Dr. Carl Christensen, an addiction medicine specialist at Wayne State University School of Medicine.

Other options include 12-step programs made famous by Alcoholics Anonymous, and counseling and aftercare.

Once executives realize they need treatment, they often fear the admission process. Bertin-Epp and Ghena recommend executives first seek advice from their primary-care physicians. They also suggest executives call them directly.

In February, Brighton began a concierge service for executives who need substance abuse intervention but are too embarrassed to make traditional arrangements. Instead of calling a hospital's patient intake office, Bertin-Epp offers her cell phone number.

Some 10 to 20 executives from around the country call per week, Bertin-Epp said. They ask: “How could I have done this to myself? What will my staff think of me? What will the board think?”

Bertin-Epp answers questions on why treatment is important, where an executive can go, and how to explain an absence or educate the office staff.

It helps that Bertin-Epp has former addicts on her team.

Virginia June, Brighton's director of business development, began drinking with her alcoholic father at age 9. She was rather proud she could “drink him under the table.” But by 25, she was drinking a fifth of bourbon, popping 30 amphetamine pills and snorting a gram of cocaine a day.

“It is amazing I am still alive,” said June, now 47. “When I was 12, my mother used to buy me Boone's Farm. It was like a juice box.”

Dr. Mark Menestrina, director of Brighton's detoxification unit, has been arrested 12 times and lost his medical license.

“Pretty much anything I could use, I would use,” said Menestrina, 55, who has been sober 15 years. “The only substances I did not use were ones that were not yet invented.”

It wasn't until his wife filed for divorce in 1987 that he realized he needed help.

Over a 14-year period, Menestrina counted 49 times in which he had been in a treatment program. But it was the 50th time that he realized he needed to listen to the experts. In March 1993, he had his last drink.

Menestrina said many executives take elaborate steps to cover their admission, but few believe their stories.

“Even their dog knows they have a problem.”

Still, executives have assistants who sometimes cover their addictions.

“Professionals can control their environment more, and that can make the problem worse,” Ghena said. “My advice for subordinates is to talk with each other” and find a peer to approach the superior.

But Christensen said co-workers sometimes don't know there's a problem. “If you have a co-worker who is an addict and homeless, you might not even know until they have lost everything. It is not uncommon for a person to have a life completely destroyed but still show up at work,” he said.

Most people are relieved once they are in treatment.

“They have lied and made excuses to hide it,” Christensen said. “They want help. It is just difficult taking that first step.”

"I needed to shut up and listen'

When his printing business tanked in 2002, Maysura started to increase his drinking until he was up to a quart of liquor a day.

“I was having family problems, my parents were sick and my business closed. I just couldn't handle the pressure,” he said.

Maysura searched the Internet for self-help solutions and finally decided to seek professional help.

“I had a habit that I cultivated over 30 years, and I found you can't get rid of it in 30 days,” he said. “It is a disease, but you also have to deal with psychological traits, so it isn't easy to kick.”

After years of heavy drinking, the banker who wishes to remain anonymous had a pancreatic attack.

“My doctor told me in April 2006 that if I didn't stop drinking I might as well put a gun to my head because you can't replace your pancreas,” he said.

In May 2006, he asked his physician about checking into a treatment center. “I couldn't sleep without having a drink or taking a drug.”

It wasn't until his third admission at Maplegrove in June 2007 that he became receptive to the full treatment program.

“My way of thinking was not working. I needed to shut up and listen and do what I was supposed to do,” he said. The key, he said, was attending post-inpatient treatment meetings three to four times a week.

In October 2005, Maysura had his last drink. He has since gone back to college and will graduate this year with a bachelor's degree in psychology. He plans to earn a master's degree in social work to become an addiction counselor for seniors. Right now, he volunteers at Maplegrove.

“I go to meetings once a week and feel comfortable because I am around people who understand me and do not judge me,” Maysura said. “I am not worried about hitting the bottle again. I have the knowledge on how to say no to old friends who want to go have a drink.”

Jay Greene: (313) 446-0325, jgreene@crain.com


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