Alcohol

tagussmc said:

Dec 2016 Study on alcohol (and tobacco) post-treatment for H&N

I read all of your comments below and thanks for sharing.  Here's a link to a 12/16 study that concludes that continuing alcohol use after treatment has significant impact on mortality rate.  Makes me sad.  I'm a 5 year survivor (hpv positive, stage 4 base of tongue) but also a big fan of my wine and cocktails and all the fun and laughs that I associate with them.  After reading this, I think the answer is clear - ongoing alcohol consumption post-treatment increases your chance of death.  Talk about a buzz kill!  The study does not differentiate between HPV positive vs non and it does indicate, oddly, that beer consumption and liquor consumption prior to diagnosis seemed to be worse than wine.  Alcohol variety wasn't taken into consideration in the post-treament monitoring.  Note:  These comments are my gleanings from the article - the report link is below - read it yourself and please don't quote me.  As for me, I'm going to make some lifestyle changes.  5 years out from treatment and I'm loving life... I don't want to trade time on earth for time with a drink in my hand.

Here's a snip from the study and the whole thing is linked below - again - don't go by me.  It's your life - take 30 minutes and read it.  Quote:  "After adjusting for pre-diagnosis exposures, continued drinking (average of 2.3 drinks per day) post-diagnosis significantly increased risk (RR continued drinking vs. no drinking=2.7, 95% CI, 1.2–6.1), while continued smoking was associated with non-significantly higher risk (RR continued smoking vs. no smoking =1.8, 95% CI, 0.9–3.9). Continued drinking of alcoholic beverages after an initial diagnosis of head and neck cancer adversely affects survival; cessation efforts should be incorporated into survivorship care of these patients.

By the way - where it says "RR continued drinking vs no drinking = 2.7" means you're 2.7 times more likely to die if you continue drinking than if you don't.  Interestingly that includes other sources of death such as cardiovascular.  My onco doc said a martini was fine.  I translated that to say a daily martini (and/or wine) was fine.  I'll be changing that.  2.7 times more likely to die doesn't sound like good odds to me.

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2789339/

 

tagussmc,

Welcome to the H&N forum, alcohol consumption for H&N members comes up here every once in a while.

If you clear the important cancer hurdles, it may be a good idea to try many good behavior actions. Diet, nutrition, exercise, and all the things we have read and heard about.  Or maybe just don’t be too bad.  Life is short; you don’t know when it is your time is up. Any one of us could have an unfortunate accident.

Be good, be safe.

Matt

The problem with much of the analysis in this thread is the HPV aspect.  There is a definite relationship between tobacco and alcohol in the old school throat cancers, but those have been in decline for a while.  HPV is outside of all those characteristics, and growing rapidly.  I wil eventually indulge in wine, beer, and brandy again.  But not this year; things are healing slow enough as it is, but they are at least healing.

There is increasing evidence that some, but not all, cancers are the result of random mutation.  Given that +42% of humanity has HPV active in their throat, and we're seeing 50,000 cases of HPV cancer a year from a potential population in the billions, I'm betting we are simply random events.  Deep down in its core, that is how evolution works (I'm trained/work as a Paleontologist).  Blind alleys and extinction are the norm, and no, knowing the last six months of misery are simply nature doing its thing does not give me comfort.  The problem with that thesis, for me, is the relative newness of HPV.  What was the catalyst that triggered this process on a global basis, and seems to have occured some time in the 1970s.  It'd be easy if there was a commonality, like tobacco and lung cancer, but I just don't see it in our case.