Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / The Alcohol Cancer Cover Up (And What It Means for Your Health) | Ep 392

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The Alcohol Cancer Cover Up (And What It Means for Your Health) | Ep 392 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:00
  Philip Pape: Did you know that back in 2022, the US government commissioned a study on alcohol and cancer?
• 0:07
  Philip Pape: The study was finished, and then someone decided, eh, maybe we don't want to release that.
• 0:11
  Philip Pape: Meanwhile, the Surgeon General is calling for cancer warning labels on bottles of alcohol, and many Americans, many people in general, have no idea alcohol is even linked to cancer.
• 0:20
  Philip Pape: So, what exactly is in that buried report?
• 0:23
  Philip Pape: And what does the evidence we do have say about your cancer risk when it comes to alcohol?
• 0:28
  Philip Pape: Let's find out.
• 0:30
  Philip Pape: And today is gonna be an interesting one because we're talking about alcohol, but from a different perspective.
• 0:54
  Philip Pape: Now, I'm not here to tell you to never have a beer or a glass of wine.
• 0:58
  Philip Pape: I have one myself on rare occasions, but what I am here to do is give you a full, unfiltered picture of what the evidence shows so you can make truly authentically informed decisions about your health.
• 1:10
  Philip Pape: And when a government, in this case the US government, commissions a scientific study with your tax dollars, whatever your opinion is on that, and then they complete the study and then they refuse to release the findings from a frankly perfectly well done study, that is a bit concerning.
• 1:29
  Philip Pape: It's also an issue with transparency, especially when you went through this whole process and then you buried the information.
• 1:36
  Philip Pape: And the information is actually pretty powerful when it comes to the stuff that we care about on this podcast.
• 1:41
  Philip Pape: And I hope you know nobody might now.
• 1:43
  Philip Pape: I'm trying, I try not to be preachy.
• 1:45
  Philip Pape: I just want to be honest about, you know, when information's out there and there are different actors, different players, whether it's uh an influencer on social media or government institution or an individual that are hiding something or not telling the full story, that we can bring out what the reality is and really focus on that, not so much on attacking all of these sources.
• 2:06
  Philip Pape: That's not what I do.
• 2:06
  Philip Pape: I don't do the hot takes and the call-outs.
• 2:08
  Philip Pape: It's more of, hey, what do you need to know?
• 2:10
  Philip Pape: So here I'm just gonna jump into it today because it's a this pretty cool topic, to be honest.
• 2:15
  Philip Pape: It's it's scary though.
• 2:16
  Philip Pape: Um, here are the facts that are based on some different investigative reports that I was able to get on podcasts, on news, on different sources.
• 2:26
  Philip Pape: And this is obviously the first source of potential issue in that what can you trust today when it comes to news?
• 2:31
  Philip Pape: But I I kind of pieced it together, and it looks like back uh three years ago, 2022, the HHS, HHS, the Health and Human Services in the US, commissioned the alcohol intake and health study.
• 2:44
  Philip Pape: Okay, the alcohol intake and health study.
• 2:46
  Philip Pape: And you're obviously free to look all of this up online, make your best decision and judgment about this information.
• 2:52
  Philip Pape: And the goal of the study was to gather the latest evidence on alcohol and health so that they could update the federal dietary guidelines.
• 3:00
  Philip Pape: So this is taxpayer-funded research, and most of this research, and in this case, it was conducted by independent academic groups.
• 3:09
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 3:09
  Philip Pape: So assuming we trust, you know, who did the study, we're not going to get into that.
• 3:13
  Philip Pape: The study was done, it was completed, it was finalized, ready for pop publication, and then crickets.
• 3:19
  Philip Pape: And I'm not even, many of us don't even know about this.
• 3:21
  Philip Pape: Um honestly, I didn't learn about it until this year.
• 3:23
  Philip Pape: That's why I'm doing this episode.
• 3:24
  Philip Pape: So just in the last few months, different reports found that despite the report being completed, the federal officials didn't release it, probably due to, you guessed it, politics, industry pressure, whatever, whatever the motives are, the research was paid for, which it kind of pisses me off, right?
• 3:42
  Philip Pape: Because these are my tax dollars, they're spending on this stuff, and again, whether you agree or not, and then someone's like, hey, we did the study, it was a good study, but we're not gonna release the data for ulterior reasons.
• 3:51
  Philip Pape: So if we go back to January of 2025, the Surgeon General Vivek Murphy issued a public advisory calling for cancer warning labels on all alcohol.
• 4:02
  Philip Pape: And he cited evidence linking alcohol to seven cancer types.
• 4:06
  Philip Pape: And I think he all even mentioned that most Americans don't even know that alcohol causes cancer.
• 4:11
  Philip Pape: And it's not something that we talk about too often, although the few guests that I've had on to discuss alcohol have absolutely discussed the long-term links and correlations between alcohol and cancer.
• 4:21
  Philip Pape: And at the time, if you go back and look at the data, what happened?
• 4:24
  Philip Pape: Well, the stock market for alcohol stocks took a tank, you know, took a drop, and there was some pushback by industry.
• 4:32
  Philip Pape: And then the study itself that was buried, people are like, hey, did you know this was out there?
• 4:38
  Philip Pape: Maybe this is relevant.
• 4:40
  Philip Pape: What maybe we should see what it actually says.
• 4:42
  Philip Pape: And then you go to mid-2025, so this is a few months later, there's some reports in the news that show the federal, the drafts of the federal guidance were being watered down.
• 4:54
  Philip Pape: So you have this international consensus starting to tighten around the risks of alcohol and cancer.
• 4:59
  Philip Pape: And then the guidance here in the US for the federal guide guidelines starts going the opposite direction, dropping all this language about stronger limits.
• 5:07
  Philip Pape: And then in October, so literally, I think when this episode comes out, actually, if yeah, October 2025, there was another piece of evidence that reaffirmed alcohol is a major preventable cause of cancer with no amount, no amount of alcohol being entirely risk-free.
• 5:24
  Philip Pape: I think that was the IARC.
• 5:26
  Philip Pape: So you've got the stronger warnings on one hand, you've got our surgeon general in the US even kind of agreeing with that.
• 5:33
  Philip Pape: Then you have this funded study being kept from public view.
• 5:37
  Philip Pape: So that's kind of the background.
• 5:39
  Philip Pape: Whatever you make of it, I hope I didn't, I hope I gave it a pr fairly objective treatment of just telling you all the sides of what's going on.
• 5:45
  Philip Pape: And so what if we just ignored all that and said, hey, what does the evidence say already about alcohol and cancer?
• 5:52
  Philip Pape: What does the existing research say?
• 5:54
  Philip Pape: The National Cancer Institute does have a public fact sheet.
• 5:57
  Philip Pape: You can look it up, and it says clearly that alcohol consumption is a risk factor for several cancers.
• 6:03
  Philip Pape: And it has the strongest evidence for seven in particular: breast cancer in women, colorectal cancer, esophageal, liver, laryngeal, oral cavity cancer, and pharyngeal cancer.
• 6:16
  Philip Pape: Of course, you can hear several mouth cancers in there, right?
• 6:18
  Philip Pape: So you've got colon, you've got esophagus, esophagus, liver, various parts of the mouth and throat, breast cancer in women.
• 6:26
  Philip Pape: And there's nothing mysterious about this, right?
• 6:28
  Philip Pape: We know how alcohol works in the body.
• 6:29
  Philip Pape: It gets broken down, gets broken down into acetyldehyde, which, and I never pronounce that right.
• 6:35
  Philip Pape: That's the toxin.
• 6:36
  Philip Pape: And what that toxin does, one of the things that toxin does is damages your DNA.
• 6:40
  Philip Pape: Like many foreign substances that damage DNA, just like when you smoke, anybody who smokes, you're basically constantly damaging and mutating your DNA.
• 6:47
  Philip Pape: That's why it leads to cancer.
• 6:48
  Philip Pape: And the other thing that consumption of alcohol does is it limits nutrient absorption.
• 6:53
  Philip Pape: We know that it turns off all processing of all the other macros while your body is metabolizing the alcohol.
• 6:59
  Philip Pape: And that could have an impact against cancer protection mechanisms in the body, like folate.
• 7:06
  Philip Pape: Okay, so now you're not absorbing certain nutrients, at least for a time, especially if you're a frequent drinker.
• 7:10
  Philip Pape: But you don't even have to be that frequent of a drinker.
• 7:12
  Philip Pape: We're gonna get to that.
• 7:13
  Philip Pape: It also affects your hormones, it increases estrogen and other hormones that are tied to breast cancer and acts as a solvent, which helps carcinogens penetrate your cell membrane.
• 7:24
  Philip Pape: So it's just a lot of interesting mechanisms.
• 7:26
  Philip Pape: And of course, as always, the dose response relationship is important.
• 7:31
  Philip Pape: It's relevant because the more you consume, the higher your risk.
• 7:35
  Philip Pape: What's important to know though is even very light drinking shows an elevated risk for certain cancers versus no drinking.
• 7:42
  Philip Pape: So it's kind of like that big step up.
• 7:44
  Philip Pape: It's kind of like you go from your baseline, you have even one drink, and you get a step up, another drink, another step up.
• 7:51
  Philip Pape: And so we're trying to figure out that point at which we should really be concerned, especially if we care about our health and longevity.
• 7:56
  Philip Pape: Now, in this, I think it's in the same fact sheet, or I don't know where I got it, but I have notes from the NCI that says that some cancers, like female breast cancer, for those, the risk increases even at moderate, quote unquote, or light quote unquote levels.
• 8:12
  Philip Pape: So one drink per day increases breast cancer risk, and two drinks per day roughly doubles certain cancer risk.
• 8:19
  Philip Pape: And this is compared to non-drinkers, of course.
• 8:21
  Philip Pape: The WHO Europe 2023, again, you guys can judge these institutions however you want.
• 8:29
  Philip Pape: I'm just sharing the information.
• 8:30
  Philip Pape: They said, quote, when it comes to alcohol consumption, there's no safe amount that does not affect health.
• 8:35
  Philip Pape: And, you know, a lot of people say, hey, this is one of the world's leading public health organizations.
• 8:40
  Philip Pape: Whether you agree with it or not, it's it's a pretty strong statement, right?
• 8:45
  Philip Pape: And it's out of Europe, where they actually have a lot of alcohol consumption.
• 8:49
  Philip Pape: So that's interesting too, for what it's worth.
• 8:51
  Philip Pape: The IARC classifies alcohol as a group one carcinogen, which is the same category as tobacco and asbestos.
• 8:58
  Philip Pape: And it means that there's enough evidence that it does cause cancer in humans.
• 9:03
  Philip Pape: So I would at least want to play it a little bit safe here and say, okay, there's a link between alcohol and cancer to some extent.
• 9:10
  Philip Pape: There is.
• 9:10
  Philip Pape: And if we have information via recently funded studies that further strengthen that evidence and that gets buried, you have to question why.
• 9:21
  Philip Pape: And maybe you don't care about why.
• 9:22
  Philip Pape: Maybe you just care that the fact that it was buried and we want to know the information.
• 9:25
  Philip Pape: What is the information?
• 9:26
  Philip Pape: And I'm gonna just take a quick break here because we're gonna get into the politics of public health in a bit.
• 9:32
  Philip Pape: We're gonna talk about some of the nuances and then what this means for you practically.
• 9:37
  Philip Pape: We have a lot of interesting information outside the podcast, and much of it is free, including these free guides.
• 9:43
  Philip Pape: If you go to wits and waste.com slash free, I was going through our guides and I realized we have one called Eating Out, the Eating Out Guide.
• 9:49
  Philip Pape: And it's one of the most common questions I get is like, what do I do when I go out and I'm presented with alcohol and appetizers and salads and I'm going out with friends, they're having pizza, all that stuff.
• 9:58
  Philip Pape: So go to wits and waste.com slash free, free or click the link in the show notes for my eating out guide.
• 10:02
  Philip Pape: I think it's a good compliment to since we're talking about alcohol today and you probably tuned in to learn about alcohol, it's a good way to make smart choices and handle social drinking situations and stay aligned with your goals and still enjoy life, right?
• 10:15
  Philip Pape: And and that that's back, that's bringing us back to the practical side of this.
• 10:19
  Philip Pape: So witsandwaits.com slash free or click the link in the show notes.
• 10:22
  Philip Pape: All right, that was just a quick tangent because now we get back into the serious stuff.
• 10:25
  Philip Pape: Why was this study buried?
• 10:27
  Philip Pape: If you look at the US alcohol industry, it's massive, right?
• 10:30
  Philip Pape: Tens of billions in annual revenue, probably big lobbying power in Washington, like many industries.
• 10:36
  Philip Pape: And I'm sure they don't want cancel cancel warning labels on their products because they've seen what's happened to the cigarette industry since that occurred.
• 10:44
  Philip Pape: And that's because these labels tend to work, right?
• 10:47
  Philip Pape: When you put warnings on products, people consume fewer of them.
• 10:51
  Philip Pape: They start talking about them a different way.
• 10:53
  Philip Pape: We know smoking dropped dramatically after the warning labels and the PR campaigns, the public education campaigns, to the point where I've seen in my own lifetime, I was born in 1980, you know, smoking sections in restaurants and lots of people smoking everywhere, to it's like stigma.
• 11:10
  Philip Pape: It's a stigma now that you know you're ostracized if you smoke.
• 11:13
  Philip Pape: For again, for better or worse, whatever, you know, freedom, choice, blah, blah, blah.
• 11:17
  Philip Pape: Not even getting into any of that.
• 11:18
  Philip Pape: I'm just sharing what I've seen happen.
• 11:20
  Philip Pape: And so the alcohol industry, alcohol is a very interesting thing because we we glamorize it, right?
• 11:25
  Philip Pape: And again, I consume alcohol very rarely these days compared to what I used to because I understand its health impacts and I don't, I want to take care of my health.
• 11:33
  Philip Pape: But there, there's been a lot of messaging over the decades, like red wine is good for your heart.
• 11:38
  Philip Pape: You guys have heard that one.
• 11:39
  Philip Pape: You've heard the talk about resveratrol in red wine.
• 11:42
  Philip Pape: And all of those have been debunked.
• 11:44
  Philip Pape: Like there is zero positive to alcohol in any respect whatsoever.
• 11:49
  Philip Pape: Zero, zero.
• 11:50
  Philip Pape: So if you're still hearing some of those messages, or alcohol is fine in moderation, like that it's healthy in moderation, absolutely zero.
• 11:58
  Philip Pape: No, that is not true.
• 11:59
  Philip Pape: There's zero positive when it comes to alcohol.
• 12:02
  Philip Pape: I just want to put that out there.
• 12:03
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 12:04
  Philip Pape: That's different from saying you can't ever enjoy, I shouldn't use the word enjoy, but imbibe or consume something that you want to consume for some reason that's different.
• 12:15
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 12:16
  Philip Pape: And you think of terms like responsible drinking and moderation.
• 12:20
  Philip Pape: Again, that is interesting language that twists what you think about them.
• 12:25
  Philip Pape: Where you're like, okay, this is, I get social benefits.
• 12:28
  Philip Pape: You know, you look at beer commercials, Corona, whatever, where they're partying on the beach, right?
• 12:32
  Philip Pape: We we all know the thing.
• 12:33
  Philip Pape: And certain things get glamorized as well, even in other areas, like cigars.
• 12:37
  Philip Pape: I am surprised.
• 12:38
  Philip Pape: A lot of my friends who are listening are probably gonna be called out on this that you've got guys in the fitness industry who smoke cigars and think that's okay.
• 12:45
  Philip Pape: I'll say not okay.
• 12:46
  Philip Pape: It's perfectly okay from a freedom perspective and choice perspective, but it still has some cancer risk, just like cigarette smoking.
• 12:52
  Philip Pape: It's just a fact.
• 12:53
  Philip Pape: And they may know this and they may choose to do it anyway, and that's fine too.
• 12:56
  Philip Pape: So we got to look at data and also understand marketing.
• 13:00
  Philip Pape: And then when we throw politics into the mix, now we have science and politics bashing heads, which is always uh an interesting partnership.
• 13:07
  Philip Pape: Because again, the Surgeon General actually called for warning labels, which means it got to a level where they were possibly going to do that, right?
• 13:14
  Philip Pape: And he doesn't even control the labeling.
• 13:16
  Philip Pape: Congress does, right?
• 13:17
  Philip Pape: And that, and of course, the industry knows that, so of course, they they just have to prevent Congress from doing that.
• 13:22
  Philip Pape: And I think they've been successful, right?
• 13:25
  Philip Pape: It looks like they've been successful.
• 13:26
  Philip Pape: So that's kind of the politics behind it.
• 13:28
  Philip Pape: Again, for better or worse, what you believe, whatever side of the aisle you're on, et cetera.
• 13:32
  Philip Pape: So I want to I want to steel man the other side because I do want to give enough nuance and I guess fairness if that's if that word even applies here.
• 13:42
  Philip Pape: I'm not sure.
• 13:43
  Philip Pape: Not all cancer associations with alcohol.
• 13:46
  Philip Pape: So not all links between cancer and alcohol are equally strong across all consumption levels.
• 13:50
  Philip Pape: Remember, I mentioned breast cancer before.
• 13:52
  Philip Pape: I mentioned that specifically because they get separated out as far as their impact.
• 13:57
  Philip Pape: A there was a National Academy's report that basically said, look, some have a much more cautious or conservative link based on what we think we see in the evidence.
• 14:09
  Philip Pape: And that there's a lot of mixed evidence as well, which is to be expected in the scientific community.
• 14:16
  Philip Pape: If you listen to my episode with Dr.
• 14:18
  Philip Pape: Eric Helms, we go into great depth on falsification and on empiricism and all of that.
• 14:24
  Philip Pape: What we do know is the link between what's called moderate consumption and colon cancer is well established.
• 14:32
  Philip Pape: And that that concerns me as someone with a history and who you know is male because that that tends to affect more men, right?
• 14:39
  Philip Pape: Just like breast cancer affects more women.
• 14:41
  Philip Pape: For other cancer types, the relative risk increase at low levels of alcohol is small, it's still non-zero, but it's smaller than, say, colon cancer or the breast cancer.
• 14:53
  Philip Pape: Now, the way that we talk about these risks is important too because it's very confusing, right?
• 14:58
  Philip Pape: If one drink per day increases breast cancer risk, what does that mean in absolute terms?
• 15:04
  Philip Pape: What does that mean?
• 15:05
  Philip Pape: If you look at the baseline lifetime risk for US women for breast cancer, it's 13%.
• 15:11
  Philip Pape: And one drink per day might increase that to 14 to 15%.
• 15:15
  Philip Pape: Now, is that a big deal?
• 15:17
  Philip Pape: Statistically, it is.
• 15:19
  Philip Pape: Individually, you might say that it's not, but you can only weigh these risks if you know about them.
• 15:25
  Philip Pape: That's kind of the point.
• 15:27
  Philip Pape: That's why I'm actually making this episode.
• 15:29
  Philip Pape: Right now, less than half of Americans actually know that alcohol causes any type of cancer at all.
• 15:34
  Philip Pape: And I think that's a big gap in awareness.
• 15:35
  Philip Pape: And I'll be honest, I really wasn't clear on that till much, till very recently, especially when I got into the nutrition world, finally started to be like, okay, we need to pay attention to this stuff.
• 15:45
  Philip Pape: You know, we need to pay attention to this because the link is much stronger than, say, the link between eating processed foods and cancer, let's say.
• 15:53
  Philip Pape: Not to be confused with overconsumption of any food where you get where you have obesity and that's linked to cancer.
• 15:59
  Philip Pape: That's a whole different discussion.
• 16:00
  Philip Pape: So, I mean, this data that came from this buried report could have informed some more clear guidance, I suppose.
• 16:07
  Philip Pape: Right.
• 16:08
  Philip Pape: Instead, we still have this confusion, this gap, whatever you want to call it.
• 16:11
  Philip Pape: So, what do you want, what do you do with this information?
• 16:13
  Philip Pape: You're like, all right, Philip, that's all interesting.
• 16:15
  Philip Pape: This is not a news podcast, this is not a political podcast, great.
• 16:18
  Philip Pape: What do we do?
• 16:19
  Philip Pape: All right, first, understand what a standard drink is.
• 16:22
  Philip Pape: I think that's helpful because a lot of you are underestimating your consumption, just like we do with food, especially when we're not tracking.
• 16:29
  Philip Pape: A standard drink isn't that big, guys.
• 16:31
  Philip Pape: A standard drink is five ounces of wine, which is like that very small glass of wine that you're a little bit upset that they poured you in this restaurant.
• 16:37
  Philip Pape: You're like, come on, you're charging me 12 bucks for that.
• 16:40
  Philip Pape: 12 ounces of beer.
• 16:42
  Philip Pape: Okay, again, who gets 12 ounces of beer?
• 16:44
  Philip Pape: That's a can of beer.
• 16:45
  Philip Pape: That's not like a pint.
• 16:46
  Philip Pape: Now, granted, some restaurants have those very thick glasses that are like 14 ounces, they call it a pint, you know what I mean.
• 16:52
  Philip Pape: Or one and a half ounces of spirits, right?
• 16:55
  Philip Pape: Any hard liquor.
• 16:56
  Philip Pape: Anything you pour at home is gonna be way more than that.
• 16:58
  Philip Pape: Come on, admit it.
• 16:59
  Philip Pape: Admit it.
• 17:00
  Philip Pape: Second, I want you to think about frequency over quantity.
• 17:04
  Philip Pape: Not not always, but often.
• 17:07
  Philip Pape: I want you to think about that.
• 17:08
  Philip Pape: Because seven drinks in one night is different physiologically than one drink per night for seven nights, even at the same weekly total.
• 17:18
  Philip Pape: And you're gonna say, like, which one is worse?
• 17:20
  Philip Pape: You know what?
• 17:21
  Philip Pape: I don't know.
• 17:22
  Philip Pape: I don't know.
• 17:23
  Philip Pape: I would say the seven drinks in one night is probably worse because it probably highlights a different issue unless you do it like once every three years because you go to some party, you know.
• 17:31
  Philip Pape: But I'm not sure that's the case with a lot of people, right?
• 17:34
  Philip Pape: The one night, the one drink per night continuously, that might be a habit, a habit that you can mold over time, like I did.
• 17:41
  Philip Pape: I used to drink wine every night, and then I switched to just beer on the weekend or wine on the weekend, then I switch to like one a weekend, then I switch to non-alcoholic, and I hardly ever drink now, right?
• 17:50
  Philip Pape: And again, I'm not holding myself up as some paragon of this stuff.
• 17:53
  Philip Pape: This has taken me years to even get to that point.
• 17:55
  Philip Pape: And I still will occasionally have a drink.
• 17:57
  Philip Pape: So that's the second thing is think about frequency over quantity.
• 18:00
  Philip Pape: Just look at your patterns.
• 18:02
  Philip Pape: The third is think about cumulative exposure because cancer risk is about lifetime exposure to all the different things that cause cancer, right?
• 18:10
  Philip Pape: More years plus higher average consumption is going to equal greater risk.
• 18:13
  Philip Pape: So even if you are having seven drinks in one night, but you do it every five years, my guess is your risk is minuscule close to zero from that.
• 18:22
  Philip Pape: I don't know if drinking a whole bunch of drinks in one night and that's the only time you ever did it is the same as like smoking, you know, a pack of cigarettes one day and it's the only time you did that.
• 18:32
  Philip Pape: I'm not really sure.
• 18:33
  Philip Pape: Because I definitely have heard the idea that even one cigarette that you've ever smoked that can mutate your DNA and cause cancer.
• 18:40
  Philip Pape: I don't know.
• 18:41
  Philip Pape: Don't quote me on that.
• 18:42
  Philip Pape: Um, fourth is that risk is multifactorial.
• 18:46
  Philip Pape: Remember, alcohol is just one thing.
• 18:47
  Philip Pape: But look, you control what you can control.
• 18:50
  Philip Pape: So control the things that you feel have the biggest impact on your outcome and your results, your body composition, your hormones, your longevity, your health.
• 18:58
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 18:58
  Philip Pape: Fifth, if you're strength training, alcohol has additional downsides.
• 19:04
  Philip Pape: We've talked about this concept before.
• 19:05
  Philip Pape: I did an episode about the fourth macro and how it affects fat loss and muscle.
• 19:10
  Philip Pape: It impairs so many things that it really is a big negative in the world we inhabit here on wits and weights.
• 19:17
  Philip Pape: Whether you're talking protein synthesis, sleep, it's you know, the empty calories basically that you get from it, your performance, your fats, visceral fat storage, belly fat.
• 19:26
  Philip Pape: Anybody concerned about belly fat shouldn't be drinking too much alcohol, right?
• 19:30
  Philip Pape: So if you care about those things, think about what you can control and why you're doing it.
• 19:34
  Philip Pape: Because from a physique and health standpoint, less is always better all the way to zero.
• 19:38
  Philip Pape: Zero is going to be the best in this case.
• 19:40
  Philip Pape: And I won't say that about a lot of things.
• 19:42
  Philip Pape: I'm never gonna say you have to have zero processed foods.
• 19:44
  Philip Pape: You can actually have a decent amount of ultra-processed foods in your diet and have optimal health and live a long life.
• 19:49
  Philip Pape: You can't have a certain amount of alcohol on your diet and hope to have an optimal life.
• 19:53
  Philip Pape: That that there's a difference because one's one's a toxin, one's a poison that's foreign to your body.
• 19:58
  Philip Pape: And that's alcohol, by the way.
• 19:59
  Philip Pape: In case I wasn't clear about that.
• 20:01
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 20:01
  Philip Pape: So I'm not saying never to have a drink.
• 20:03
  Philip Pape: I'm saying know what you're doing to your body when you do, and drink less than you think is moderate because we're all lying to ourselves about what moderate is.
• 20:11
  Philip Pape: Let's be honest.
• 20:12
  Philip Pape: There's a quote I saw in my notes, I think it was from the IARC, that said, risks start from the first drop.
• 20:19
  Philip Pape: Okay, risks start from the first drop.
• 20:21
  Philip Pape: Not the full risk occurs on the first drop, but that there is this dose response cumulative effect where there is some risk once you start to drink at some level.
• 20:31
  Philip Pape: So if you drink daily, could you shift to a few times a week?
• 20:34
  Philip Pape: If a few times a week, could you shift to just special occasions?
• 20:37
  Philip Pape: If you're doing just special occasions, could you have one instead of three?
• 20:41
  Philip Pape: And so on and so forth.
• 20:42
  Philip Pape: Every reduction is going to reduce your exposure to cancer.
• 20:46
  Philip Pape: Every alcohol-free day is a day your body isn't dealing with damage to your DNA.
• 20:51
  Philip Pape: And you do not owe anyone an explanation for not drinking, by the way, right?
• 20:54
  Philip Pape: The social pressure around alcohol is truly bizarre.
• 20:58
  Philip Pape: It is truly odd when you step back and think about it.
• 21:01
  Philip Pape: We've normalized regular consumption of what's essentially a carcinogen.
• 21:06
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 21:07
  Philip Pape: So if I didn't get my point across by now, I'm not sure I ever will.
• 21:11
  Philip Pape: And at the same time, I'm saying the dose matters, the accumulation matters, the context of everything else you're doing matters.
• 21:19
  Philip Pape: It all matters, guys.
• 21:20
  Philip Pape: Think about the nuance.
• 21:21
  Philip Pape: So here's what ties this together your body is constantly making repairs, right?
• 21:26
  Philip Pape: It's repairing itself.
• 21:27
  Philip Pape: When you lift, you create, let's say, micro damage that gets rebuilt stronger, so you get stronger, bigger, bigger muscles.
• 21:34
  Philip Pape: Your liver is a great detoxifier.
• 21:36
  Philip Pape: It's processing nutrients, it's filtering all the toxins that come through, including, yes, alcohol.
• 21:41
  Philip Pape: Your immune system is gonna eliminate abnormal cells as best as it can, including precancerous cells.
• 21:48
  Philip Pape: So your body's doing wonderful things to constantly clean itself up and avoid this, but they also require energy and recovery to do that.
• 21:55
  Philip Pape: And alcohol goes against that, right?
• 21:58
  Philip Pape: It's gonna force your body to prioritize detoxification.
• 22:02
  Philip Pape: It is literally poison.
• 22:04
  Philip Pape: And your liver and your immune system, everything else has to say, eh, we need to get rid of this first before we do anything else.
• 22:09
  Philip Pape: That diverts resources from protein synthesis, from sleep quality, from you know, your inflammation is gonna go up and damage and DNA damage is going to accumulate.
• 22:19
  Philip Pape: Again, accumulate over time, just like with smoking, right?
• 22:23
  Philip Pape: Accumulates over time.
• 22:24
  Philip Pape: The more you do it, the longer you do it, the more frequently you do it, the worse it is.
• 22:27
  Philip Pape: So if you're training hard, if you're eating enough protein, if you're managing your sleep and stress, if you're being consistent, and then you're regularly introducing a substance that counteracts all that hard work while increasing disease risk, it's working against yourself.
• 22:41
  Philip Pape: That is that is a factual statement.
• 22:43
  Philip Pape: That is it.
• 22:44
  Philip Pape: It's a factual statement.
• 22:45
  Philip Pape: You still have a choice, but it's a factual statement.
• 22:48
  Philip Pape: And so this buried stuff buried buried, that's how I used to say it.
• 22:51
  Philip Pape: This the this buried study is important because it just highlights that we need to be in charge of our own lives and the information we receive and seek out.
• 23:04
  Philip Pape: And we have to be careful what we believe, but also understand there's information that we may believe that isn't even available to us, right?
• 23:11
  Philip Pape: So it gets complicated, right?
• 23:13
  Philip Pape: You don't need that study to make informed decisions.
• 23:16
  Philip Pape: There's plenty of evidence.
• 23:18
  Philip Pape: And every single one of you listening has more control over this than almost any other health factor, to be honest.
• 23:23
  Philip Pape: Like it's it's quote unquote easy from that perspective.
• 23:26
  Philip Pape: You can't control your genetics, you can't control your environmental exposures in general, right?
• 23:31
  Philip Pape: In general, without big changes, but you can control whether you drink, how much, how often you drink, along with the other things you're controlling, like your training and how much protein you eat, et cetera.
• 23:41
  Philip Pape: And that's really, really powerful.
• 23:42
  Philip Pape: So go ahead and use that power.
• 23:44
  Philip Pape: I want you to use that power.
• 23:46
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 23:46
  Philip Pape: I that I think that's all I want to say.
• 23:48
  Philip Pape: Just remember, you have the agency, you decide what the trade-off, what trade-offs are worth it.
• 23:52
  Philip Pape: I'm not gonna tell you what trade-offs to make.
• 23:55
  Philip Pape: I just want to get to you to be informed.
• 23:57
  Philip Pape: And information is power, as they say.
• 24:00
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 24:01
  Philip Pape: So if this episode gave you an interestingly different perspective, maybe a little different than most of my episodes, to be honest, but it taught you something about alcohol and health.
• 24:09
  Philip Pape: All I ask is you text it to a friend.
• 24:12
  Philip Pape: Obviously, don't text it to someone who's gonna be combative about this topic, but maybe someone has said, like, hey, have you heard about the issues with alcohol, or I'm trying to reduce my drinking, or you know, I'm trying to get healthier.
• 24:24
  Philip Pape: Text it to a friend.
• 24:24
  Philip Pape: Text it to somebody you love who is curious about this topic, and that's it.
• 24:28
  Philip Pape: That's all I ask of you.
• 24:29
  Philip Pape: I'd be grateful.
• 24:30
  Philip Pape: Until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights, and remember that making informed decisions about what you put in your body is totally up to you, and that is powerful.
• 24:40
  Philip Pape: This is Philip Pape, and you've been listening to Wits and Weights.
• 24:43
  Philip Pape: I'll talk to you next time.