Health Buzz: Alcohol Use and Cancer Risk and Other Health News

A Drink a Day May Increase Your Cancer Risk

Consuming as little as one alcoholic drink per day may increase the risk of several types of cancer in middle-aged women, according to a new study published online yesterday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The study involved more than 1.2 million British women, making it the largest study ever to look into the role of alcohol use in women's cancer risk. During the seven-year follow-up period, 68,775 women in the study were diagnosed with cancer. Cancer risk increased as the consumption of alcohol rose, and the kind of alcohol the women drank didn't seem to make a difference. Moderate drinking, the study suggests, accounts for about 13 percent of cancers of the breast, liver, rectum, and upper respiratory/digestive tract in women, HealthDay reports.

Alcohol consumption affects more than cancer risk; in fact, in some women, alcohol may protect against heart disease and fractures—if it's not abused. Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis reported last year that alcohol use and alcoholism are on the rise in women, though not in men.

Lost Your Health Insurance? Consider Planned Parenthood Clinics

It's no surprise that as the economy falters, many women are praying that their birth control doesn't fail, and some women have consciously decided to postpone having a baby in this recession. Many of those without insurance have been swarming into Planned Parenthood clinics to get free or subsidized contraception, Deborah Kotz reports. In fact, a spokesperson from Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania says it has seen a 10 percent increase in the number of women coming into its local centers in the past three months, and many of them are recently unemployed. The Yuma Planned Parenthood in Arizona saw 260 new patients from November 2008 to January 2009, up from 171 new patients during the same period a year earlier. And the affiliate in east-central Iowa now adds about five or six women each day to its patient roster where it used to add about that many a week.

Has the recession claimed your job—and your employer-sponsored health coverage? Remember, when shopping for private health insurance, cheaper isn't always better. Here are some smart tips for buying health insurance online. Also, consider this advice for women and for recent college graduates who are in the market for health insurance.

Marion Barry's Transplant: Why a Living Donor Beats a Cadaveric Kidney

Former Washington, D.C., mayor and current city council member Marion Barry, who is recovering from a kidney transplant, was lucky: A 47-year-old woman described as a friend donated the kidney. That meant Barry didn't have to wait on a long list to receive a cadaveric kidney—one from a deceased donor. The 78,000-plus people on the waiting list for kidney transplants at the moment make up the bulk of the nearly 101,000 people waiting for all types of organs (a list that also includes liver, pancreas, heart, lung, and intestines), according to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network. "The worst thing that can happen, obviously, is to have patients die while waiting for organs," says Bradley Warady, director of dialysis and transplantation at Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Mo., and a medical adviser for the National Kidney Foundation. "But it happens every day."

The question of kidney donation from living donors raises thorny issues of donor safety and psychological motives. Still, it's an important option because kidney exchanges between strangers help to ease the organ shortage.

—January W. Payne

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