The Cameo Show
The Cameo Show is a podcast about sharing our life experiences and learning from each other. Through solo stories and inspiring conversations with a wide variety of guests, we explore the secrets and strategies for feeling confident, empowered and equipped to live the life we want to lead. Tune in to learn how to find joy and fulfillment in your life and to gain valuable insights from the amazing stories and lessons of our guests.
The Cameo Show
Alcohol and Cancer Warning: Discussing the New Surgeon General Suggestion
The episode dives into the recently announced links between alcohol and cancer, raising awareness about serious health risks often overshadowed by drinking culture. Through personal stories and statistics, we explore the implications for individuals and the industry, liken it to the tobacco industry, inspiring listeners as they reconsider their relationship with alcohol - especially during Dry January.
• Discussion of the Surgeon General's recommendation for alcohol to carry a cancer warning
• Personal experiences shared about life without alcohol
• Statistics highlighting the connection between alcohol and cancer
• Industry marketing practices and their implications
• The importance of awareness and education regarding alcohol consumption
• Reflection on the journey of quitting drinking and its benefits
We’d love to hear your thoughts—text us, email, or reach out on Instagram. Don’t forget to like, follow, and subscribe for new episodes every Wednesday. Thanks for tuning in!
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Hello and welcome to the Cameo Show. I'm your host, cameo, and we are joined today by my husband and co-host, mr Greg Braun.
Speaker 2:So glad to be here.
Speaker 1:We are pumped about today's conversation and the topic, but before we dive in, Greg likes to start us with a dad joke.
Speaker 2:I've got a good one today. What do you call a wizard who's bad at football?
Speaker 1:I don't know. A fumbledore bad at football, I don't know. A fumbledore, Fumbledore like Dumbledore. A reference to Harry Potter for all of you. Harry Potter heads out there. I don't know if Harry Potter heads is like a real thing, but if it's not, it should be.
Speaker 1:You're welcome. Today's topic is timely because it is January. It's a new year where people are picking up new habits. It is also considered dry January, something that you see as like a hashtag or topic on social media and throughout the media, and it kind of falls in alignment with that a little bit. So recently, like a few days ago, the Surgeon General recommended that alcoholic beverages carry a cancer warning.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:And this is very near and dear to our heart, because, for those of you who are maybe new here or have maybe not heard us speak about this before, greg and I are both alcohol-free for the last 10 years. Well, I'm coming up on 10 years and Greg is just a little over 10 years, but call it a decade for both of us, which is a really a pretty long time. We don't really ever give ourselves too much credit there, because it's just now who we are and part of what we do, but prior to those 10 years, we were 10 years and maybe almost 20 years of lots of alcohol in our life. So we may not drink now, but we used to be pretty, pretty good drinkers and we also both used to smoke and Greg used to chew, and so when we talk about this topic, it's not from a space of judgment, but more from a space of like wow, this is huge. This is a really big game changer in the alcohol industry.
Speaker 1:In my personal opinion. I didn't know. It wasn't like a driving force for me when we stopped drinking. Behaviorally, drinking needed to go out of my life. From a coping mechanism standpoint, alcohol needed to be removed from my life and from a I want to be a better person and make better decisions standpoint. Alcohol needed to be removed from my life, and I knew that there would be a side effect of better health and betterment across the board when I decided to stop drinking. But not drinking because it was going to cause cancer was not something that I was aware of literally until probably a few days ago, when it was brought to my attention through this announcement.
Speaker 2:Yeah, kind of like cigarettes used to be right. Yeah, you always knew when you smoked cigarettes or, for me, chewing that you're like this. This is really bad for me because we all know it causes lung cancer, throat cancer, lip cancer. You know there's so many different forms of cancer that we we just kind of it was common knowledge.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you knew when you lit the cigarette like you felt a little bit dirty Like I know. This is terrible for me, yeah, and, and I don't know when those warnings were added to cigarette packs, but I know that they weren't always there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they weren't always there.
Speaker 1:I can remember when there were smoking sections in restaurants and smoking rooms in airports and like smoking was a more popular thing that people used to do when I was a teenager and before you know, even when smoking we could smoke in restaurants.
Speaker 2:I mean, like you felt dirty about it because you know that like this, this causes cancer and you're playing roulette with that, but you never really thought when you go to the restaurant and order a beer like that, this also causes cancer.
Speaker 1:I think I saw where it was like 50% of adults don't realize the alcohol is a cancer causing, really yeah.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's basically the common understanding of what this is that you see these commercials for all the time during sporting events, right, and it's young people that are very attractive, having fun at a tailgate party, drinking Coors Light or whatever you know, and it's like you don't see cigarette commercials now because of these things. So that'll be interesting to see how this changes the marketing of alcohol.
Speaker 1:Oh for sure, Because how do you promote something that you know now comes with a warning label for increased cancer risk? The warning labels on alcohol currently say hey, if you're pregnant or could be pregnant, don't drink. Or if you're drinking, don't drive because you can't operate a motor vehicle. But nowhere is there any mention of cancer, and I don't think anyone. I mean 50% is a pretty staggering stat. I don't think anyone associates cancer necessarily with alcohol.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Other than, like you might think, psoriasis of the liver Right when people drink too much, or whatever the case may be like extreme cases.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But alcohol is linked to seven types of cancer In fact breast cancer, colon cancer, rectum cancer, esophagus cancer, liver cancer, mouth cancer and throat cancer.
Speaker 2:Basically your whole digestive.
Speaker 1:Essentially yes, and one thing that I found astonishing was that 16.4% of women who have breast cancer it's alcohol related. If I were still a drinker and this were new information and I were considering not drinking, I would probably think differently about it now, just like when I quit smoking. It was a little bit easier to quit smoking. Not easy, because quitting smoking is like the hardest thing we've ever done.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Like the hardest Knowing that, like, smoking causes cancer and it's right here on the pack Every time I like pack it up and get ready to light one. It's just in my face. I know it made it a little bit different and if.
Speaker 1:I were still drinking. I might approach drinking differently, because it's not just the people who have a problem or an addiction, or it causes them to make bad decisions in their life and they need help. It's not just the extreme cases of psoriasis, it's not just the person who drinks straight liquor, it's everyone. It's all alcohol. Three and a half drinks per day can double or even triple the risk of cancers of the mouth, larynx and esophagus. And three and a half per day is maybe not what people drink Like. Maybe you're thinking well, I don't drink three and a half per day, so I'm not double or tripling anything. But you might not drink that much every day. But if you have a few more on the weekend, or a bottle of wine on Saturday afternoon at brunch or even champagne for that matter that is adding up to where your average per day might be, you know, accumulating up to that point where you're increasing your risk of cancer substantially. Double or triple is a lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:The third leading preventable cause of cancer in the US is alcohol.
Speaker 2:Wow Third. Third Can I guess number one, yeah, is nicotine smoking.
Speaker 1:Tobacco, tobacco.
Speaker 2:So the number one in the US is tobacco Something that's legal.
Speaker 1:Still legal to go by. Just I think you have to be 21 now instead of 18. I don't know the cigarette laws anymore, but yes.
Speaker 2:And then and that's. This isn't a discussion about the shoulds, and shouldn't be, of legalization of things.
Speaker 1:But we don't talk about politics, and religion on this show.
Speaker 2:But yeah, draw your own conclusions, make your own decisions and and research things and try to get real information on stuff, but that's crazy.
Speaker 1:The number one is nicotine tobacco tobacco products, followed by number two, which is I'm going to guess the bad diets Obesity, obesity, okay. So basically, bad Poor nutrition, bad diet. I'm no saint Like I sit here. This is a coffee mug full of sugar-free Red Bull. So Red Bull could someday very soon come with a warning label, if it doesn't already.
Speaker 2:I'm sure it does already. Next week will be about red bull. So if this is, this is new information, and if you're already thinking like maybe I want to pause drinking or I want to see what my life would look like without alcohol in it, this might be a little nudge, to really take it serious, to really give it a shot more, more than just maybe I wanted to see if I could lose some weight or I wanted to have a little bit more. You know, clarity, I mean there's, there's so many benefits of not drinking, as we've discovered that aren't so obvious, and this would be one of them that you could add to that list of like. Hey, you're not going to see this immediately, it's not something you're going to notice, but it's a long-term residual effect of not drinking. So it might just be one more bullet for your case for maybe not drinking, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, why are we just now being told this Like? Why is this just now being added? This is not just something they found out yesterday.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:This has like been known, not just something they found out yesterday. Yeah, this is like been known, and unless you're seeking out this information, or unless someone is brave enough and bold enough to say I'm going to challenge the alcohol industry, right yeah and and bring this research and this evidence to the public yeah and suggest. It's just suggested, it's not been made. An actual like law or whatever has to go through Congress or whatever you have to do. Don't test my government knowledge at this point.
Speaker 2:And again, I don't need laws to tell me what's good for my body or not. And that's the other problem here is people think they're not doing anything wrong because it's legal and they're just drinking and it's like, well, this is part of tailgating and drinking.
Speaker 1:Well, this legal substance is responsible for 100,000 cases of cancer preventable cancer and 20,000 deaths annually. So we just go along with, like what we've always done, what we see, what we think, until somebody brings this to our attention or until we seek out the information ourselves. It's the information age, we have access to it, but you don't always know where to begin and you don't know what's real and what's not, and it's a lot to digest.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Partner that with the fact that the alcohol industry and big pharma are paying. They have lobbyists that are paid handsomely to pay politicians, and again we're not talking politics or religion. They have lobbyists that are paid handsomely to pay politicians, and again we're not talking politics or religion, we stay away from that. But they're being paid to not disclose this information or to keep this out of going into law to require them to, because it will impact the marketing plan, it will impact their stock prices.
Speaker 1:In fact, their stock prices fell after this announcement was made that this recommendation was new, because people aren't sure what's going to happen. My personal opinion is that when you don't really know this information, there's maybe not enough conviction to make you choose that it's something you want to stop doing.
Speaker 2:So to your point.
Speaker 1:It's definitely maybe a tipping point moment for some people, which would then open up the opportunity to see some of the other benefits longer term that you might not recognize initially or might not think you're missing or might not long for in the future, this quest to maybe stop implementing alcohol into your life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Because I can tell you you stop drinking for a day, five days, two weeks a month and you just keep going and you start to notice a difference in the way you think and feel and operate and your relationship with yourself and with your work and with your family. I mean, like it just it radiates out and my life looks totally different than it did 15 years ago, because 10 years ago I stopped drinking. And it's literally the catalyst for 100 plus different decisions in all these different directions, but it all comes back to that one decision of to just not drink alcohol.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you would never believe it yeah but everything you said something once about you know, when you first stopped, you thought about all the things you'd be missing yeah, what?
Speaker 2:yeah? Well, yeah, your mind plays tricks on you and you're yeah, oh my gosh, I'm gonna miss out on oh yeah, all the fear like who am I and am I even gonnaable, and how? Am.
Speaker 1:I going to socialize and all of those things, but what you said was like I didn't realize how much I would be gaining.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:And all of these years later, you're able to recognize that yeah, and again, we didn't consider that it was causing cancer. It's still hard every day to choose to not drink. Like it gets easier and you have good days and bad days. But even 10 years later, there are moments. But this would be maybe the piece of information. Like we quit smoking and I still sometimes want a cigarette. It doesn't go away, but I know how bad cigarettes are. Like I just know that it will make me have cancer, most likely Right Like well, now, this piece of information might strengthen that conviction, even for someone like us who hasn't drank in a long time, where you might feel like well, maybe I could, or maybe I should, or maybe I will.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, this is an extra piece of that that keeps you.
Speaker 2:Which that never goes away. By the way, I still have the, the urge. It's a mild, small urge, but sometimes it's a little bit louder, and sometimes when you're walking by somewhere and you'll smell a cigarette and you're like, you know, and it's funny to think that cigarettes actually smell good, but you know what I mean. If you know what I mean, like there's that like moment where you're like, oh, so, that just never goes away. I just, yeah, you're just to have that, but it gets smaller and quieter, yeah.
Speaker 1:We did an episode a while ago where we discussed our experience with not drinking alcohol, kind of who we were before and who we are after. So if you are someone who's considering, you know, making the choice to eliminate alcohol from your life, that's an episode to reference. That's more behaviorally oriented. And I did another episode. It was called Death by a Thousand Cups, a play on death by a thousand cuts how the small, tiny choices that we're making regarding alcohol can add up to big health consequences. I had some mixed emotions on that one, because when you start talking about alcohol prior to this announcement and what we're talking about today, perhaps it's a very guarded thing, it's a very personal thing and that's fine. But people are very you're not coming after my alcohol. Alcohol makes my life better just because you couldn't handle it and you couldn't behave yourself and all these things, and I totally agree. I couldn't agree more. I get that Like it's a very personal thing and everyone has their own journey and reflective points about that. But death by a thousand cups kind of already illustrated some of the health consequences that maybe we aren't considering, that aren't so obvious, like you mentioned now with this announcement just kind of further evidence to evaluate the space that alcohol is taking up in your life and the impacts that it's having on you, now and long-term, with regard to your behavior and your health. It'll be interesting to see what happens and if this goes through like congressional approval or whatever's necessary, and how it impacts the alcohol industry, what kind of lobbying goes into it with the political side of things, and how it impacts maybe some of the other industries too, like with medicinal, marijuana and different things that have been on the ballots in different states and you know lobbyists have shut down and maybe marijuana has been shutting down alcohol, who knows? Like it's all the behind the scenes stuff. But think for yourself, question everything, research your information and hopefully this will help open opportunity for someone who might be on the fence about this piece in their life.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for joining us on the Cameo Show. We're curious about your thoughts on this topic. It can be a very polarized thing to talk about, so you can always text the show or drop us a line via email or on Instagram. As I mentioned, there are other episodes pertaining to this topic. We have new episodes every Wednesday, so if you're new here, like, follow, subscribe so you don't miss a beat If you're with us every week. We thank you as always. Till next time.
