Folate and alcohol consumption

By Martin March, | Health | 0 Comments

Women who drink may be protected from breast cancer if they have a high dietary intake of folate.
Recent research has highlighted the importance of the B vitamin folate (or folic acid, as it’s known in supplement form) in reducing the risk of heart disease. A new report now highlights the importance of folate in breast cancer prevention.

Researchers at the Mayo Clinic in the US have been studying the diet of more than 34,000 women aged between 55 and 69. There had been 1,586 cases of breast cancer in the group. By comparing diet with breast cancer incidence, the researchers learned that those women with the lowest folate intake who also drank in moderation had about a 50 per cent higher risk of breast cancer than the non-drinkers with the highest folate intake. Evidently both low folate and moderate alcohol consumption could be risk factors for cancer.

But the women who drank alcohol and had a high folate intake had about the same risk of breast cancer as those who didn’t drink and had a low folate intake. So you can even get the two risk factors to cancel one another, it seems! The research underlines the importance of people who choose to drink alcohol paying attention to the quality of the rest of their diet. Folate is found in green leafy vegetables (think of foliage - the two words have the same origin) and in citrus fruits.