Scientists have shown a link between alcohol and breast cancer, but it was thought the amount you’d have to drink to increase your cancer risk was considerable. Now, new studies show that as few as three drinks a week may increase risk. So, what happens to that daily glass of red wine for heart health…? Making choices around risk and benefit.

By now, you’ve probably seen the headlines: “Drinking linked to breast cancer risk.” The national media has been all over this subject in the past week, as a new study reinforces what those of us with breast cancer already know: alcohol increases your risk of breast cancer.

So what’s new?

Just this: the newest data seems to show that breast cancer risk increases even if you consume as few as three drinks a week. That would be one 12-ounce bottle of beer; a 4-ounce glass of wine, and a shot (1 ounce) of hard liquor – spaced over the course of 7 days.

Does it make you think twice about that daily “time to relax” glass of wine? Or are you mentally writing this off as yet another in the long series of “don’ts” associated with breast cancer?

Don’t eat grilled meat. Don’t use antiperspirants. Don’t drink soy milk. Don’t… do all kinds of things you do anyway, right?

But before you dismiss the research that vaulted the alcohol/breast cancer link into the headlines again, understand this: the two studies showing this link are a couple of the largest, longest-running studies ever undertaken focusing on factors affecting women’s health.

So don’t take these results lightly.

Great Britain’s Million Women Study involves, as the name suggests, more than 1 million British women aged 50 and over. Spearheaded by Oxford University researchers, it’s been following this group of women since 1996, and continues to recruit study participants.

As does the Nurses’ Health Study, a Harvard-based study of over 100,000 female American nurses now entering its 36th year.

While neither of these studies started out focusing specifically on the breast cancer/alcohol link, each independently has recently reported that link. Only long-term, large studies such as these can compile enough data, over enough time, to truly be taken seriously.

At this point, though, the alcohol/breast cancer relationship is by association: no cause and effect has been established. In other words, there’s no evidence that light drinking causes breast cancer. As America’s breast cancer guru, Dr. Susan Love, pointed out in comments she made about the studies, there could be other lifestyle factors involved.

Still, there’s a definite association between an increased risk of breast cancer, and drinking as few as three drinks a week. Just as, decades ago, researchers initially noticed an association between tobacco use and lung cancer, even though there was no evidence – at the time – that smoking caused lung cancer.