Is there a least bad alcohol?

Q: I've been trying to cut back on alcohol lately, but I do drink occasionally. Are any types of alcohol less risky than others?

- CAROLINE HOPKINS LEGASPI

If you've heard that red wine is better for you than beer or liquor, or that clear liquor like vodka or gin is less harmful than dark liquor like rum or whiskey, we have bad news.

"Alcohol is alcohol," said Jürgen Rehm, a senior scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto in Canada. Drinking any type of alcohol, in any amount, is bad for health.

Still, experts say, it's sometimes not reasonable or even practical for people to avoid alcohol entirely. So if you're going to drink, there are some strategies you can take to reduce your risk, and to avoid some of the other unpleasant effects of drinking, like hangovers.

Why Alcohol Is So Harmful

When you have a drink, your body turns the ethanol that's present in the alcoholic beverage into a "really nasty substance" called acetaldehyde, which can damage your DNA, said Timothy Stockwell, an alcohol researcher at the University of Victoria in Canada.

Many tissues in the body, including those in the mouth, throat, liver, colon and breasts, are susceptible to this harm. And when that DNA gets repaired, cancerous mutations may arise.

This is why drinking increases the risk for developing at least seven types of cancer, said Katherine Keyes, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University.