A new study may cause more people to worry the next time they light up a cigarette or sip a martini.

According to research presented Monday at the American Academy of Cancer Research, people who drink and smoke may be at a much higher risk for cancers in the throat and stomach. Dutch researchers studied the health records of nearly 121,000 people for two decades and found that a person who drank four glasses of alcohol per day was five times more likely to develop a type of esophagus cancer versus a person who didn’t drink.

They also found that smoking increased one’s risk of common esophagus and stomach cancers. Current smokers had the highest risk. Former smokers had an intermediate risk compared with people who’d never smoked. The researchers did not study the relationship between the number of cigarettes consumed and increased cancer risk.

Lead study author, Jessie Steevens, M.Sc., of the Department of Epidemiology at Maastricht University, in Maastricht, the Netherlands, said the results will hopefully serve as an eye opener.

"The results of this study again confirm recommendations for a healthy lifestyle, namely not to smoke and to drink alcohol in moderation," said study author, Jessie Steevens, M.Sc., of the Department of Epidemiology at Maastricht University, in Maastricht. "But it also suggests that there must be other risk factors for EAC and GCA," she said. "Smoking is a risk factor for both cancers, but since a decreasing part of the population smokes, this cannot explain why the incidence is rising so rapidly for both cancers in Western countries in recent decades.

According to the most recent statistics, an estimated 43.4 million American adults smoked and nearly one fifth of them were women. Sixty percent of women aged 18 to 44 currently consume alcohol.

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