{"id":1998,"date":"2018-11-27T11:48:11","date_gmt":"2018-11-27T11:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/insulean.co.uk\/?p=1998"},"modified":"2018-11-27T11:53:04","modified_gmt":"2018-11-27T11:53:04","slug":"alcohol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.insulean.co.uk\/alcohol\/","title":{"rendered":"ALCOHOL | The Dose makes the Poison"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3><strong><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Zero Alcohol is Healthy<\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">In September 2018, a major international <span style=\"color: #000080;\"><a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thelancet.com\/journals\/lancet\/article\/PIIS0140-6736(18)31310-2\/fulltext\">study<\/a> <\/span>was published in The Lancet. The authors concluded that any amount of alcohol is harmful. &#8221;<em>We found that the risk of all-cause mortality, and of cancers specifically, rises with increasing levels of consumption, and the level of consumption that minimises health loss is zero&#8221;. <\/em>Those of us who enjoy a glass of red wine a few times a week &#8221;to help keep the heart healthy&#8221; were dismayed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">However, this is the latest &#8216;expert opinion&#8217;, since the last &#8216;expert opinion&#8217;.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>Zero Alcohol is Harmful<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">In April 2018, another published<span style=\"color: #000080;\"> <a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thelancet.com\/journals\/lancet\/article\/PIIS0140-6736(18)30134-X\/fulltext\">study<\/a><\/span> showed the exact opposite, that there were clear harms to non-drinkers and that <em>&#8221;the risk of early death from drinking begins to rise at a level above 100g of alcohol per week (12.5 units)&#8221;.<\/em> This paper, also published in The Lancet medical journal, concluded that five standard 175ml glasses of wine or five pints a week is the upper safe limit \u2013 about 100g of alcohol, or 12.5 units in total. More than that raises the risk of stroke, fatal aneurysm (a ruptured artery in the chest), heart failure and death. Note that the NHS recommends no more than 14 units of alcohol a week. That&#8217;s about a glass of wine a day.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">So, which is it? To drink or not to drink?<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h3><\/h3>\n<h3><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>How much is too much?<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Before you fully embrace teetotalism, consider this. The press release of the latter study only showed the relative risk of developing an alcohol-related illness, such as diabetes.<\/span><\/p>\n<h4><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>Comparing zero drinks to one drink<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The risk of developing one of the 23 alcohol-related health problems was 0.5% higher, i.e,<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><span style=\"color: #000000;\">914 in 100,000 would develop a condition in one year if they did not drink.<\/span><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><span style=\"color: #000000;\">918 in 100,000 who drank one alcoholic drink a day would develop a condition.<\/span><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h4><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>Comparing one drink to two drinks<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The absolute (actual) risk, increases from 0.918% (one drink) to 0.977% (two drinks). In other words, if you have two drinks a day, your risk &#8216;jumps&#8217; from less than 1% to less than 1%!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The absolute risks are very small. Furthermore, the lack of reporting of <span style=\"color: #000080;\"><a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"http:\/\/insulean.co.uk\/cholesterol-obsession-statins\/\">absolute risk<\/a> <\/span>makes it difficult for readers to understand the actual dangers of drinking alcohol. Relative\u00a0risk is useless and only acts to amplify the absolute risk. The reporting of relative risk is confusing and misleading, yet unacceptably prevalent in published studies.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">This increase in risk is<strong> tiny<\/strong>. On this one, I concur with the current NHS recommendations. Drink sensibly.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">There is no safe level of driving, but the government does not recommend that people avoid driving.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h3><\/h3>\n<h3><strong><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Drink Sensibly<\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">British social life is been entirely organised around alcohol. This isolates non-drinkers and subjects them to intense peer pressure. There is no doubt of the harms of excessive alcohol, but the vast majority of us enjoy the pleasure of a drink, to relax or help as a social lubricant. There is no significant harm in that, in my opinion.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Public health policy remains necessary because the harms of excessive alcohol intake cannot be underestimated. Punitive taxation does work, but is often met with resistance because those who drink sensibly are equally penalised. Nevertheless, several measures are in place to reduce the numbers who drink, such as<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Increasing prices.<\/span><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Taxation.<\/span><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Setting minimum units pricing (the price according to the strength of the drink).<\/span><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Restrictions on marketing.<\/span><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Restricting the places where people can buy alcohol.<\/span><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Zero Alcohol is Healthy In September 2018, a major international study was published in The Lancet. The authors concluded that any amount of alcohol is harmful. &#8221;We found that the risk of all-cause mortality, and of cancers specifically, rises with increasing levels of consumption, and the level of consumption that minimises health loss is zero&#8221;. Those of us who [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2000,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[135,71],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>ALCOHOL | The Dose makes the Poison - A Sobering Read<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"There is no doubt of the harms of excessive alcohol, but the vast majority of us enjoy the pleasure of a drink, to relax or help as a social lubricant.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.insulean.co.uk\/alcohol\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"ALCOHOL | The Dose makes the Poison - 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