No TGIF anymore! Study finds there’s no healthy level of alcohol consumption

In a new study that has quashed all your hopes of drinking a peg or two in the name of 'health' benefits, scientists have found that there is no safe or healthy level of drinking!

There have been many studies conducted on the various health benefits we can get from occasional and limited drinking, but even the occasional drink is harmful to health, according to the largest and most detailed research carried out on the harmful effects of alcohol.

The authors from the Global Burden of Diseases study, that gives detailed reports on causes of illnesses and deaths in the world is based at the University of Washington, came out with the figure that alcohol caused 2.8 million deaths in 2016 and it was also the leading risk factor of premature death in the 15 to 49 age group, which results in 20 per cent of deaths.

The study, which was published in the journal, The Lancet, and conducted by the researchers of Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation, investigated levels of alcohol consumption and health effects in 195 countries between 1990 to 2016. Data was collected from 694 different studies to figure out how common drinking was and from 592 studies including 28 million people worldwide to measure the health risks involved with drinking.

A glass of red wine a day has long been said to be good for heart health. But although the researchers did find low levels of drinking offering protection from heart disease, and may be from diabetes and stroke, but the benefits were far outweighed by alcohol s harmful effects.

Drinking alcohol was noted to be big reason of cancer in the people over 50s, particularly in women. Previous research has shown that one in 13 breast cancers in the UK were alcohol-related. The study found that globally, 27.1 per cent of cancer deaths in women and 18.9 per cent in men over 50 were related to their drinking habits.

While the study shows that the increased risk of alcohol-related harm in younger people who have one drink a day is small (0.5%), it goes up significantly with heavier drinking up to 7 per cent among those who have two drinks a day and 37 per cent for those who take five drinks.

One in three, that s 2.4 billion people around the world drink alcohol, the study showed. A quarter of women and 39% of men drink.

Alcohol poses dire ramifications for future population health in the absence of policy action today. Our results indicate that alcohol use and its harmful effects on health could become a growing challenge as countries become more developed and enacting or maintaining strong alcohol control policies will be vital, said the report s senior author, Prof Emmanuela Gakidou.

Worldwide we need to revisit alcohol control policies and health programmes, and to consider recommendations for abstaining from alcohol. These include excise taxes on alcohol, controlling the physical availability of alcohol and the hours of sale, and controlling alcohol advertising. Any of these policy actions would contribute to reductions in population-level consumption, a vital step toward decreasing the health loss associated with alcohol use, concluded Dr. Gakidou.

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