POOL FENCING REVIEW SCRAPED
Despite promises of a review, the Government has canned its plans
THE rise of the daily ‘wine o’clock’ habit for Australian mums is poised to have significant health implications, with research showing for women, even drinking half a bottle of wine a day increases the risk of breast cancer and is equal to smoking five cigarettes.
Experts are warning the meme-driven culture of mums indulging in self-care by drinking could become a health crisis for governments with new data from the federally-funded Daybreak digital service, that helps people reset their drinking habits, revealing threequarters of members are women, a third are aged in their 40s, most drink alcohol four or more days a week and on a typical drinking day, nearly 50 per cent would consume five or more drinks in a session.
An Australian not-for-profit that is disrupting the traditional AA model, Daybreak is an app with nearly 70,000 people registered worldwide and 45,000 Australians.
It comes as the Federal Government is working towards the formal release of its new alcohol consumption guidelines, which reduces the amount of alcohol consumed down to 10 weekly drinks.
But Trish Hepworth, from Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE), warns 84 per cent of people aren’t aware of the cancer link with alcohol.
New data, especially collated for News Corp Australia by FARE, shows drinking a few glasses of wine a day increases the risk of breast cancer by six per cent with ‘five cigarettes’ in each half bottle of wine.
“Given the strong causal relationship between alcohol and breast cancer, for a woman, drinking half a bottle of wine is equivalent to smoking five cigarettes,” said Ms Hepworth, noting the risk is not the same for men.
“So if a husband and wife both share a bottle of wine – the level of risk is markedly different,” she said, adding that data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare showed a rise in risky drinking in women in their 40s, 50s and 60s between 2001-2016.
Ms Hepworth said she would like to see health warnings on bottles. “Basically if women cut down their drinking we would cut down the rates of breast cancer,” she said.