‘Light drinking better than staying teetotal’
...but many think bingeing is no big deal
PART of what we are? A new survey has revealed a worrying attitude to drinking in which almost half of us – 43% – believe drinking too much is ‘no big deal’.
The survey of 1,000 adults also found 70% of adults believe drinking to excess is part of Irish culture. The figures were revealed in a survey carried out on behalf of Drinkaware, a campaign funded by the drinks industry to make underage drinking and drinking to excess ‘unacceptable’. Drinkaware chief Miriam Taber said: ‘The vast majority of Irish adults still aren’t fully aware of the low-risk guidelines for alcohol.
‘We are encouraged [however] to see an increase in the number of people who have become much more aware of how excessive drinking affects their health compared to last year,’ she said.
FOR those who enjoy the occasional tipple of an evening, it is time for you to raise a glass. Middle-aged people who drink the equivalent of a 175ml glass of wine a day are half as likely to develop dementia as those who do not touch a drop, a study has found.
But heavy or ‘problem’ drinkers raise their chances of developing the disease, the more they consume, scientists warned.
Researchers suggest low amounts of alcohol can have a protective effect on the heart, reducing the risk of heart attack and stroke.
Séverine Sabia, from the Université Paris-Saclay in France, who led the study, said: ‘We did not find alcohol consumption between one and 14 units a week to be associated with risk of dementia.
‘We found other measures of excessive alcohol consumption – dependence and hospital admissions for alcohol related chronic diseases – to be associated with risk of dementia. While we also found an excess risk of dementia in abstainers, this should not motivate people who do not drink to start drinking due to adverse effects of alcohol on mortality, cirrhosis of the liver, and cancer.’
Researchers examined data on more than 9,000 civil servants over 23 years to see how alcohol intake related to dementia. It was published in medical journal, BMJ.
The participants had their alcohol consumption measured and tracked between 1985 and 2004, at an average age of 50. Cases of dementia were later identified through hospital and mortality data with a total of 397 cases of dementia recorded.
They found those who did not drink in middle age had a 47% higher risk of dementia compared with people who consumed between one and 14 units of alcohol per week.
Researchers suggested that part of the excess risk of dementia in abstainers could be attributable to the greater risk of cardiometabolic diseases – such as high blood pressure, coronary heart disease and type 2 diabetes. This reinforces the message that low-levels of alcohol may have a protective effect on the heart, they say.
But experts cautioned that those who did not drink may have other health conditions, or could have been drinkers earlier in life.
The greatest risk was among those with a history of hospital admission for alcohol-related chronic diseases who had a four times higher risk of dementia.