Fears as baby boomers hit bottle

BABY boomers are at risk of developing deadly conditions by regularly binge drinking, experts warned yesterday.

Men and women aged between 45 to 64 were more likely to consume excessive amounts of alcohol, official figures revealed.

And people aged 55 to 64 were particularly likely to be drinking “at higher or increasing risk levels”, said the Office for National Statistics.

A quarter of men aged 65 and over and 13 per cent of women drank five days a week in 2016.

Some 60 per cent of women and 69 per cent of men aged 45 to 64 had drunk alcohol in the week before they took the survey – both the highest of any age group.

Campaigners seized on the figures yesterday to issue health warnings.

Susannah Brown, from the World Cancer Research Fund, said: “It is worrying that so many baby boomers are drinking too much as this significantly increases their risk of several common cancers, including bowel and breast. If nobody drank alcohol in the UK, 21,000 cases of cancer could be prevented each year, including nearly 12,000 cases of breast cancer.”

Dr John Larsen of Drinkaware said: “Whilst it is encouraging to see that young people aged between 16 and 24-years-old are increasingly tending to drink less often or are becoming teetotal, there are some worrying figures in the survey.

“The Office for National Statistics data shows that 45 to 64-year-olds are as likely to binge drink as those between the ages of 16 to 24.

“Most people wouldn’t think that sitting at home and having more than three pints or drinking most of a bottle of wine in front of the television is bingeing, but the units add up. There are short and long-term health risks associated with drinking at risky levels from interrupted sleep and weight gain to cancer, liver and heart disease.” The data showed couples are also more likely to drink alcohol on five or more days a week than single people, though they are slightly less likely to binge drink.

And the study found that those in managerial or professional jobs are more likely to drink five days a week or more and drink more heavily in a single session than those in intermediate or manual jobs. Figures yesterday also revealed an estimated 339,000 hospital admissions related to alcohol consumption in 2015/16 – up 22 per cent from 2005/06.

Professor Sir Ian Gilmore, chairman of Alcohol Health Alliance, said: “We would urge the next government to make tackling alcohol harm an immediate priority to save lives, reduce harm, and reduce the pressure on the NHS.”