‘No level of alcohol consumption safe’
The world’s most comprehensive study on alcohol consumption suggests there is no safe level of drinking, with any known health benefits outweighed by the adverse effects alcohol has on the body.
Alcohol has been found to be a leading risk factor for death and disease worldwide and is associated with nearly one in 10 deaths in people aged 15 to 49, according to the new study, published yesterday in medical journal The Lancet.
The US-based authors, who combined 26 years of alcohol data from 195 countries, including New Zealand, concluded that while there was evidence of some beneficial effects against heart disease, the risk of developing all other health problems increased with the number of alcoholic drinks consumed each day.
They estimated that, for one year, in people aged 15-95, drinking one alcoholic drink a day increased the risk of developing one of 23 alcohol-related health problems by 0.5 per cent, compared with not drinking at all.
That figure increased to seven per cent in people who drank two drinks a day, meaning 977 people in every 100,000 would develop an alcohol-related health problem. Drinking five drinks a day increased the statistic to 37 per cent.
Currently, New Zealand’s Ministry of Health guidelines recommend that men drink no more than three standard units a day, and no more than 15 standard units a week. Women’s figures are two a day and 10 a week.
Drinking patterns varied globally, with the highest number of current alcohol drinkers in Denmark – 95.3 per cent of women, and 97.1 per cent of men – while New Zealand had the fifth highest prevalence of female drinkers at 88 per cent. Kiwi men didn’t feature in the top 10.
Lead author Dr Max Griswold, from the University of Washington, acknowledged that alcohol had a complex association with health, affecting it in multiple ways.
Regular consumption had adverse effects on organs while acute intoxication could lead to injuries or poisoning. There had, however, been previous research suggesting that low levels of consumption could have a protective effect against heart disease and diabetes.
‘‘Previous studies have found a protective effect of alcohol on some conditions, but we found that the combined health risks associated with alcohol increase with any amount of alcohol. The strong association between alcohol consumption and the risk of cancer, injuries and infectious diseases offset the protective effects for ischaemic heart disease in women in our study,’’ Griswold said. Globally, one in three people drink alcohol – equivalent to 2.4 billion people – including 25 per cent of women and 39 per cent of men.
While in 2016, drinking alcohol was the seventh leading risk factor for premature death and disease, in people aged 15-49 years old, alcohol was the leading risk factor, with almost four per cent of deaths in women and 12.2 per cent of deaths in men attributable to alcohol.
The main causes of alcohol-related deaths in this age group were tuberculosis, road injuries, and self-harm. For people over 50, cancers were a leading cause of alcohol-related death.
Co-author Emmanuela Gakidou, also from the University of Washington, said alcohol could have dire ramifications for future population health in the absence of urgent policy action worldwide.
She suggested excise taxes on alcohol, controlling the physical availability of alcohol and the hours of sale, as well as controlling the advertising around alcohol.
‘‘The strong association between alcohol consumption and the risk of cancer, injuries and infectious diseases offset the protective effects for ischaemic heart disease in women in our study.’’ Lead author Dr Max Griswold