2024-04-30 11:31:26
This is sad news for lovers. Studies are coming out one after another showing that alcohol has little health benefit.
Moderate drinking was once thought to be good for the heart. However, better research has put an end to this hypothesis.
“Drinking less alcohol is a good way to be healthier,” Dr. Timothy Naimi, director of the Canadian Institute on Substance Use at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, told The Associated Press.
As various studies have proven that alcohol is harmful to health, drinking recommendations in each country are generally changing to drink less alcohol.
The UK, France, Denmark, the Netherlands and Australia have lowered their recommended alcohol intake. Ireland plans to require cancer warnings on alcohol from 2026.
“The scientific consensus has changed due to overwhelming evidence that alcohol is linked to more than 200 health conditions, including cancer, cardiovascular disease and injuries,” said Carina Ferreira Boggs, alcohol adviser at the World Health Organization’s Regional Office for Europe.
Many people still think, ‘Wouldn’t moderate drinking be beneficial to your health?’
This idea stems from incomplete studies that compared groups based on drinking volume. Typically, alcohol consumption was measured at one point in time. And because none of the studies randomly assigned people to drinking or non-drinking groups, they could not prove causality.
People who say they drink moderately tend to be more educated, have higher incomes and have better access to health care, Dr. Naimi noted. “When you adjust these things, the benefits tend to disappear,” he said.
Another problem is that most studies did not include young people. Almost half of people who die from alcohol-related causes die before the age of 50.
“If you study people who survived into middle age and got into trouble and didn’t stop drinking and didn’t binge drink, that’s a very select group,” Naimi said. “It makes it look like there’s an advantage for moderate drinkers when in reality it’s just a statistical illusion.” “He explained.
Other studies challenge the idea that alcohol has benefits. These studies compare people who have a genetic variant that makes drinking alcohol unpleasant with people who do not. People with the variant tend to drink very little or not at all. One of these studies found that people with the genetic variant had a lower risk of heart disease, dealing another blow to the idea that alcohol protects people from heart disease.
So, how much alcohol is appropriate?
Drinking alcohol increases the risk of developing several types of cancer, including colon cancer, liver cancer, breast cancer, and mouth and throat cancer. Alcohol is broken down into a substance called acetaldehyde in the body, which can damage cells and prevent them from recovering themselves. This creates conditions for cancer to grow.
Dr. Naimi said thousands of Americans could be prevented from dying each year if they followed government guidelines recommending that men limit their intake to no more than two drinks a day and women to no more than one drink a day.
One drink is equivalent to a 12-ounce (approximately 355 ml) can of beer, a 5-ounce (approximately 148 ml) glass of wine, or a glass of liquor.
Dr. Naimi said the simplest message, based on research-backed recommendations, was: “If you drink alcohol, the less you drink, the better for your health.”
Park Hae-sik, Donga.com reporter pistols@donga.com
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2024-04-30 11:31:26