2023-12-29 20:34:44
The Spanish Association for the Study of the Liver (AEEH) warned this Friday that the effects of binge drinking or excessive alcohol intake in a few hours, a common practice among young people especially during New Year’s celebrations, are more harmful to the liver than moderate consumption.
As recalled this Friday by the AEEH, several studies concluded that people with genetic risk factors and who consume alcohol occasionally, but in large quantities, will have up to six times the risk of developing cirrhosis.
According to the latest data published by the Ministry of Health in the Study Surveyalcohol was, by far, the drug with the highest prevalence of consumption among students residing in Spain aged 14 to 18.
In this sense, 73.9% of those surveyed mentioned having consumed alcoholic beverages at some point in their lives. On the other hand, more than half of the students between 14 and 18 years old drank alcohol recently (in the last 30 days), observing that 23.2% of the students experienced some drunkenness in this period and 27.9% binge drinking, that is, he drank five or more glasses of alcoholic beverages in an approximate interval of two hours.
But what is most striking, the AEEH highlighted, is that 12 and 13 year old students mostly obtained alcoholic beverages in neighborhood stores (41.6%), which made clear the ease of access to alcohol by part of the minors.
Cirrhosis
In this sense, the president of the AEEH, Dr. Manuel Romero, stressed that “the reality is that the sooner you start drinking, the more likely it is to generate addiction and end up in cirrhosis.”
In fact, he added, “what is already beginning to happen in many young people and particularly in many young women, to the point that a change in the pattern of risky consumption is beginning to be evident.”
Cirrhosis and alcohol-associated hepatitis may be the main consequences of this abusive alcohol consumption, which, together with genetic factors such as obesity and metabolic syndrome, increases the risk.
“The safest consumption is zero,” said Romero, “and to defend this premise we still have a long way to go from institutions so that our young people do not have such easy access to alcohol.”
A situation that must be stopped with awareness and prevention. The distance between the scientific evidence available in relation to the impact on health of alcohol consumption and the perception of this impact by the population is one of the issues that most concerns specialists in liver pathologies, since liver disease related with alcohol intake is the one that causes the most mortality in Spain, the AEEH pointed out.
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