Who’s Drinking Too Much? It Might Be Us
By Cheryl Harbour

Just when people were feeling comfortable about the possible health benefits and the low health risks of consuming a little alcohol each day, the guidelines we’ve come to trust have come under fire.

Several studies completed recently suggest that the U.S. government guidelines are “too loose.” What the guidelines say is that having two drinks a day for men or one drink a day for women does no significant harm. Also, some earlier research has concluded that there might even be a positive impact on health, in terms of reducing heart attacks among moderate drinkers.

A new report, published in The Lancet (a peer-reviewed medical journal), states otherwise. This report looked at data for nearly 600,000 drinkers from 83 studies spanning 19 countries. The first conclusion: There’s no difference between men and women regarding the effect of alcohol. Their daily limit should be the same. Second, there appears to be no longevity benefit from having one drink a day and there was actually a decrease in life expectancy for people who drank more than that. The study concluded that the bad effects offset the good. While drinking may raise “good” cholesterol (believed to protect against arterial blockages), it tends to raise the risk of other problems, such as stroke, aortic aneurysm, fatal hypertensive disease and heart failure.

What may surprise you even more is that drinking is trending downward among high school and college age groups, while baby boomers show a slight increase. This was the result of another study - Monitoring the Future - conducted at the University of Michigan.

A common presumption might be people in the younger age groups spend so much time on their electronic devices they've lost interest in drinking, but several other theories have been proposed. One is that anti-smoking messages have been effective and have carried over to drinking.

Katherine Keyes, a Columbia University professor of epidemiology who has tracked drinking trends, has offered another explanation. She is quoted in an article in the Washington Post suggesting "young people raised in relatively affluent times are more likely to adopt a 'slow life strategy' in which they postpone many of the activities that a previous generation would have adopted at an early age."

In contrast to the drop in high school and college drinking, researchers see a steady rise in alcohol use among people 65 and older. A majority of baby boomers are under age 65, but the concern is still there. It's not just the moderate drinking that worries medical experts but the relatively high incidence of binge drinking and alcohol abuse. According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), the increase in drinking among older Americans is most pronounced among people with greater levels of education and income, and among women.

Numerous experts have commented on this new information and they caution that these studies are associative. The data doesn’t show cause and effect and doesn’t rule out that people who drink more might be generally less health-minded, have less energy to incorporate exercise into their daily routine, or have other unhealthy habits, such as smoking.

To learn more about why the drinking guidelines may be “too loose,” see the original article in the Washington Post.

 




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