A new medical study recently published in The Lancet that was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation completely contradicts with most health guidelines when it comes to alcohol, here's the study: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)31310-2/
The conclusion of this study:
CNN article: https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/23/health/global-alcohol-study/index.html
CBS News article: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alcohol-and-health-no-safe-level-of-drinking-major-new-study-concludes/
The conclusion of this study:
Conclusion
Alcohol use is a leading risk factor for disease burden worldwide, accounting for nearly 10% of global deaths among populations aged 15–49 years, and poses dire ramifications for future population health in the absence of policy action today. The widely held view of the health benefits of alcohol needs revising, particularly as improved methods and analyses continue to show how much alcohol use contributes to global death and disability. Our results show that the safest level of drinking is none. This level is in conflict with most health guidelines, which espouse health benefits associated with consuming up to two drinks per day. Alcohol use contributes to health loss from many causes and exacts its toll across the lifespan, particularly among men. Policies that focus on reducing population-level consumption will be most effective in reducing the health loss from alcohol use.
CNN article: https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/23/health/global-alcohol-study/index.html
If you're one of the third of all humankind who drinks alcohol, take note: There's no amount of liquor, wine or beer that is safe for your overall health, according to a new analysis of 2016 global alcohol consumption and disease risk.
Alcohol was the leading risk factor for disease and premature death in men and women between the ages of 15 and 49 worldwide in 2016, accounting for nearly one in 10 deaths, according to the study, published Thursday in the journal The Lancet.
For all ages, alcohol was associated with 2.8 million deaths that year.
Those deaths include alcohol-related cancer and cardiovascular diseases, infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, intentional injury such as violence and self-harm, and traffic accidents and other unintentional injuries such as drowning and fires.
"The most surprising finding was that even small amounts of alcohol use contribute to health loss globally," said senior study author Emmanuela Gakidou, a professor at the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. "We're used to hearing that a drink or two a day is fine. But the evidence is the evidence."
Not surprisingly due to their populations, China, India and Russia led the world in alcohol-related deaths in men and women. The US ranked fifth among men and seventh among women on that list; the UK ranked 21st for men and ninth for women.
"This study is a stark reminder of the real, and potentially lethal, dangers that too much alcohol can have on our health and that even the lowest levels of alcohol intake increase our risks," Helen Stokes-Lampard, chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners in the UK, said in a statement. She was not involved in the study.
The Lancet study, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, used data from the 2016 Global Burden of Disease report, which captured information on premature death and disability from over 300 diseases by sex and age in 195 countries or territories between 1990 and 2016.
Researchers analyzed the impact of alcohol on 23 health conditions and alcohol-related risks on people between the ages of 15 and approximately 95 for the year 2016.
In independent comments published alongside the study, King's College London alcohol researcher Robyn Burton called the study "state-of-the-art."
"The conclusions of the study are clear and unambiguous: alcohol is a colossal global health issue," Burton wrote, suggesting that policy makers put a priority on programs that focus on decreasing alcohol consumption.
However, the Alcohol Information Partnership, a group comprising eight of the world's biggest liquor companies, said in a statement that "Nothing in this study challenges the array of studies suggesting that choosing to drink moderately is associated with a decreased risk of some health issues and a lower risk of death. We advocate sensible drinking by those who choose to drink and support consistent, evidence-based advice, which enables people to make their own informed choices about alcohol."
The results appear to fly in the face of research that indicates moderate drinking -- in the United States, that's one drink a day for women and two a day for men -- might reduce the risk of heart disease and Type 2 diabetes. That might be true in isolation, Gakidou said, but the picture changes when all risks are considered.
"We too found some protective effects for Type 2 diabetes and ischemic heart disease at low levels of alcohol consumption," she said. "But those benefits are outweighed by the overall adverse health impact of alcohol, even at moderate levels."
Jeremy Pearson, associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation, agreed, saying in a statement, "While there may be a slight benefit to heart and circulatory health from modest drinking, many studies have shown that the overall health risks of drinking alcohol outweigh any benefits."
University of Cambridge epidemiologist Steven Bell co-authored a separate study published in April in The Lancet that found drinking is beneficial in lowering the risk for heart attack. However, that study's big takeaway was that even one drink a day could shorten life expectancy; long-term reduction in alcohol use added one to two years to life expectancy at age 40.
He points out that his study looked only at drinkers, but the new research compared drinkers to non-drinkers in accessing risk and is one of the first to look at data.
"Based on these findings," Bell said, "at no point ... is there a level of consumption that appears to lower the overall risk of developing any of the wide array of diseases investigated in comparison to non-drinking.
"The take-home message being that people shouldn't drink under the belief that it will lower their risk of disease," he said, "and those of us who opt to drink should minimize our intake if we wish to prolong our life and well-being."
CBS News article: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alcohol-and-health-no-safe-level-of-drinking-major-new-study-concludes/
While some medical studies — and a great deal of media attention — have focused on possible health benefits of drinking alcohol in moderation, a large new report warns that the harms of alcohol greatly outweigh any potential beneficial effects. The authors of the study, which looks at data on 28 million people worldwide, determined that considering the risks, there is "no safe level of alcohol."
Alcohol is associated with 2.8 million deaths worldwide each year, the researchers found in the study, which is published in the journal The Lancet. Just over 2 percent of women and nearly 7 percent of men worldwide die from alcohol-related health problems each year.
Regular alcohol consumption can have negative impacts on the body's organs and tissues, while binge drinking can lead to injuries or alcohol poisoning. Alcohol dependence can lead to self-harm or violence.
"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," lead author Dr. Max Griswold, of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, said in a statement. "In particular, the strong association between alcohol consumption and the risk of cancer, injuries, and infectious diseases offset the protective effects for ischemic heart disease in women in our study."
He added, "Although the health risks associated with alcohol starts off being small with one drink a day, they then rise rapidly as people drink more."
Across the globe, one in three people drink alcohol, equivalent to 2.4 billion people, according to the report.
For the study, the authors reviewed data from 694 studies to estimate how common drinking alcohol is worldwide. They also looked at 592 studies with data on 28 million people in 195 countries to study the health risks associated with alcohol.
Among the many findings, the research showed that drinking alcohol was the seventh leading risk factor for premature death and disease in 2016. That year, in people aged 15 to 49 years old, alcohol was the leading risk factor, with 3.8 percent of deaths in women and 12.2 percent of deaths in men connected to alcohol.
In this age group, the leading causes of alcohol-related deaths included tuberculosis, road injuries, and self-harm. In people age 50 and older, cancers were a leading cause of alcohol-related death, accounting for about 27 percent of deaths in women and 19 percent of deaths in men.
In their review, the authors found that the only protective effect of alcohol came with reducing the risk of ischemic heart disease. There were also possible protective effects for diabetes and ischemic stroke, but these results were not statistically significant.
However, the risk of developing all other health issues increased with the number of alcoholic drinks consumed each day and the harms far outweighed the potential benefits, the authors report.
"Policies focusing on reducing alcohol consumption to the lowest levels will be important to improve health. The widely held view of the health benefits of alcohol needs revising, particularly as improved methods and analyses continue to shed light on how much alcohol contributes to global death and disability," Griswold said.
In an accompanying editorial, Dr. Robyn Burton of King's College London calls the research "the most comprehensive estimate of the global burden of alcohol use to date."
"The conclusions of the study are clear and unambiguous: alcohol is a colossal global health issue and small reductions in health-related harms at low levels of alcohol intake are outweighed by the increased risk of other health-related harms, including cancer," she writes.
