Category: Health

Posted on

Alcohol guidelines ‘too high’ say doctors

alcohol guidelines

Government alcohol guidelines that were “plucked out of the air” wrongly suggest that we can drink almost daily with no ill-effects, say doctors.

Government guidelines say men should limit themselves to about a pint a day and women a small glass of wine. But new research indicates even modest amounts can raise the risk of cancer.
Photo: Alamy

They have been set too high and fail to take into account new evidence showing that drinking only modest amounts raises the risk of cancer and other diseases.

The issue is investigated as part of a three-part You & Yours documentary into Government guidelines on alcohol, diet and exercise, being aired over the next three days (starting January 2) on BBC Radio 4.

The current guidelines recommend men should limit themselves to “three to four units a day”, which NHS information alikens to “not much more than a pint of strong lager, beer or cider”.

Women should not regularly drink more than “two to three units a day”, equivalent to “no more than a standard 175ml glass of wine”.

New research published last year suggests consumption should be much lower – perhaps just a quarter of a pint of beer daily.

Dr Michael Mosley, who looked into the matter for the radio documentary, found the guidelines were based on limited data on the harms of low to moderate level drinking.

They were formulated in 1987 by a Royal College of Physicians working party. In 2007 Richard Smith, one of the members of the group and a former editor of the British Medical Journal, was quoted as saying they could not say what a safe limit was, because of this lack of data.

“Those limits were really plucked out of the air,” he said.

“They were not based on any firm evidence at all. It was a sort of intelligent guess by a committee.”

Dr Mosley said the Government had “presented these guidelines as if they are about health, but they’re really not”.

“They’re more about behaviour, trying to stop you going out and crashing the car, or fighting,” he told The Times.

New evidence suggests regularly drinking only small amounts of alcohol can raise the risk of various cancers.

A Harvard University study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2011, found that women who drank just four small glasses of wine a week – about five units – increased their risk of developing breast cancer by 15 per cent compared to teetotallers.

Another study published that year estimated alcohol caused about 13,000 cancers a year – including 6,000 of the mouth and throat, 3,000 bowel cancer cases and 2,500 of breast cancer.

And last May, scientists published research recommending that people should cut their consumption to just 50ml of wine a day, or quarter of a pint of beer.

If everyone limited their intake in this way, 4,600 lives a year would be saved, they calculated, even after accounting for about 850 extra deaths from heart disease.

There would be 2,600 fewer deaths from cancer and almost 3,000 less from liver cirrhosis, they found.

Dr Nick Sheron, a liver specialist at Southampton University, said: “The problem I have with the Government advice is that is normalises the fact that it’s OK to have a drink on a daily basis, when that’s really not the case.”

Dame Sally Davies, the Chief Medical Officer for England, is currently reviewing the evidence on the risks of drinking, said a Department of Health spokesman.

She said: “The health risks from alcohol rise as you drink more and there is some evidence that small amounts of alcohol can reduce some health risks.

“To look at whether the system is still helpful to people, the Chief Medical Officer is set to review the alcohol consumption guidelines.”

By , Medical Correspondent

1.49PM GMT 01 Jan 2013

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/9774223/Alcohol-guidelines-too-high-say-doctors.html

Posted on

There is no such thing as a safe level of alcohol consumption

no safe level

The idea that drinking small amounts of alcohol will do you no harm is a myth, claims Professor David Nutt

Last week I attended a discussion group chaired by the Observer’s health correspondent Denis Campbell where one of the other experts, a public health doctor, asserted that alcohol should be treated differently from tobacco (and by inference other drugs) because there is no safe dose of tobacco whereas alcohol is safe until a person’s drinking gets to “unsafe” levels. Its health benefits for the cardiovascular system are also often used to support the claim that in low doses alcohol is safe, for how else could it be health-promoting?

The myth of a safe level of drinking is a powerful claim. It is one that many health professionals appear to believe in and that the alcohol industry uses to defend its strategy of making the drug readily available at low prices. However, the claim is wrong and the supporting evidence flawed.

There is no safe dose of alcohol for these reasons:

  • Alcohol is a toxin that kills cells such as microorganisms, which is why we use it to preserve food and sterilise skin, needles etc. Alcohol kills humans too. A dose only four times as high as the amount that would make blood levels exceed drink-driving limits in the UK can kill. The toxicity of alcohol is worsened because in order for it to be cleared from the body it has to be metabolised to acetaldehyde, an even more toxic substance. Any food or drink contaminated with the amount of acetaldehyde that a unit of alcohol produces would be immediately banned as having an unacceptable health risk
  •  Although most people do not become addicted to alcohol on their first drink, a small proportion do. As a clinical psychiatrist who has worked with alcoholics for more than 30 years, I have seen many people who have experienced a strong liking of alcohol from their very first exposure and then gone on to become addicted to it. We cannot at present predict who these people will be, so any exposure to alcohol runs the risk of producing addiction in some users.
  •  The supposed cardiovascular benefits of a low level of alcohol intake in some middle-aged men cannot be taken as proof that alcohol is beneficial. To do that one would need a randomised trial where part of this group drink no alcohol, others drink in small amounts and others more heavily. Until this experiment has been done we don’t have proof that alcohol has health benefits. A recent example of where an epidemiological association was found not to be true when tested properly was hormone replacement therapy. Population observations suggested that HRT was beneficial for post-menopausal women, but when controlled trials were conducted it was found to cause more harm than good.
  •  For all other diseases associated with alcohol there is no evidence of any benefit of low alcohol intake – the risks of accidents, cancer, ulcers etc rise inexorably with intake.
  • Hopefully these observations will help bring some honesty to the debate about alcohol, which kills up to 40,000 people a year in the UK and over 2.25 million worldwide in the latest 2011 WHO report.

We must not allow apologists for this toxic industry to pull the wool over our eyes with their myth of a safe alcohol dose, however appealing it might be to all us so-called “safe” drinkers. Remember these words of a man whose great family wealth and influence was built on illegal alcohol:

“The great enemy of the truth, is very often not the lie – deliberate, contrived and dishonest – but the myth – persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” John F Kennedy

David Nutt is professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London and chairs the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/mar/07/safe-level-alcohol-consumption