Alcohol Use and Burden for 195 Countries and Territories, 1990–2016:
Alcohol use and burden for 195 countries and territories, 1990–2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016 VOLUME 392, ISSUE 10152, P1015-1035, SEPTEMBER 22, 2018
Open AccessPublished:August 23, 2018DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31310-2
Blog Number 1, July 12, 2023
I decided to become an author for my retired career. The topic of my first book was going to be Suicide and I expended a lot of energy and effort putting together this initial book. However it kind of fizzled and I changed my interest to the topics of alcohol and alcoholism. This was in January of 2019. My initial search for scientific articles asked for “Scientific articles on what a safe level of alcohol to drink.” This is a difficult question and what I had heard in the past that a safe level for men was 2 drinks a day and for women it was only 1 drink a day. A drink has various definitions. If you go down to the local bar a burly man it likely to hold up a Pitcher of beer and proclaim: “Here’s a drink for me!” in reality this Pitcher usually has 60 ounces of beer, which is 5 drinks. A “Drink” in the USA contains 14 grams of pure alcohol, which is found in 12 ounces of beer (5% alcohol), 5 ounces of wine (which is typically 12% alcohol) or 1.5 ounces of distilled spirits (40% alcohol). If a man drinks up to 2 drinks of alcohol a day, then he is deemed a “moderate drinker”, if he has 3 or more drinks in a day then he is a “heavy drinker”. There is an entirely different type of drinking, the type that I used to engage in, called “Binge drinking”. This consists of a man drinking enough drinks (usually 4-5) in a short enough period (usually about 2 hours) to develop a blood alcohol concentration consistent with “Alcohol intoxication”, BA=0.08. Drinks are defined differently in different countries. It gets very confusing. Other Blogs will return to that topic.
By good luck or serendipity, I found this article that had the following interpretation: Alcohol use is a leading risk factor for global disease burden and causes substantial health loss. We found that the risk of all-cause mortality, and of cancers specifically, rises with increasing levels of consumption, and the level of consumption that minimises health loss is zero. These results suggest that alcohol control policies might need to be revised worldwide, refocusing on efforts to lower overall population-level consumption.
The article was significant. It had 515 investigators (I counted them myself), they had looked at 195 countries and territories (basically the entire world), and they carried on their research for 26 years. There were 28 million subjects. There were hundreds of Institutions, Universities and Groups that were involved in this research. To me their research boiled down to “the only safe level pf alcohol consumption consistent with optimal health is zero drinks a day.” Alcohol is not good for humans.
They also found that there were “no health benefits from drinking alcohol”! The alcohol industry has funded a lot of research about alcohol. They were desperate to show benefits from booze. What about their J-curve and the proven fact that “moderate drinkers” lived longer than teetotalers? Well those topics will be covered but the bottom line appears to be: “There are NO HEALTH BENEFITS FROM DRINKING ALCOHOL!”
I decided after reading this paper, several times, that my position in writing my book and living my life was that all people should avoid all alcohol; that people should learn to live their lives ALCOHOL-FREE. For most people this is no big deal. In many areas of the world in excess of 90% of people abstain from ethanol; they correctly assess it as being a “bad spirit” that will destroy the drinker’s life.
There are thousands and thousands of articles on alcohol. I do my searches in a very simple way. I go to Google and ask for “Scientific articles on alcohol and the human hypothalamus” or “Scientific articles on alcohol and the adolescent brain.” Try it yourself and see what you find?
It was obvious to me that the Alcohol Industry would go after the statement that there were No Benefits From Drinking Alcohol and that is exactly what happened. The most vital benefit that they wanted to claim was for protection from heart disease. There were several articles that came out advocating ingestion of small amount of Red Wine; I do not know anyone that drinks those miniscule amounts. The active ingredient for protection was not alcohol, in fact, alcohol-free wine was found to be the most beneficial. They actually sell fifths of alcohol free Red Wine at Amazon but when I last researched this; the cost was high and the reviews were mixed. The compound that provides some benefit to the heart is Resveratrol, an anti-inflammatory like Vitamin C, NAC, or Glutathione.
Later studies on Cardiac Benefits have shown that there are No Health Benefit and have advised health professionals to NOT recommend alcohol drinking for any health problem.
So in summing up: The only safe level of alcohol consumption for optimal health is ZERO DRINKS A DAY! There is NO HEALTH BENEFITS FROM DRINKING ALCOHOL! Learn to live life alcohol-free on day at a time.
