How much alcohol is safe?
When it comes to how alcohol affects your health, every person has a different advice for you- from how drinking affects pregnancy to whether wine helps in increasing your blood flow.
But now, a new major multinational study has another piece of advice: People who consume more than about six drinks per week have a greater risk of premature death. The study is done by The Lancet a weekly general medical journal. It is among the world’s oldest, most prestigious, and best known general medical journals.
The study published in the Lancet analyzed data from 600,000 people who drink zero to more than 350 ml of alcohol per week. It found that people who drank more than 100 grams of alcohol per week, the equivalent of about six glasses of wine, had increased risk of stroke, heart disease, heart failure, fatal hypertensive disease and fatal aortic aneurysm.
Look at it this way. If a 40-year-old man reduced his weekly alcohol intake from 196 grams (the current alcohol guideline for men in the United States) to 100 grams, he could expect to live as much as two years longer, the study says. So a person’s risk of death increases as they drank more. The researchers used a mathematical model to estimate that people who consumed between seven and 14 drinks per week had a lower life expectancy at age 40 of about six months; people who drank between 14 and 24 drinks per week had one to two years shaved off their lives; and people who imbibed more than 24 drinks a week had a lower life expectancy of four to five years.
In September, a World Health Organization report found an estimated 3 million people die every year because of alcohol consumption. That’s 5 percent of all deaths. Booze is also a leading risk factor for early death and disability among people aged 15 and 49.
This is happening because of less awareness amongst the drinkers. If one consumes alcohol in limit then there would be less of such complications. So next time you having a party with your friends or just chilling at your home, just drink responsibly.
