BBC Science Focus - The Scientific Guide To a Healthier You - 2019

5% cider

2.8

units

2.3

units

9.8

units

1

unit

2.3

units

13% wine 13% wine 40% whiskey 4% beer

HOW MANY UNITS ARE THERE IN MY DRINK?

Recommended weekly
maximum = 14 units

DIET

Cross-section of a liver

showing the condition

cirrhosis (where normal

liver tissue is replaced by

scar tissue), which is often

caused by excessive

alcohol consumption

people who are in poor health, and

that skews the apparent benefits of

moderate drinking. He recommends

abstinent days, abstinent months

and, if you actually don’t miss the

stuff, abstinent years.

Dr Alexander Jones, a consultant

cardiologist and clinical scientist at

University College London, agrees

that alcohol raises your risk of a

wide range of cancers. He believes,

however, that there is evidence that

alcohol can be beneficial for the

heart, at least in relatively low doses.

“Heav y d r i n kers have a muc h h ig her

risk of developing heart disease than

non-drinkers,” he says. “But there are

large prospective studies which show

that if you drink modest amounts of

alcohol, up to say two units a day,

then you are less likely to develop coronary

heart disease or stroke later on in life.”

So, who is right? The best way to assess the

impact of moderate drinking would be to take

a large group of non-drinkers and randomly

allocate them to either drinking alcohol or

water, then follow them for many years. Such

a study would be almost impossible to do. But

a study along more modest lines was published

in 2015 in the Annals of Internal Medicine. For

t h is st udy, resea rc hers at Ben- Gu r ion Un iversit y

in Israel took 224 type 2 diabetics who rarely

drank and randomly allocated them to either

a 150ml glass of red wine, white wine or

mineral water with their evening meal, every

evening, for two years. For context, 150ml 5

can be sociable and may be beneficial for us

purely for those reasons.

“There are 60 different ways at least that

alcohol can make you unwell or kill you,” he

tells me over a glass of water. “It’s not just

the obvious things like liver disease. A man

drinking three to four units a day increases his

risk of developing prostate cancer. Alcohol, at

whatever level, raises a woman’s risk of breast

cancer. There would be 10 per cent fewer

deaths from breast cancer worldwide if there

was no drinking.”

Stockwell thinks the studies that suggest

moderate d r i n k i ng is protec t ive a re f lawed. He

says the problem is that the group of people who

‘don’t d r i n k’ of ten i ncludes for mer a lcoholics a nd