For too long, we have been led to believe that alcohol is good for health if consumed in moderation and that a glass of wine or a peg of Scotch has many health benefits. Now, busting the myth, the World Health Organization (WHO) has revealed that when it comes to alcohol consumption, there is no safe amount that does not affect health.
In The Lancet Public Health, WHO states, alcohol is a toxic, psychoactive and dependence-producing substance and has been classified as a Group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer decades ago. “It causes at least seven types of cancer, including the most common cancer types, such as bowel cancer and female breast cancer.”
The UN health agency also stated that in the European Union, cancer-related deaths are on the rise and most of all alcohol-attributable deaths are due to various types of cancer.
How much is safe to drink?
In response to the question of how much is actually safe to drink, the WHO stated that currently available evidence cannot indicate the existence of a threshold at which the carcinogenic effects of alcohol “switch on”. It further stated, “There are no studies that would demonstrate that the potential beneficial effects of light and moderate drinking on cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes outweigh the risk of cancer”.
“We cannot talk about the so-called safe level of alcohol use. It doesn’t matter how much you drink – the risk to the health of the drinker begins with the first drop of any alcoholic beverage. The only thing What we can say for sure is that the more you drink, the more harmful you are,” said Dr Carina Ferreira-Borges, Acting Unit Lead for Non-Communicable Disease Management and Regional Director for Alcoholism and Illicit Drugs at the WHO Regional Office the advisor said. to Europe.
Can even light to moderate drinking cause cancer?
Globally, the WHO European region has the highest levels of alcohol consumption and the highest proportion of drinkers in the population. Here, more than 200 million people in the region are at risk of cancer due to alcohol.
The latest figures indicate that half of all alcohol-attributable cancers are caused by “light” and “moderate” alcohol consumption – less than 1.5 liters of wine or less than 3.5 liters of beer or less than 450ml of spirits per week
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