“Youth Shouldn’t Drink”: World Studies Challenge Alcohol Guidelines-Nationwide

According to the world’s first study, people under the age of 40 have found that drinking more than a few glasses of beer or wine a day is harmful to their health and recommends that young people not drink it. alcohol Jeez.

These findings are part of a wider range Global burden of illness (GBD) Research, a comprehensive research program launched in 1990 by the World Bank to assess disability and mortality on a global scale.

This analysis Alcohol consumption Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Lancet July 14th. This is the first study of alcohol use that classifies risks by region, age, gender, and year.

Risks for young people, benefits for older people

According to this study, young adults between the ages of 15 and 39 face only health risks when drinking alcohol, have no benefit, and are most likely to drink excessively.

Using a vast data set across 204 countries examining the health status of men and women aged 15-95 years from 1990 to 2020, researchers found that one of the alcohols that poses little or no risk to the population. I was able to estimate the average daily intake.

For people under the age of 40, the recommended amount of alcohol you can consume before taking a health risk is about 15 mL of wine or 50 mL of beer, or “a little over a tenth of a standard drink.”

In this study, the standard drink was defined as 10 grams of pure alcohol (100 mL wine, 375 mL beer, or 30 mL liquor). Using this template, researchers have found that young people begin to endanger their health after drinking 0.136 standard drinks a day.

“Our message is simple. Young people shouldn’t drink, but older people may benefit from drinking small amounts,” said Health Indicator Science, Institute of Health Indicators, University of Washington School of Medicine. Professor Emanuelagakidu said.and press release..

“It may not be realistic to think that young adults refrain from drinking, but I think it’s important to provide up-to-date evidence so that everyone can make informed decisions about their health. “She added.

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Public health officials are certainly cutting down on their work to reduce youth drinking rates. Researchers have found that in 2020, 60% of people around the world who consume dangerous levels of alcohol fall between the ages of 15 and 39. bracket.

Canada is currently ranked 44th in the world in terms of alcohol consumption. World Health Organization 2019 Report And our per capita drinking rate is Far above the world average..

However, while young people are advised to reduce drinking, this study found that older people can sometimes benefit from drinking.

People over the age of 40 who have no underlying health problems consume “small amounts” of alcohol daily to “provide some benefits such as reducing the risk of ischemic heart disease, stroke, and diabetes.” can.

People between the ages of 40 and 64 can safely drink from about half a standard drink to nearly two glasses a day. More accurate estimates will vary by gender and region. Based on the findings, people over the age of 65 can drink a little over three glasses of standard drinks.

Therefore, studies show that drinking alcohol in young people can be harmful to your health, but as you get older, it can actually be beneficial to consume alcohol.

Tallinn Greeder, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, said he wasn’t surprised that GBD discovered only the health risks of drinking young people.

“I’m not really surprised because their brains aren’t fully developed until they’re 25 to 30 years old,” she said. “Alcohol is a brain suppressant, which is like shutting down normal functioning.”

Canadian Guidelines for Drinking

One of the objectives of this study was to inform public health policy makers about the risks associated with alcohol and encourage countries to reassess their guidelines on safe drinking habits.

Currently in CanadaLow riskDrinking guidelines (not without risk) suggest that women should be limited to two standard drinks a day and men should be limited to three standard drinks. This is well above the recommended level in GBD studies between the ages of 15 and 39.

For this reason, the authors of the study are seeking alcohol guidelines that emphasize age-specific consumption levels to distinguish between safe and dangerous drinking.

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Researchers also emphasized the need for guidelines specifically tailored to men under the age of 40, as countries represent the groups most likely to use alcohol harmfully. ..

Approximately 77% of people who drank too much in 2020 were men, but Canadian guidelines state that men can drink more safely than women.

Greeder states that these gender-based recommendations take into account differences in body composition and metabolism between men and women, but these findings require changes to the guidelines.

“Now we know that it’s not really low-risk, so we need to rethink the wording in terms of low-risk drinking guidelines,” she said. “No matter how much consumption is done, it’s dangerous.”

The real question is how public health authorities can communicate this risk to young people.

“There is an idea that if you give young people the information to use it, they are in a sense very invincible at this time,” Greeder said.

The dangers are not immediately apparent, so it is unlikely that cultural changes in drinking will occur in the same way that attitudes regarding tobacco use have changed. Lung cancer was a poster child for smoking, but there is no peculiar “big bad wolf” associated with drinking.

According to Greeder, alcohol is a health risk, “not only physical effects, but also long-term psychological and mental health effects are of considerable importance.”

According to Greeder, sleep is one of the major areas affected by alcohol, and people are not fully aware of the negative effects of not being able to sleep soundly.

“There are many more accidents caused by the use of alcohol,” she added.

This perception of other complex factors affecting health is part of a “biological psychosocial” approach.

“It’s biological in the sense that it’s physically happening to the body, but it involves the effects of psychological events like suicide,” Grieder said.

“Depression is also associated with the use of alcohol.”

All of this danger and increased likelihood of accidents that drinking brings to mental health contributes to cutting a person’s life for years. And Grieder observed that it wouldn’t go away soon.

“Consumption is on the rise, especially out of the pandemic. People have been restricted for so long that it’s time to get out and live their lives.”

Although it is unlikely that young people will stop drinking altogether, this study suggests that it is time to change social perceptions of what is considered dangerous behavior.

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