Heavy Drinkers: Are You In That 5% of the Population?
The health benefits of alcohol are frequently touted on the daily news, but the many hazards are often omitted. Americans truly enjoy their alcohol, but the facts remain that excessive alcohol use is the third leading cause of preventable death in the United States and is a risk factor for numerous serious health and societal problems.
What is excessive alcohol use? It can take the form of heavy drinking, binge drinking, or both. Heavy drinking is defined for women, as more than one drink per day on average, and for men, two drinks per day on average. Binge drinking may occur only once per week or once per month but is defined as 5 or more drinks during a single occasion (in about 2 hours) for men or 4 or more drinks during a single occasion for women. Approximately 5% of the total population drinks heavily and 15% of the population engages in binge drinking, according to the CDC.
Binge drinking alone is associated with a number of very serious and significant consequences. Not to mention the many accidents, injuries, sexually transmitted diseases, unintended pregnancies, and children born with fetal alcohol syndrome, alcohol intoxication from binge drinking is often responsible for significant brain damage, liver disease, high blood pressure, stroke and other cardiovascular diseases, sexual dysfunction, and deadly alcohol poisoning.
Have you ever heard on the news that alcohol can cause cancer or brain damage? Well it can, yet this seems to be a well-kept secret. Heavy alcohol consumption, and in some cases moderate alcohol consumption, has a huge downside such as increasing the risk of cancer of the breast, mouth, pharynx, larynx, esophagus, and liver; not to mention other toxic and harmful effects on the brain and liver.
Despite all the well-documented research that shows the hazards of drinking alcohol, most people when asked will say, drinking a glass or two of wine or an alcoholic drink is “good for you”. Sure, an occasional glass of wine probably won’t hurt most people, but any more than a glass per day for a woman is considered heavy drinking, and there are bad consequences of heavy drinking.
The daily news is not completely wrong, there does appear to be some health benefits of alcohol, but many leading authorities contend that the hazards outweigh the benefits.
Source: National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism of the National Institute of Health
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