Page 32 - BBC - The Scientific Guide to a Healthier You

DIET

5 While this isn’t a huge amount, it
is well over the current government
guidelines of 14 units a week for men
and women. The guidelines used to
be 21 units a week for men, 14 for

women, but they were changed in
December 2016, when the Department
of Health announced that, “there
is no justification for drinking for
health reasons”.
I was surprised and somewhat
sceptical about the definitive nature
of this statement for reasons I will
come to in a moment, but it did
give me further reasons to attempt
an alcohol-free November. I went
off and got some blood samples
taken, to measure fasting glucose,
liver enzymes and my cholesterol
levels, and I also weighed myself and
measured my blood pressure. I put the bottles there would really be any lasting benefits if I
of wine out of sight and I was good to go. kept it up. Is alcohol, at the relatively modest
levels that I’ve been drinking it for the last few
BREAKING THE HABIT years, really that bad?
The first couple of weeks were challenging, According to the Department of Health if
because I had got into the habit of having a you’re drinking 14 units of alcohol a week,
drink with my evening meal and I did miss let alone the 20 units that I was averaging,
it. I thought the best way to get through the then you’re increasing your chance of dying
month was to tell people what I was doing by around one per cent. That figure sounds
so it would be too embarrassing to backtrack. quite scary, but Sir David Spiegelhalter, Winton

My friends were understanding and it also Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk,
meant that when we met for a drink I was at Cambridge University, has crunched the
no longer tempted to eat crisps at the bar. numbers and put some context on the one per
I found that I was better company when I went cent chance of dying claim.
out in the evening because I was less likely to “An hour of TV watching a day, or eating
have a postprandial slump. I did not, however, a bacon sandwich a couple of times a week,
notice much improvement in my sleep or any is more dangerous to your long-term health,”
impressive changes in my skin. he says. “It all seems to come down to what
It seemed that there were good reasons to pleasure you get from moderate drinking.”
stick to Dry November, but I wondered whether So not that scary after all. But what about
the claim that moderate drinking is worse for
you than total abstention and that “there is no
“There would be 10 per cent justification for drinking for health reasons”.

This is certainly the view of Prof Tim Stockwell,
fewer deaths from breast director of the Centre for Addiction Research
at the University of Victoria in Canada. He
cancer worldwide if there has advised many governments, including our
own, on alcohol guidelines and thinks there SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
was no drinking” are no biochemical benefits to drinking. He

does concede, however, that moderate drinking

32 BBC SCIENCE FOCUS MAGAZINE COLLECTION