Moderate drinking: Women and men, alcohol limits, benefits, risks
Ria uses medication, coaching, and digital tools to customize treatment, and delivers it all through a smartphone app. Technically, the only truly safe level of drinking is not drinking at all. However, for many people this is not realistic, nor is this what most people want. Brierley is a dietitian nutritionist, content creator and strategist, and avid mental health advocate. She is co-host and co-creator of the Happy Eating Podcast, a podcast that breaks down the connection between food and mental wellness.
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The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse & Alcoholism (NIAAA) defines moderate drinking as up to two alcoholic drinks for men and one for women in any single day. In the United States, moderate drinking for healthy adults is different for men and women. It means on days when a person does drink, women do not have more than one drink and men do not have more than two drinks. Heavy drinking thresholds for women are lower because after consumption, alcohol distributes itself evenly in body water, and pound for pound, women have proportionally less water in their bodies than men do. This means that after a woman and a man of the same weight drink the same amount of alcohol, the woman’s blood alcohol concentration (BAC) will tend to be higher, putting her at greater risk for harm.
- These risks seem to cancel out evidence of alcohol’s cardiovascular benefits, which was weakened anyway when researchers did more nuanced studies.
- Keep in mind, too, that alcoholic drinks contribute little to no other nutritional value.
- In diary methods, participants record each drink consumed over a given timeframe (e.g., 1 week), ideally shortly after consumption.
- Alcohol consumption has been linked to cancers of the breast, colon and rectum, liver, esophagus, voice box, throat, mouth, and probably the pancreas, according to the American Cancer Society.
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In the United States, both the Federal tax code and the tax codes of individual States specify which beverages are classified as “ beer,” “ wine,” or “distilled spirits” and their alcohol content. According to those definitions, “ beer” includes strong beer (i.e., beer with an alcohol content greater than 3.2 percent), beer with an alcohol content of up to 3.2 percent, ale, malt liquor, and similar types of beverages. Similarly, “ wine” encompasses wine, vermouth, champagne, sparkling wine, cider, and related beverages. The broadest category is that of “distilled spirits,” which includes numerous beverages, such as gin, rum, vodka, whiskey, scotch, bourbon, and premixed cocktails. (For people with alcohol use disorder, the option is abstinence.) People have long derived pleasure from alcohol. I am one of them, although my definition of “moderation” has shifted with the guidelines.
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In common parlance, a moderate drinker is someone who does not drink to the point of drunkenness unless on special occasions. It is a nebulous concept that people often use to distinguish between a heavy drinker—someone who may frequently drink to the point of drunkenness—and the occasional drinker or non-drinker. These are not scientific terms by any means; they are merely the phrases that have come to be adopted by individuals in their day-to-day use of language, and their definitions are highly subjective. However, there is a vast middle ground between having one drink every now and then and alcoholism, and the truth about the potential risks to one’s health when it comes to moderate drinking are blurry.
A review study (and meta-analysis), which was published in 2011 in the journal BMJ, showed that drinking alcohol significantly raised HDL cholesterol, yet didn’t raise total cholesterol, LDL or triglycerides. For many Americans, summer is the most relaxing time of the year. Particularly when the weather is nice, millions of people around the country choose to spend the day or evening outside, enjoying the company of friends and family while lighting up the grill and having a few drinks. how to wean off prozac 10 mg seems to be good for the heart and circulatory system, and probably protects against type 2 diabetes and gallstones. Heavy drinking is a major cause of preventable death in most countries. In the U.S., alcohol is implicated in about half of fatal traffic accidents.
Risks of heavy alcohol use
It affects levels of lipids (cholesterol and triglycerides) and insulin in the blood, as well as inflammation and coagulation. If you choose to drink, having only a moderate (limited) amount can lower your risk for health problems caused by drinking. Some people shouldn’t drink at all, like people younger than 21 years, people who are pregnant or might be pregnant, and people with certain health conditions.
In either case, however, alcohol is still absorbed into the bloodstream at a much faster rate than it is metabolized. Thus, the blood alcohol concentration builds when a person has additional drinks before prior drinks are metabolized. Knowing what counts as a heavy drinking day—4 or more drinks for women and 5 or more for men—can be clinically useful in two ways. Department of Health and Human Services, moderate drinking is up to 7 drinks per week for women, and up to 14 drinks per week for men. Per day, it’s up to one drink for women and up to two drinks for men.2 This means that if you have seven beers on Saturday and don’t drink the rest of the week, it doesn’t count as moderate.
A popular variant of the QF methodology is represented by self-administered, semiquantitative food-frequency questionnaires, which assess the consumption of different foods (see, for example, the questionnaire developed by Willett and colleagues [1988]). For example, a simple frequency questionnaire would ask, “ How often do you drink milk? ” A semiquantitative food frequency questionnaire, however, central nervous system depression would ask, “ How often do you drink a glass of milk? In some QF surveys, respondents are asked how often and how much, on average, they consumed different types of alcoholic beverages over the past year. Those surveys generally include specific definitions of standard drink sizes for each beverage type assessed. In recent years, the alcoholic beverage market has become even more diversified.
Frequency measures query the respondent on his or her typical drinking frequency in a given timeframe (e.g., the past year), based on various predetermined categories from which to choose (e.g., “never,” “once a month,” “once a week,” or “everyday” ). Because these frequency measures do not assess the alcohol amount consumed on each drinking occasion, they do not allow researchers to calculate a person’s average or total volume of alcohol consumption. It’s long been known that alcohol reduces the amygdala’s reactivity to threatening stimuli while individuals are drinking. The current study is the first to indicate that light to moderate alcohol consumption has longer-term neurobiological effects in dampening activity in the amygdala, which may have a significant downstream impact on the cardiovascular system. Like a “standard drink,” “moderate drinking” can have several definitions.
The researchers have invested much effort in maintaining some degree of comparability across surveys, despite changing definitions and conceptualizations of alcohol-use disorders (Grant 1994). Finally, distilled spirits exhibit a wide range in terms of alcohol concentration. Typically, many familiar forms of distilled spirits (e.g., vodka, whiskey, gin, or rum) have alcohol contents of 40 to 50 percent (often expressed as 80 to 100 proof). Considerable variation may occur even within these categories, with the alcohol content of some varieties being as low as 30 percent and others as high as 75 percent. Liqueurs and cordials, usually grouped with distilled spirits, often are less concentrated than standard liquors.
One variant of this enzyme, called alcohol dehydrogenase type 1C (ADH1C), comes in two “flavors.” One quickly breaks down alcohol, the other does it more slowly. Moderate drinkers who have two copies of the gene for the slow-acting enzyme are at much lower risk for cardiovascular disease than moderate drinkers who have two genes for the fast-acting enzyme. steve harwell and alcohol [44] Those with one gene for the slow-acting enzyme and one for the faster enzyme fall in between. Alcohol interacts in potentially dangerous ways with a variety of medications, including acetaminophen, antidepressants, anticonvulsants, painkillers, and sedatives. It is also addictive, especially for people with a family history of alcoholism.
Heavy drinking, including binge drinking, is a high-risk activity. The bottom line is that alcohol is potentially addictive, can cause intoxication, and contributes to health problems and preventable deaths. If you already drink at low levels and continue to drink, risks for these issues appear to be low. Excessive alcohol use can harm people who drink and those around them.
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