It’s looking like the reported health benefits of drinking alcohol might have been just too good to be true. A wide international investigation had researchers studying data from over 500,000 current drinkers in 19 countries, and the results are in. The study found that the safe upper limit for alcohol consumption is only about 100 grams of alcohol per week. In real-life hooch terms, that’s just five pints of beer or five 6-oz. glasses of wine, which carried out over a full seven-day week, is less than one glass a day.
According to the research, consuming more than that raises the risk of early death from cardiovascular diseases, including stroke and heart failure. But the study’s truly alarming finding is the direct effect that increasing consumption has on shrinking your life expectancy. It shrinks by 6 months for drinkers who double the recommended safe limit, imbibing up to 200 grams of alcohol per week, by 1 – 2 years for those consuming up to 350 grams, and by a whopping 4 – 5 years when a person’s alcohol intake goes over 350 grams weekly.
The study’s authors are reaching out to countries like Italy and the United States, where the current guidelines state safe upper limits that are twice those levels, to recommend that they reduce those numbers.
Looks like if you booze, you lose.
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