Wording is very careful to not offend the alcohol industry.
“Growing skepticism of alcohol’s benefits”
Why not “Growing awareness of alcohol’s harms”?
Alcohol’s benefits, you know like feeling like shit in the morning, liver failure, being an asshole…
Look if I can’t blame the booze for being an asshole that means I’m just an asshole.
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Eh, it helps me enjoy socializing, I’m nice AF when I drink, and I don’t get hung over unless I go absolutely crazy with it. As for liver failure, the sooner this shit existence is over the better.
I had to quit alcohol because of my husband’s issue with it. It was no problem for me to let it go, though I did miss it for a time.
Same thing, I’m happy as hell when I’ve had a few glasses of wine, it’s fun to socialize. But what really drove home to me the benefit of quitting, was even though I was happy and funny to be around, there were still moments where alcohol put me outside my own decision making.
I didn’t like that.
there were still moments where alcohol put me outside my own decision making.
That’s not something I’ve ever really had an issue with personally. I’ve never done anything while intoxicated that I regretted later other than maybe having too much and getting sick. Even when I’ve gone way overboard I have never gotten any complaints from anyone about how I behaved. Not that I’m saying that’s the case for everyone, I know people who get mean or emotional when they drink and they should avoid it. It just doesn’t happen to me. I just get more happy and outgoing and it kills a lot of my social anxiety.
No I am the same as you when it comes to drinking.
I guess I don’t know how to explain it.
Maybe, something simple, like over eating sweets at a party because I was buzzing. I only realized it after I stopped drinking, how much it really was the alcohol making the decisions for me, even if that decision is to make a joke or share a story, I’d otherwise not speak without alcohol.
I hear you and I’m not advocating all people shouldn’t drink anytime. Just personally, I didn’t realize how much alcohol influenced my decision making until after I gave it up voluntarily, about a year or so into sobriety.
Reaction times are slower for example, so to drink is really deciding to give up control of yourself for a time. Probably why it makes socializing easier.
I think I get what you’re saying. I guess In my case I don’t think of it as making decisions for me so much as stopping my anxiety from preventing me doing things I would otherwise like to do. Like overeating and things like that may come into it a bit but I still have a fairly good handle on things like that even when I’m drunk (if I’m getting drunk it’s already a forgone conclusion that my diet is shot that day). I never really lose control of myself or come around the next day thinking “Oh man, that thing I did last night wasn’t me”. I’m not taking that for granted and being reckless by like driving or operating power tools or anything but so far no major issues have arose from it like I’ve seen happen to others.
Have you heard the good news about our Lord and Savior, weed? All fun with no drawbacks
There are certainly drawbacks to weed, both short and long term. Depending on how frequently and to what extent you use they may be less severe than alcohol, but they still exist. Nothing that affects your brain chemistry that profoundly comes without downsides. Sorry.
I wish. I love weed, and it’s waaaaaaay safer than alcohol, but it does have drawbacks. It gives me a lot of anxiety. I know some people who’ve had issues with Schizophrenia. And I know others who’ve had interference with their athsma.
I’ve tried but it just doesn’t do it for me.
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It’s not legal here, so it’s a bit hard to get a hold of.
…
Hey, watch it buddy. Asshole is an upgrade from my baseline, so be thankful that some of us self medicate. (Was a joke, jeez)
My husband could have said this five years ago, weeks before he quit.
He’s not an asshole, but boy did alcohol make every mental health matter he had worse. In turn, creating an asshole.
Alcohol doesn’t medicate.
There possibly might be something healthy about certain wines that, with other dietary things might keep people healthier afaik, but they probably took that idea and just out it as a factual benefit, alcohol makes you healthy, period!
Don’t mind the liver disease, cognitive decline, cancers and what not more. Hell, even hangovers are grrrrreat!
On a side note: pot hangovers are awesome.
You cherry picked one line from an article that does talk about alcohol’s harms, including in the opening paragraph.
Not to mention the “growing skepticism of alcohol’s benefits” is also accurate because there have been cases over the years where some study will come out saying it’s better to drink a little than not at all (despite awareness of many of alcohol’s harms, but they were blamed on drinking in excess) and people have been growing more skeptical of those lately.
Belief in those benefits drove a different kind of drinking (like a glass of wine with dinner habit) than a lack of awareness (or denial) of the harms (which can lead to more severe alcoholism involving frequently drinking to get drunk). By addressing both the awareness of harms and skepticism of benefits, it’s showing that both of those groups are on the decline.
Health concerns are legit, but have they seen the prices? A 6 pack of Bud Light is regularly 9 bucks. FOR BUD LIGHT. Forget about premium brands, those are 12 and up. Hell, small batch locals are up to 15+. Liquor hasn’t shot up quite as much, but it has climbed.
Don’t even get me started on how much bars/restaurants charge.
The bar around the corner from me charges $16 for a single White Claw.
Holy fuck
Are you sure you haven’t stumbled into a movie theater masquerading as a bar?
At that price they better throw some simple syrup in there, needs to at least have some calories at $16
Man, I wish. Check out Canadian liquor prices. I don’t drink Bud but I’m pretty sure a six pack is $16 ($11.58 USD). Hard liquor is where we’re really hit though. Whisky is my drink of choice and it’s very expensive up here. I remember going to Boston a few years back and buying a few bottles of scotch because of how much cheaper it was, it was crazy.
Weed is cheaper.
And is less likely to turn certain people into assholes the way that alcohol does sometimes
Yeah I never get high and want to fight
There’s a South Park episode about the alcohol industry relying on ten percent of their buyers being alcoholics. That was me until a month ago. But I quit because it was now rampantly destroying my body in ways that severely affected me, even when sober. I’d keep drinking if I could.
Oh well, more money in my pocket. And more mental energy for nerd projects, which I’d long wanted to get back to anyway.
Congrats! The first month is the hardest. Come check out stopdrinking@lemmy.world, if you haven’t already.
When I started, I listened to many hours of the Happy Sober Podcast. Craig Beck does a good job of exposing the tricks alcohol plays on the brain.
Keep it up! It gets easier.
I’ve sobered up for a month to eight months at a time. The difference is that the long stint was just because and I got talked into drinking by someone I was dating and then it was on top of me again. The one month stint was just to take a break. I did about two weeks right before the USA election last year, but then the asshat got in control again and I said fuck it.
This time, I really don’t have a choice. The effect on my body made it clear that I can’t keep going. I had a good run. I drank very hard for a very long time.
But thank you for the kind words. They are appreciated.
I’m gonna be honest. I need to do a lot more reading because I’m just more confused about alcohol consumption now.
I’d really like to better understand the direct health effects, like cancer mentioned in this article with low or moderate consumption.
“There is no safe level of alcohol consumption” isn’t the most helpful piece of information. A lot of things we consume aren’t completely safe. Whether it be carcinogens, red meat, or microplastics, we are always ingesting things that have both negative and positive effects.
Life is about managing risks. Eating fatty or high caloric foods, affects us a whole lot differently than eating whole foods, vegetables, and low carbs. Alcohol is just another item on the list of risks to manage.
How does low to moderate alcohol consumption compare to the risks associated with all the other sources of consumption?
🤔
“There is no safe level of alcohol consumption” isn’t the most helpful piece of information.
It’s mostly to bust the myth that there’s some level of alcohol consumption that’s actually beneficial for the health. You should never pretend that alcohol is good for your health.
Yeah, I certainly agree with this is probably the most helpful thing from the article. I’ve never pretended that it can be healthy, but I know that’s important to a lot of people.
While that may be true, there are plenty of instances where alcohol consumption is better than drinking water. Drink wine to avoid ringworms type shit.
Tapeworm? Ringworm is a fungal skin infection.
Yes I got them mixed up. Both are pretty much not present in my region.
I’m no doctor but I’m gonna guess there’s like … actual medicine you can take for that instead of using alcohol as a method of treatment
Sounds like something someone with parasites would say. 🤔
It’s technically preventative, also its more a historical issue. Basically a lot of water sources were contaminated with parasites, metals, and just general nastiness which resulted in people using juice, wine, and beer as a replacement. This cultural element lost a lot of pressure towards the end of the 1800s going into the 1900s and was even an element of prohibition the argument being that water was clean alcohol was no longer needed. Which is stupid but whatever.
Okaaay, suspect, but whatever. That’s 1. What are the rest of the “plenty of instances where alcohol consumption is better than drinking water?”
Basically any instance where the water is contaminated and you don’t have access to a filter. Boiling is tedious and only does so much.
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For decades the line was that a glass or two of red wine had health benefits, but they were largely deriving that by comparing data to places like Italy, France, and Spain where wine consumption is normalized and they have other health factors.
Same stuff that started driving “The Mediterranean Diet”.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/heart-disease/in-depth/red-wine/art-20048281
On further study though, it gets complicated:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10146095/
"Acute and short-term RW consumption seems to exert positive effects on antioxidant status, the lipid profile, thrombosis and inflammation markers, and the gut microbiota.
Importantly, a longer duration of treatment with RW has been shown to protect renal and cardiac function parameters in T2DM patients, suggesting that a moderate intake of RW may serve as a dietary supplement in diabetic patients.
On the other hand, blood pressure values, homocysteine levels, and gastrointestinal function seem to be impaired by short-term RW intake."
This is helpful.
Of course, it’s focused on positive health benefits. I’m not actually looking to justify alcohol consumption as healthy. What I would honestly like to know is if it is proven to be unhealthy.
This article is the first time I’ve actually heard it associated with cancer risk. And that is with the presumption of frequent and excessive alcohol consumption.
I’m more concerned with low to moderate amounts and what the proven negative effects are. Is it worse than consuming red meat, carcinogen ingestion, microplastic congestion, and any number of other negative factors we ingest due to a bad diet (e.g. high cholesterol foods).
As far as I know, it’s about on par. Light, infrequent drinking doesn’t meaningfully increase your risk of disease any more than moderate consumption of red meat, for example. Frequent heavy drinking definitely does.
This is what I’d like to see some data on.
You should look up the correlation between alcohol consumption and cancer rates. It’s pretty clear-cut; the graph goes down ever so slightly down* and then keeps on rising. The “safe” limit would just be a function of how high a probability of getting cancer you’re willing to tolerate.
*Medical issues are a common reason not to drink, so the cancer rate for the total non-drinking population is appreciably higher than it would be for a healthy non-drinking individual. There’s no causation behind that drop to our knowledge.
PS: I said “cancer,” but the same principle applies to liver failure and a host of other “fun” diseases.
If I can find it, I’d be curious about this.
I’m more concerned with low to moderate amounts and what the proven negative effects are. AND, is it worse than consuming red meat, carcinogen ingestion, microplastic congestion, and any number of other negative factors we ingest due to a bad diet (e.g. high cholesterol foods).
It’s also so incredibly dependent on genetics that it’s not even funny.
I have been following this subject for decades as I have spent most of the last 30 years selling booze.
You should think of it as like smoking weed more than eating a steak.
This makes sense. However, I’m not familiar with cannabis ingestion. I do know that smoking anything at all has increased negative risks.
I drink infrequently, but certainly more than I consume red meat. I might consume one steak a year, for example.
How are you defining “low to moderate”?
Mayo says:
If you already drink alcohol, do so in moderation. For healthy adults, that means:
- Up to one drink a day for women.
- Up to two drinks a day for men. The limit for men is higher because men most often weigh more than women and have more of the substance that breaks down alcohol in the body.
A drink is defined as:
- 12 ounces (355 milliliters) of regular beer.
- 5 ounces (148 milliliters) of wine.
- 1.5 ounces (44 milliliters) of hard liquor or distilled spirits.
Personally, I come nowhere near that. However, I’m still curious, at those levels or less, what the effects are.
Yeah, I generally take these kind of warnings with a grain of salt (which is yet another risk to manage). The studies are generally looking at usage levels far in excess of what I personally consume. It’s pretty safe to say that with significantly lower usage you’re also looking at significantly lower risk.
One of the many things I’ve cut down on because of unemployment. I used to socialize in bars more often.
When I was unemployed I went from drinking sparingly to drinking like six to eight beers and a bunch of shots every day. It was years of just getting messed up and having fun with my spouse.
Now it’s been way too long of doing that every day and we have bellies. We quit recently (after a medium/fast taper) and the only issue we’re both running into is horrible sleep. I assume it gets better after a few weeks.
Be proud of yourselves, that’s a huge accomplishment! Me and my partner are tapering right now too and I hope we’ll be like you soon!
Thank you! I was sooo scared to go from a couple beers daily to zero alcohol. I realized that even with a couple beers before bed, I was still sleeping poorly, so we jumped to zero this week. It’s been so odd, no cravings, no seizures, no anxiety or shakes… just shit sleep, but then I wake up not hung over and feel awesome. It’s been a LOT easier than I expected. I hope it’s also easy for you! We’ve been taking a lot of naps when we can. Overnight sleep should get better over the next couple weeks.
We’re still going to have Drinkin’ Fridays, which is not recommended, but for our own sanity we’re taking one day a week.
We’re scared too. Especially my boyfriend is really scared about withdrawal symptoms. Anyway he’s also started to realize that he got a beer belly already. I know it’s not recommended but I think drinking once a week isn’t that bad. And also I don’t believe in the whole one drink again and you will drink again all the time. Hope your sleep improves soon!
If you don’t mind sharing, how many drinks were you having every day, and how many are you down to?
My partner and I were having between 14 and 16 standard drinks daily, sometimes more if we were doing coke or something. For a while I was taking Xanax every morning and drinking a ton every night. I stopped Xanax about a year ago.
We tapered our drinking over two weeks down to 6-7 beers and no hard booze. The last day we drank, we had a couple whiteclaws and split a little bottle of soju. Then we went to zero this week.
If he’s been drinking less than that, I think he’ll be pretty fine on withdrawal symptoms like I am! I realize the amount I was drinking is pretty insane, but my tolerance was skyrocketed after like seven years of it.
So my boyfriend was drinking about 6-8 beers per day and some schnaps. (Sometimes half a bottle to a bottle per day). For me it’s like 3 beers a day, but because of work I can’t drink everyday so I guess for me it’s not going to be that hard. Just when I have a hard day at work I’m so happy to come home to my boyfriend and beer. I think it’s not going to be a physical withdrawal for me but a mental thing I will have to fight. And also of course when partying we used to drink much more also …
Ooh everyone is different, but I really think he will not have any withdrawals! That’s a similar amount to what I was drinking… at my worst I’d split half of a 1.75 with my partner on top of 8+ beers.
The mental thing I completely understand! Our house is cluttered cuz we’ve been too tired to clean this week, and we have empty whiteclaw cans on a bedside table and some boxes with crushed cans in the kitchen. Even with that stuff around, we have not at all been tempted… just tired.
I’m back in the office next week (hybrid) after being home for months, so I DEFINITELY will have some struggles not having some drinks after dealing with being in the office… but I will persevere! I want to fit my cute clothes again!
I really hope both of you have a similar experience to us, but maybe with more sleep. Other than sleep, it’s been way easier than we thought it would be.
The hard part was quitting. The next hardest part will be staying quit. You require sleep to live, the sleeping will eventually sort itself out.
Troof. We were very responsible drinkgurls until COVID. I drank a bit more than they did before, but once we had nothing to do, we just drank a bunch and had fun every day.
Now we have things to do, and bellies we don’t want. So we’re adamant on this. We have other stuff we can do to get weird occasionally, so we can always do that if we wanna get weird during the day. I did some THC yesterday for the first time in like a year (it gave me super anxiety/panic because I was hung over all the time) and it was a LOVELY experience. I think I’ll be having some toots of live rosin after work now instead of 14 drinks.
I get it, I enjoy the herb, too, but it’s generally not a good idea to replace one bad habit with another.
You’re trying substitution therapy, but you’re doing it wrong. You might want to try replacing drinking with working out or running. It will fill your drinking time with a positive activity. My Dad quit smoking by playing with Rubik’s Cube when he got a craving. I’ve lost 85 pounds by keeping a guitar next to my chair, and picking it up and playing, instead of eating out of boredom. Knitting, needlepoint, woodworking, painting/drawing, etc., nearly any hobby can help.
Or, y’know, fire it up. Weed has its it’s issues, but it’s definitely not as dangerous as liquor.
When I was quiting caffeine one of the things I did was I kept a bottle of water right next to my coffee cup, so every time I felt the urge to reach for the coffee I’d move my hand slightly and grab the water instead. It worked really well for reducing my coffee consumption before I quit entirely
I was drinking heavy but lack of funds meant lack of funs.
Something something recession indicator
Alcohol doesn’t give me any fun benefits. Like, it doesn’t remove my inihibitions and doesn’t feel good. It just makes me feel nauseus and numb and it doesn’t even taste good.
Weed is like that for me, I can’t find the high at all, just feel stupid and tired and annoyed. It is so unpleasant. Tried a few times over the years and nope.
Beers cost $15 per pint!
Damn, only $3.50 at my local bar. $5 or so for a nicer one. And if I’m feeling cheap, Applebees has $5 LITs.
I knew it must’ve been bad given the local place that did 99¢ margaritas on Tuesdays nowjust 5 years later does $3.99 margaritas on Tuesdays
I honestly can’t help but thinking that the different media diet nowadays is also a driver of reduced alcohol consumption. If you watch traditional TV and movies, alcohol and drinking are absolutely everywhere and invariably normalized as part of everyday life. Kid has problem in school? Mom drinks a glass of wine. Getting promoted at work, everyone a round of scotch. Vacation doesn’t count if there are no umbrella drinks.
You barely see any alcohol at all on TikTok, and I assume it’s either forbidden or demonetized on all major platforms. Out of sight, I guess, out of mind.
I hate that it’s because of visa/mastercard but alcohol is forbidden in porn too.
That’s more to do with consent issues on set. At least, it is for studios that run things correctly.
You can find videos out there with fake alcohol, though.
That’s true too but I’ve had content flagged just from a red solo cup being on-screen in the background. Shit’s getting rediculous.
Not just health hazards, but legal hazards, too. Get a DUI, and you instantly becomes a pariah to everyone around you, including work, who may fire you. Then there are the costs, fines, possible prison, increased insurance, etc.
Going out and partying it up in a city that requires cars, is too much of a risk, and getting drunk at home is kind of pathetic.
Also, legal/ semi-legal weed.
With the increase loneliness crisis 📈 and the decrease drinking at the local pub 📉
I think this headline is not a positive
Society needs to decouple socializing from drinking that’s all
I quit.
Work stress, financial stress, time stress, family stress… I didn’t used to drink much, but it sneaks up on you when it helps quiet the noise in your head about all the stresses. You find yourself looking forward to drinking even if technically you’re not an alcoholic.
Yeah, you know intellectually what the dangers are, but so much social life revolves around alcohol and media really doesn’t help by pushing the idea. Out and drinking, bbq at home and drinking, watching sports and drinking…etc.
I quit for a bit, tried to ease into light social drinking and hated looking over my shoulder all the time to see if an extra drink or three was going to sneak up on me. Hated that. Stopped being fun.
I just hope we don’t slide into another Prohibition, honestly. Between people who don’t drink because health, and the social conservatives who want a fundamentalist theocracy, we are squeezed.
For me, it’s money - I finally have a good job AND a husband with a good job, and over time have accumulated a collection of booze to use for cocktails. And if we want to go out for a drink it won’t bankrupt us. I practice moderation, one drink 3-4 times a week but never more than one, plus two months off each year, and really like that much drinking, feel good physically.
I recently saw a very good YouTube video on that topic and how the original studies often failed to account for variables.
Slight tangent, but it’s weird how 2 drinks per day is a low limit. If you drink even 1 drink per day regularly that’s probably an addiction imo
It is a lot easier to do good statistics now than ever before. It’s really important to make sure studies use good methodology.
I’m personally opposed to a lot of meta studies because older studies tend to bin ages and covariates and there is zero logic or evidence to that except it making things seem simpler on paper.
Modern regression spline techniques and knowing to use f tests correctly actually give us much much more reliable models that better use observed data.
As Frank Harrel calls it, dichotomania (arbitrarily binning real values) is a scourge on science.
I would like to know if, health wise, it’s the same to drink 2 drinks per day or four every second day (excluding the obvious short term effects)
4 every second day has much better effects on my mental health.
I’m a social drinker, so I’m more likely to drink “some” drinks once a week than a little every day. The latter is really not appealing!
Agreed. Also mathematically that’s “a couple of beers:”
Thanks for the chuckle! Considering the health advise is specifically about two beers, saying a couple in context seemed confusing. Thus the quotation marks.
A lot of these studies will ask “In the last X weeks how many drinks have you had” then they normalize that, so I doubt there’s much distinction in the studies.
I guess what I’m saying is the studies typically won’t make a distinction on that.
Which feels like it leaves a lot out of the picture to me.
On an average week, where I don’t go to a party, I’m not on vacation, etc. I’m probably averaging out to less than 2 drinks a week.
When I try to factor in those parties and such, even with some pretty generous estimates, I barely average out to 1 drink a day.
Of course when I do have those parties and such, I probably go above that average for that particular day/week.
And I feel like there could be some pretty significant differences between someone who is actually having a beer or two or three almost every day, and someone like me who drinks little or no alcohol for most of the year, but does get a bit drunk at a party a handful of times a year.
Both might be pretty similar in terms of total average alcohol consumption, but the pattern is obviously pretty different.
And I’m not saying that one or the other is necessarily any more or less harmful, but you never really see the data broken down like that and if they’re not looking into it with that sort of detail, I feel like that’s leaving themselves open to really miss something important.
If we’re being literal, yeah it’s a bit scary that they need one drink every day.
If we’re talking averages across time, 1 drink a day is equivalent to kicking back a 12 pack every other weekend (plus two more drinks). Just sounds like a good time.
To be clear I’ve had maybe one beer in the last year, and it was handed to me. I don’t really have strong personal opinions about drinking in either direction.
You clearly have no history of addiction of you think a single drink a day is addiction.
The definition of addiction is about a persistent and intense urge. The amount necessary to quench that urge is irrelevant.
It’s not the same level of addiction as someone who has a handle a day but a small addiction is still an addiction by definition.
Some addictions are just psychological e.g. weed, but things like coffee, nicotine, and alcohol also have physical effects upon quitting.
That’s a non-scientific definition for a medical condition.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/addiction
Dsm5: Taking the substance in larger amounts or for longer than you’re meant to
Wanting to cut down or stop using the substance but not managing to
Spending a lot of time getting, using, or recovering from use of the substance
Cravings and urges to use the substance
Not managing to do what you should at work, home, or school because of substance use
Continuing to use, even when it causes problems in relationships
Giving up important social, occupational, or recreational activities because of substance use
Using substances again and again, even when it puts you in danger
Continuing to use, even when you know you have a physical or psychological problem that could have been caused or made worse by the substance
Needing more of the substance to get the effect you want (tolerance)
Development of withdrawal symptoms, which can be relieved by taking more of the substance
Note that the dsm5 categorizations only needs a couple of those for it to count as a mild substance use disorder. A daily habit you can’t stop, cravings/urges, and a history of familial problems made worse by it, and withdrawal symptoms are more than enough to count without regard to the amount. I’m addicted to caffeine as are most adults I know. Hell some people can fit this definition with junk food and that counts and is valid.
That’s not how addiction works. Firstly, addiction is not a defined term in the medical or psychological fields so the conversation is kind of pointless. Secondly, amount has nothing to do with it. Lots of people have a “nightcap to help them sleep” every night. That is dependence and problematic or colloquially, addiction even if it’s only one drink.
That is in fact how addiction works. If you don’t trigger any effects then you do not develop the addictive response. Quantity is absolutely a factor to some degree and a single drink for most adults will not trigger any euphoric effects.
If you don’t trigger any effects
OK and what about for the people who one drink does trigger an effect?
a single drink for most adults
Again, what about for the people who it does? You’re being quite absolute here. What I’m saying is you cannot use amount alone to determine whether or not it’s problematic. You said it yourself, it’s a factor. You originally used it as a determinant.
So no, that is not in fact how addiction works. I’ve spent the last 10 years studying psychology and I’m a PhD student in the field now.
I have a drink after work most days and have done so for years. It helps me unwind and gets my stress level down to where I can actually relax in the hour or two of free time I have before bed, but I wouldn’t say I’m addicted. If I have places to be or things to do or just don’t drink one or more days it’s not like I’m craving it.
This is me. Maybe 3 days a week, I’ll enjoy a drink (sometimes two if I’m pouring, say, a lighter gin & tonic) before bed. I can stop drinking at any time. And I regularly do, during one of my diet cycles or after getting back from vacation when I wanna take a break from alcohol.
Earlier this year, the outgoing U.S. surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, recommended a label on bottles of beer, wine and liquor that would clearly outline the link between alcohol consumption and cancer.
“Alcohol is a well-established, preventable cause of cancer responsible for about 100,000 cases of cancer and 20,000 cancer deaths annually in the United States — greater than the 13,500 alcohol-associated traffic crash fatalities per year in the U.S. — yet the majority of Americans are unaware of this risk,” Murthy said in a statement in January.
The federal government’s current dietary guidelines recommend Americans not drink or, if they do consume alcohol, men should limit themselves to two drinks a day or fewer while women should stick to one or fewer.
