Alcohol Consumption Major Cause Of Global Deaths, Health Issues, Study Reveals

A new global study assessing health-related risks associated with the consumption of alcohol has concluded no level of drinking is safe for health, not even a little.

The research, conducted as part of the annual Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study, looked at the level of alcohol consumed by people (as individuals and groups) in different parts of the world as well as the state of their health.

As alcohol consumption patterns vary according to a range of factors, including sex and country, the international team of scientists and academics involved in the work collected health and alcohol consumption-related data for some 28 million individuals using hundreds of sources worldwide.

"With the largest collected evidence base to date, our study makes the relationship between health and alcohol clear — drinking causes substantial health loss, in myriad ways, all over the world," lead author Max Griswold from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation said in a statement.

In the research, Griswold and team found nearly 2.5 billion people across the globe consume alcohol, with the number of male consumers being far more than women. However, the real problem came up when the health-related figures were analyzed. Essentially, in the year 2016 itself, nearly 3 million people died across the globe due to alcohol consumption.

Of these, more than 12 percent of the individuals were men aged between 15 and 49, while 4 percent were women of the same age group. In the most of these cases, the toxic, mind-altering effect of alcohol either made an already existing disease worse or became the cause of a road-accident or self-harm.

Most of the countries with the highest death rates attributable to alcohol consumption among 15 to 49-year-olds were in Eastern European or Central Asian regions. The countries with the lowest rates were in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, in those aged above 50, alcohol consumption appeared to have bolstered the effect of some kind of cancer, which led to the death of nearly 28 percent women and 19 percent men.

"The health risks associated with alcohol are massive," Emmanuela Gakidou, the senior author of the study, added in the statement. "Our findings are consistent with other recent research, which found clear and convincing correlations between drinking and premature death, cancer, and cardiovascular problems. Zero alcohol consumption minimizes the overall risk of health loss."

The researchers suggested potential health risks after considering 10 grams of alcohol as a standard drink. They didn’t distinguish between different types of drinks or the amount of alcohol they carry.

While previous studies have highlighted some potential health benefits of consuming alcohol, such as for those suffering from diabetes, this work changes reveals a much different picture.

"There is a compelling and urgent need to overhaul policies to encourage either lowering people's levels of alcohol consumption or abstaining entirely," Gakidou concluded. "The myth that one or two drinks a day are good for you is just that - a myth. This study shatters that myth."

The research titled, "Alcohol use and burden for 195 countries and territories, 1990–2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016," was published Aug. 23 in the journal Lancet.