Alcohol Awareness Week 2011 - What Alcohol Can Do To Your He

[TrueBlueTerrier]

LTB 983/11 - Alcohol Awareness Week 2011 - What Alcohol Can Do To Your Health


Ref P6/11
Date: 21 November 2011





To: All Branches



Dear Colleagues



Alcohol Awareness Week 2011 - What Alcohol Can Do To Your Health

The Health Safety & Environment Department have teamed up with leading UK Charity "Alcohol Concern" during 2011 Alcohol Awareness Week to raise awareness with the CWU and call upon Branches and Health and Safety Reps to run local Awareness Campaigns with the material provided herein.

Over ten million adults in England alone are drinking above the recommended daily limits, and alcohol related hospital admissions topped the one million mark for the first time in 2009/10. According to government figures, around a third of men and a fifth of women are now drinking at levels which are harmful to their health. This doesn't mean getting drunk once a week, just regularly drinking more than what's regarded as low risk.

Alcohol can cause a wide range of physical damage and can cause psychological harm. Regular over-drinking can significantly increase the risk of alcohol-related harm - and the more you drink the greater the risk. In terms of risk, people who drink alcohol are often broken down into three categories (lower risk, increasing risk and higher risk drinkers). The health risks of excess alcohol include: Weight problems, Stomach upsets, Headaches, Anxiety, stress, depression, poor concentration, difficulty in sleeping and raised blood pressure. More serious effects include: Accidents and injuries, Liver disease, Cancers, Strokes, memory loss, sexual difficulties.

To mark Alcohol Awareness Week, here's a quick run down of some of the ways alcohol can affect our health.

High blood pressure, heart disease, stroke
The so-called French Paradox, where the French appear to have a lower risk of heart disease despite being a nation of wine drinkers is often used as an excuse by wine drinking Brits. Although research has found that regularly drinking small amounts of alcohol may reduce the risk of a heart disease in men over 40 and post menopausal women, for most people alcohol increases the risk of high blood pressure, and in turn, heart attack and stroke, two of the UK's biggest killers. According to the Department of Health, men who regularly drink more than eight units of alcohol a day are four times more likely to develop high blood pressure. Women who drink six units a day double their risk of high blood pressure.

Cancer
According to a recent study in the British Medical Journal, alcohol causes around 13,000 deaths from cancer every year in the UK. Alcohol is second only to smoking as a risk factor for mouth, throat and neck cancers. As alcohol helps the mouth to absorb smoke, people who smoke and drink alcohol to excess are 30 times more likely to develop mouth cancer. Drinking too much alcohol also increases the risk of colon and liver cancer, and breast cancer in women. Liver cirrhosis, which can be caused by regularly drinking too much, increases the risk of liver cancer.

Liver disease
Regularly drinking over the limit can cause a build up of fatty deposits in the liver, known as fatty liver disease. At this stage, cutting back or stopping drinking altogether can save this vital organ. But continuing to drink at this level can lead to the liver to becoming inflamed, causing hepatitis, and in some cases, even liver failure and death. Through time, a build up of scar tissue in the liver or fibrosis may result and finally, liver cirrhosis, which is irreversible.

Pancreatitis
Gallstones and heavy drinking are the two most common causes of acute pancreatitis, or inflammation of the pancreas. Around a quarter of cases are thought to be caused by regularly drinking too much. Some people appear to be more susceptible to the condition which can also be extremely painful. Heavy drinking is the most common cause of chronic pancreatitis, where long term inflammation causes permanent damage.

Alcohol poisoning
In general, the human body can only metabolise one unit of alcohol per hour. So drinking a large amount of alcohol in a short time can cause a rapid rise in the blood alcohol concentration. This may continue even when drinking has stopped, as the alcohol in your stomach continues to be absorbed into the bloodstream. Your blood alcohol concentration can rise to levels which can kill, known as alcohol poisoning. This can also happen when you have stopped drinking, fallen asleep or passed out.

Weight gain
Gram for gram, alcohol is second only to fat as a source of calories. Each UK unit of alcohol contains eight grams of alcohol and seven calories. They are also known as "empty calories," because they are of no nutritional benefit whatsoever. Put into perspective, a medium (175ml) glass of average strength red wine contains around 120 calories; a pint of lager (5%) around 240 calories, and a gin and tonic around 120 calories, so it's easy to see how alcohol contributes to weight gain. Studies have shown that we also tend to eat more unhealthy foods - crisps, salted nuts, greasy snacks - as we drink, adding even more calories. When you take into account that around six out of ten people in the UK are now classified as overweight, and one in four as obese - with all the health problems that go with it - then cutting back on alcohol is one of the easiest ways to improve your health.

Sleep problems
If you think alcohol helps you sleep, you're not alone. A government survey found that 58 per cent of Brits are unaware that alcohol can disrupt sleep. Although it's true that alcohol will help you fall asleep faster, it interferes with the normal sleep cycle, causing you to wake up during the night and feel unrefreshed in the morning. Alcohol is also a diuretic, and stimulates the body to excrete fluid, making it more likely you will need to go to the loo during the night.

Factsheet: "The impact of alcohol on health"
Alcohol misuse is a major cause of illness, injury and death. The World Health Organisation has identified alcohol as the third largest risk factor to health in developed countries. The number of alcohol-related deaths in the United Kingdom has consistently increased since the early 1990s, and alcohol-related illness or injury accounts for over 945,000 hospital admissions per year. The attached factsheet entitled "The impact of alcohol on health" looks in detail at a number of alcohol-related health effects.


Poster: "What's in your drink?"



To help people think about their level of drinking, Alcohol Concern's new poster on drink strength entitled "What's in your drink?" is attached and available for Branches and Reps to print along with the Factsheet to circulate and Display.



Further Information and Help



Alcohol Concern,
64 Leman Street, London, E1 8EU
Telephone: 020 7264 0510
Website: http://www.alcoholconcern.org.uk/home" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
National Drink Helpline - "Drinkline"



If you are concerned about your own drinking or worried about a family member, friend or work colleague, we hope you will find the information in this LTB and the attachments useful, but if you need help or advice, you should call the Alcohol Concern National Drink Helpline - "Drinkline" - on 0800 917 8282.


Yours Sincerely


Dave Joyce
National Health, Safety & Environment Officer

[Lounge Lizard]

Moderate drinkers tend to have better health and live longer than those who are either abstainers or heavy drinkers. In addition to having fewer heart attacks and strokes, moderate consumers of alcoholic beverages (beer, wine and distilled spirits or liquor) are generally less likely to suffer strokes, diabetes, arthritis, enlarged prostate, dementia (including Alzheimer's disease), and several major cancers.


Alcohol consumed in moderation is thought to help reduce the risk of heart disease. Indeed, alcohol consumption in conjunction with high intakes of fruit and vegetables may well explain the so-called 'French paradox'. The French diet is considered to be very high in fat, especially saturated fat, yet the death rate from coronary heart disease (CHD) remains relatively low.
A research study published in 1992 suggested that the low death rates from CHD could be due to the relatively high consumption of wine in France. A similar pattern of diet and alcohol consumption has also been found in other south European countries where heart disease rates are also lower compared with other parts of the world.
These observations prompted a long series of research studies analysing the relationship between wine and CHD.
It's still not entirely clear how alcohol reduces your risk of CHD, but it's now known a large proportion of the risk reduction is due to moderate alcohol intake raising 'good' cholesterol concentrations in the blood, so reducing the risk of blood clots.
Red wine, in particular, also contains flavonoids that act as antioxidants, which help to reduce the build up of atherosclerosis (when fat builds up on the inner walls of arteries). Red wine seems to help maintain the flexibility of the blood vessel walls.

[DGP1]

I'll drink to that

[Postman Plodd]

Richard Smith who was on the working group that came up with the safe drinking limits in the 80s shot himself in the foot a few years back by actually admitting that they 'plucked a number from the air'. He went on to admit that they actually halved the original amount they decided on as the great unwashed would no dount drink twice what they were informed was a safe amount. A one size fits all approach to alcohol consumption does not work, neither does adopting a minimum pricing strategy when it comes to problem drinkers. F*ck the neo-pros and media stooges, let me drink as little or as much as i want at any given time in peace. I pay enough for the privilege as it is.

[Straight4ward]

Everything in moderation.

(For those of you that know me, yes I did just write that
but I was having a "responsible" moment. )

[DGP1]

Everything in moderation.

(For those of you that know me, yes I did just write that
but I was having a "responsible" moment. )

but I thought your Saturdays only came in 'moderation'

[slave]

I drink too much, probably as a result of the job I do.

[Postman Plodd]

are you sure you don't drink just enough?

[Lounge Lizard]

12 October 2011

" Is the alcohol message all wrong?

Many people think heavy drinking causes promiscuity, violence and anti-social behaviour. That's not necessarily true, argues Kate Fox.

I am a social anthropologist, but what I do is not the traditional intrepid sort of anthropology where you go and study strange tribes in places with mud huts and monsoons and malaria.

I really don't see why anthropologists feel they have to travel to unpronounceable corners of the world in order to study strange tribal cultures with bizarre beliefs and mysterious customs, when in fact the weirdest and most puzzling tribe of all is right here on our doorstep. I am of course talking about my own native culture - the British.

And if you want examples of bizarre beliefs and weird customs, you need look no further than our attitude to drinking and our drinking habits. Pick up any newspaper and you will read that we are a nation of loutish binge-drinkers - that we drink too much, too young, too fast - and that it makes us violent, promiscuous, anti-social and generally obnoxious.

Clearly, we Brits do have a bit of a problem with alcohol, but why?

The problem is that we Brits believe that alcohol has magical powers - that it causes us to shed our inhibitions and become aggressive, promiscuous, disorderly and even violent.

But we are wrong.

In high doses, alcohol impairs our reaction times, muscle control, co-ordination, short-term memory, perceptual field, cognitive abilities and ability to speak clearly. But it does not cause us selectively to break specific social rules. It does not cause us to say, "Oi, what you lookin' at?" and start punching each other. Nor does it cause us to say, "Hey babe, fancy a shag?" and start groping each other.

The effects of alcohol on behaviour are determined by cultural rules and norms, not by the chemical actions of ethanol.

There is enormous cross-cultural variation in the way people behave when they drink alcohol. There are some societies (such as the UK, the US, Australia and parts of Scandinavia) that anthropologists call "ambivalent" drinking-cultures, where drinking is associated with disinhibition, aggression, promiscuity, violence and anti-social behaviour.

There are other societies (such as Latin and Mediterranean cultures in particular, but in fact the vast majority of cultures), where drinking is not associated with these undesirable behaviours - cultures where alcohol is just a morally neutral, normal, integral part of ordinary, everyday life - about on a par with, say, coffee or tea. These are known as "integrated" drinking cultures.

This variation cannot be attributed to different levels of consumption - most integrated drinking cultures have significantly higher per-capita alcohol consumption than the ambivalent drinking cultures.

Instead the variation is clearly related to different cultural beliefs about alcohol, different expectations about the effects of alcohol, and different social rules about drunken comportment.

In the UK, heavy drinking is associated with a range of stereotypes This basic fact has been proved time and again, not just in qualitative cross-cultural research, but also in carefully controlled scientific experiments - double-blind, placebos and all. To put it very simply, the experiments show that when people think they are drinking alcohol, they behave according to their cultural beliefs about the behavioural effects of alcohol.

The British and other ambivalent drinking cultures believe that alcohol is a disinhibitor, and specifically that it makes people amorous or aggressive, so when in these experiments we are given what we think are alcoholic drinks - but are in fact non-alcoholic "placebos" - we shed our inhibitions.

We become more outspoken, more physically demonstrative, more flirtatious, and, given enough provocation, some (young males in particular) become aggressive. Quite specifically, those who most strongly believe that alcohol causes aggression are the most likely to become aggressive when they think that they have consumed alcohol.

Our beliefs about the effects of alcohol act as self-fulfilling prophecies - if you firmly believe and expect that booze will make you aggressive, then it will do exactly that. In fact, you will be able to get roaring drunk on a non-alcoholic placebo.

And our erroneous beliefs provide the perfect excuse for anti-social behaviour. If alcohol "causes" bad behaviour, then you are not responsible for your bad behaviour. You can blame the booze - "it was the drink talking", "I was not myself" and so on.

But it is possible to change our drinking culture. Cultural shifts happen all the time, and there is extensive evidence (again from carefully controlled experiments, conducted in natural settings such as bars and nightclubs) to show that it doesn't take much to effect dramatic changes in how people behave when they drink.

Alcohol education will have achieved its ultimate goal not when young people in this country are afraid of alcohol and avoid it because it is toxic and dangerous, but when they are frankly just a little bit bored by it”
End Quote These experiments show that even when people are very drunk, if they are given an incentive (either financial reward or even just social approval) they are perfectly capable of remaining in complete control of their behaviour - of behaving as though they were totally sober.

To achieve these changes, we need a complete and radical re-think of the aims and messages of all alcohol-education campaigns. So far, these efforts have perpetuated or even exacerbated the problem, because almost all of them simply reinforce our beliefs about the magical disinhibiting powers of alcohol.

The drinkaware website, for example, warns young people that a mere three pints of beer (ie a perfectly normal evening out) "can lead to anti-social, aggressive and violent behaviour", that "you might start saying things you don't mean and behaving out of character", that alcohol is implicated in a high percentage of sexual offences and street crimes, and that the morning after "you may wonder what you did the night before".

I would like to see a complete change of focus, with all alcohol-education and awareness campaigns designed specifically to challenge these beliefs - to get across the message that a) alcohol does not cause disinhibition (aggressive, sexual or otherwise) and that b) even when you are drunk, you are in control of and have total responsibility for your actions and behaviour.

Alcohol education will have achieved its ultimate goal not when young people in this country are afraid of alcohol and avoid it because it is toxic and dangerous, but when they are frankly just a little bit bored by it, when they don't need to be told not to binge-drink vodka shots, any more than they now need to be told not to swig down 15 double espressos in quick succession.

Even the silliest teenagers would not dream of doing that. And not because they have been educated about the dangers of a caffeine overdose - although there undoubtedly are such dangers - but because it would just be daft, what would be the point?

What we should be aiming for is a culture where you don't need alcohol-education programmes, any more than we now need coffee or tea education programmes.

If I were given total power, I could very easily engineer a nation in which coffee would become a huge social problem - a nation in which young people would binge-drink coffee every Friday and Saturday night and then rampage around town centres being anti-social, getting into fights and having unprotected sex in random one-night stands.

There are cultures where drinking is not associated with violence I would restrict access to coffee, thus immediately giving it highly desirable forbidden-fruit status. Then I would issue lots of dire warnings about the dangerously disinhibiting effects of coffee.

I would make sure everyone knew that even a mere three cups (six "units") of coffee "can lead to anti-social, aggressive and violent behaviour", and sexual promiscuity, thus instantly giving young people a powerful motive to binge-drink double espressos, and a perfect excuse to behave very badly after doing so.

I could legitimately base many of my scary coffee-awareness warnings on the known effects of caffeine, and I could easily make these sound like a recipe for disaster, or at least for disinhibition and public disorder.

It would not take long for my dire warnings to create the beliefs and expectations that would make them self-fulfilling prophecies. This may sound like a science fiction story, but it is precisely what our misguided alcohol-education programmes have done.

Over the past few decades the government, the drinks industry and schools have done exactly the opposite of what they should do to tackle our dysfunctional drinking. I remain perhaps stupidly optimistic that eventually they will find the courage to turn things around and start heading in the right direction. "

This is an edited version of Kate Fox's Four Thought broadcast.

Kate Fox is a social anthropologist and director of the Social Issues Research Centre (SIRC)
SIRC has conducted research for companies in the alcohol industry, as well as the government and others
Her episode of Four Thought is on BBC Radio 4 on 12 October 2011 at 20:45 BST

[BarnsleyLackey]

Too busy numbing the pain to worry about calories.