When trying to moderate alcohol intake over the course of an evening or a week, it helps to know how much alcohol is in each drink you consume. Loose use of the terms “moderate” and “a drink” has fueled some of the ongoing debate about alcohol’s impact on health. Changes over the past 25 years in the definitions of many psychiatric disorders have resulted in the continual need to develop new instruments to assess evolving criteria. Likewise, criteria in the ninth revision of the International Classification of Diseases (World Health Organization WHO 1977) were modified substantially in the 10th revision (WHO 1992). Showing your patients a standard drink chart (printable here PDF – 184 KB) will help inform them about drink equivalents and may help your patients to estimate their consumption more accurately. Excessive alcohol use can harm people who drink and those around them.
When to avoid alcohol
Since 1965 researchers at the Alcohol Research Group in Berkeley, California, have conducted, at approximately 5-year intervals, nine national surveys as well as numerous community studies. 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). When alcohol is consumed, it passes from the stomach and intestines into the bloodstream, where it distributes itself evenly throughout all the water in the body’s tissues and fluids. Drinking alcohol on an empty stomach increases the rate of absorption, resulting in higher blood alcohol level, compared to drinking on a full stomach. 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.
If you’ve followed health news lately, you may have noticed scientists shifting their stance on alcohol. Furthermore, although alcohol research in general is becoming increasingly sophisticated, the measurement of alcohol consumption remains imprecise. In alcohol epidemiology, differences abound in definitions, scientific assumptions (e.g., regarding the alcohol content of a drink), and methods for calculating drinking levels.
Risks of heavy alcohol use
According to this measure, a 200-proof solution contains 100 percent alcohol by volume; an 80-proof beverage contains 40 percent alcohol by volume (Doernberg and Stinson 1985). More detailed and specific questions also elicit higher estimates of alcohol consumption. For example, separate QF questions for different periods within a given timeframe (e.g., each month within the past year) produce higher estimates than does one global QF question (e.g., consumption during the entire year). Similarly, beverage-specific questions or questions asking for consumption in different contexts (e.g., in bars, at home, or at parties and celebrations) produce higher estimates than do global questions asking about total alcohol consumption. Another technique for assessing alcohol consumption is the timeline followback (TLFB) method (Sobell and Sobell 1995).
- But good evidence shows that drinking high amounts of alcohol are clearly linked to health problems.
- It directly influences the stomach, brain, heart, gallbladder, and liver.
- Alcohol surveys also vary in assessment mode—that is, in the way in which the survey is conducted (e.g., as a personal interview, self-administered questionnaire, or telephone interview) (Rehm 1998).
How Much Alcohol Is Safe to Drink? ‘Not Much’ May Be the Answer
Yet a growing body of newer research shows that those claims may be a mirage. It’s possible that the fast-acting enzyme breaks down alcohol before it can have a beneficial effect on HDL and clotting factors. Interestingly, these differences in the ADH1C gene do not influence the risk of heart disease among people who don’t drink alcohol. eco sober house This adds strong indirect evidence that alcohol itself reduces heart disease risk. 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.
If your pattern of drinking results in repeated significant distress and problems functioning in your daily life, you likely have alcohol use disorder. However, even a mild disorder can escalate and lead to serious problems, so early treatment is important. Alcohol use disorder is a pattern of alcohol use that involves problems controlling your drinking, being preoccupied with alcohol or continuing to use alcohol even when it causes problems. This disorder also involves having to drink more to get the same effect or having withdrawal symptoms when you rapidly decrease or stop drinking. Alcohol use disorder includes a level of drinking that’s sometimes called alcoholism. Drinking alcohol in excess can negatively impact your health, including almost every part of your body.
Cited by other articles
Alcohol blocks the absorption of folate and inactivates folate in the blood and tissues. It’s possible that this interaction may be how alcohol consumption increases the risk of breast, colon, and other cancers. Extreme binge drinking, also known as high-intensity drinking, refers to drinking at levels far beyond the binge threshold, resulting in high peak blood alcohol concentrations. The reported alcohol consumption is likely to be higher if the respondent perceives the assessment to be less stigmatizing.
