More than 6 drinks a week leads to higher health risks, new report suggests — especially for women

Consuming more than six drinks a week increases the risk of a range of health problems, including cancer, according to new proposed guidelines published Monday.

Any level of alcohol consumption had a net negative impact on health for nearly every disease reviewed by the Canadian Center for Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA), a national advisory organization, according to their new report. This includes heart disease, many types of cancer, and cirrhosis of the liver.

Health risks become “increasingly high” when someone has six or more drinks per week. Research shows that for women who drink three or more drinks a week, the risk of health problems increases sharply compared to men.

said Catherine Paradis, Senior Research and Policy Analyst at CCSA and Co-Chair of Canada’s Guidelines on Drinking Low-Risk Alcohol.

Experts say it’s no secret that alcohol isn’t good for you. It has been classified as a group 1 carcinogen (a human carcinogen) for decades by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.

But not everyone realizes that alcohol use is linked to many health risks, including at least seven types of cancer, Paradis said.

This is why the guidelines – which the public can think of – talk about the health risks and how that increases with the number of drinks.

Dr. Fouad Iqbal, a radiation oncologist at Durham Regional Cancer Center in Oshawa, Ontario, who was not involved in the report, said he strongly supports his overarching message.

“These updated, evidence-based guidelines will save lives,” Iqbal said in an email interview after the report was released. “I commend the work of the team that put all of this together.”

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“People in Canada have a right to know.”

But experts say the risks associated with alcohol consumption should be made more clear beyond these recommendations. Iqbal and those who have worked on the CCSA guidelines want to see the cancer warnings and the number of standard drinks included in alcohol bottles or cans.

“Whether or not consumers choose to use this information is up to them. But there is a lot of evidence that says if you say front and center, ‘This is bad for your health and you can get cancer because of this,’ it will change the way they decide how much they drink,” he said. Turnout.

Paradis says that since the last drinking guidelines were issued in 2011, the evidence for health problems and alcohol consumption has changed a lot. That’s why four committees – including three scientific committees – have been formed to review the evidence to update the guidelines.

Participants looked at several dozen studies on alcohol and health issues as part of the new guidelines. Several data sources – including death and disability data from 2017 to 2019 from Statistics Canada – were used to form the risk calculations. They also used mathematical modeling, according to the report.

Although all levels of alcohol consumption come with some risks, their report shows a range of risks depending on how many glasses of wine or bottles of beer a healthy person has each week.

They found that the health risks were minimal or low with two or fewer glasses of wine per week. If the number of drinks rises to between three and six standard drinks per week, the risks of health problems are moderate.

But drinking more than six glasses of wine or cider a week makes the risk of health problems “increasingly high”.

For example, men who consume about five grams of alcohol per day on average have an approximately 16% increased risk of developing cirrhosis of the liver. And the risk of ballooning increases to more than 306 percent if a man drinks 50 grams of alcohol a day, according to the report.

“We know this is going to be surprising and some people might be upset about it,” Paradis said. “But we didn’t start this project to win a popularity contest. We are scientists.”

“Our whole perspective during this project is that people in Canada have a right to know.”

Drinking alcohol increases the risk of breast cancer

The new findings differ significantly from the 2011 guidelines established by the CCSA. These suggested no more than 10 standard drinks a week for women and 15 standard drinks a week for men.

Paradis says one reason for the high recommendations in 2011 was the belief that alcohol has some good cardiovascular health benefits. But now, new research shows that this may no longer be the case, she said.

“In fact, in our study, we found that alcohol was neither good nor bad at low levels to protect against certain cardiovascular diseases. At higher levels, it has a really detrimental effect,” she said.

Alcohol use in Canada causes nearly 7,000 cancer deaths each year in Canada, according to the report.

Specifically for women, having three or more drinks per week increases the risk of health problems compared to men, according to the report’s data. They include several causes, including differences in metabolism.

Paradis said the risk of breast cancer increased with increased alcohol 1 out of every 35 women dies due to breast cancer in Canada.

“If you take six cups a week, you increase 10 percent of your chances of being that woman,” she said, adding that the risk starts at one or two regular drinks a week.

Alison Garber, a communications business owner in Halifax and advocate for sobriety, said she wished she had known more about increased cancer risk sooner. Her mother and grandmother had breast cancer, and she lost her mother to cancer.

“I think this report will save a lot of lives,” she said, adding that it was good to see an increased focus on education.

“I think it’s an individual choice whether or not people drink alcohol, but I think it’s fundamentally important that it be an informed choice.”

Name the health risks

Some Canadians have reported an increase in binge drinking over the past few years.

a Statistics Canada survey Released in 2021 it shows that many Canadians aren’t pouring a single glass just for themselves. One in five respondents to the survey said they had consumed five or more drinks – the equivalent of a bottle of wine – on the days they reported drinking alcohol in the previous month.

The agency says this is higher than it was before COVID-19 hit.

The CCSA report began before the pandemic, but Paradis says adults need to know more about the alcohol they buy and how it can affect their health.

Paradis and other report authors, along with Iqbal, say bottles of wine and other alcoholic beverages should clearly identify health warnings and nutritional information. She adds that people need to be able to count their drinks to know how much alcohol they’re consuming, but they can’t do that if it isn’t explicitly stated on the label.

“The main message we want to put into this is that alcohol in general is not good for your health, and that when it comes to alcohol, having less alcohol is better,” Paradis said.

The guidelines are likely to become official guidelines sometime this fall.