• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Alcohol, how much is too much?

kittynh

Penultimate Amazing
K
Joined
Dec 18, 2002
Messages
22,634
When I was last in Europe there was a show on television about how little alcohol people, especially women, could safely consume.

I always thought if you weren't an alcoholic, and didn't drive drunk, it didn't matter how much you drank. Perhaps a worry about caloric content, but a few beers everynight wasn't going to hurt you.

The show (BBC) said that for a woman, 4 glasses of wine a week, or beers was the LIMIT. Per week.

A good buzz on the weekends was dead OUT.

Men got a little more leeway, but still, it seemed an impossibly small amount was "safe". The show was looking at long term damage to liver function.

I imagine people have been drinking a few beers a night for a long time, yet I see no public health crisis.

So, how much is too much really? As a person that has perhaps 3 beers a month I'm not worried, but I have a lot of friends that certainly have a glass or two every evening, and I think they would laugh if I pointed out that there might be a health issue.
 
My wild guess would be that it's a spectrum of risk. What you saw was probably talking about the minimum where damage occurs in some people.

There's also the issue of how livers can heal quite well though a long period of "treating them very nicely" as long as the damage wasn't pushed too far initially.
 
Your problem is your use of the term safe. What percentage of risk do you view as acceptable?
 
The limit would be based on the level that causes alcohol poisoning. Which is when there's too much for the liver to handle. When I trained to be a bar tender in TX, there was a state required (and administered) 4 hour class on the laws for selling / serving alcohol. They showed a chart for how many drinks per hour people of different weights could consume before going over the legal limit. The basic teaching was that for just about any weight person, to serve a single person more than four drinks (1/4 ounce shot of liquor per drink or one beer) in an hour, they would be over the legal limit (which was .1 at that time). And it was the bartender's responsibility to not serve them another drink for at least an hour. And then only one per hour thereafter.

Hah ... try finding a bar on a Friday night where the bartender can keep track of who's gotten more than four drinks in an hour.

I have no idea how the body is affected by repeated exposure to alcohol, if the person does allow their liver to keep up (and eats something ... and drinks water).
 
kittynh said:
When I was last in Europe there was a show on television about how little alcohol people, especially women, could safely consume.

I always thought if you weren't an alcoholic, and didn't drive drunk, it didn't matter how much you drank. Perhaps a worry about caloric content, but a few beers everynight wasn't going to hurt you.

The show (BBC) said that for a woman, 4 glasses of wine a week, or beers was the LIMIT. Per week.

A good buzz on the weekends was dead OUT.

Men got a little more leeway, but still, it seemed an impossibly small amount was "safe". The show was looking at long term damage to liver function.

I imagine people have been drinking a few beers a night for a long time, yet I see no public health crisis.

So, how much is too much really? As a person that has perhaps 3 beers a month I'm not worried, but I have a lot of friends that certainly have a glass or two every evening, and I think they would laugh if I pointed out that there might be a health issue.
Click to expand...

What was the agenda of the people who produced this?

If they were talking about long term liver damage, their numbers are way low.

Linda
 
fls said:
What was the agenda of the people who produced this?
Click to expand...

Sounds like the Department of Health. So the agenda would be keeping hospital admissions down.

If they were talking about long term liver damage, their numbers are way low.
Click to expand...

Evidences? I think the NHS has a pretty good idea as what constitutes safe levels.
 
Four glasses of wine per week.

Well, if you add the first twenty or so years of my life (in which I hardly ever drank), it would average out to about that....
 
BrianSI said:
The basic teaching was that for just about any weight person, to serve a single person more than four drinks (1/4 ounce shot of liquor per drink or one beer) in an hour,
Click to expand...

Minor correction... a shot is 1.5 oz (though many bars now make it only 1 oz) and 1.5 oz of the average liquor (80 proof) is equivalent in alcohol to 12 oz of a 5% abv beer.
 
kittynh,

For which type of risk were those limits intended? Risk of heart related diseases? Colon cancer? Ulcers? Liver disease? Altzheimer's before age 50, 60, 70?

That's a big problem with these limits (for me): In the studies, scientists usually concentrate on one group of diseases only (Why? To keep things simple. The more factors, the tougher the statistics)... but when quoted in mainstream media, this limitation is downplayed or removed. What if the risk for Altzheimer's goes up, but the risk of heart problems goes down the same factor?
 
Oh goody...something else that is going to kill me. LJ and I have been splitting about three bottles of wine a week for a long time. Heart healthy reds. I look to France for data...

glenn:(
 
geni said:
Sounds like the Department of Health. So the agenda would be keeping hospital admissions down.
Click to expand...

Do you have a reference for the show? It doesn't sound right, unless the OP got the information incorrect.

Evidences? I think the NHS has a pretty good idea as what constitutes safe levels.
Click to expand...

This is some information from the US.

The NHS site says not more than 2-3 drinks per day for women and 3-4 for men, with a 48 hour respite after a binge. That sounds different from what was presented in the OP.

Linda
 
I remember getting a screening for something-or-other about 10 years ago, and the doctor asked me how many drinks I was having per week. Since I was 22 at the time, the number was probably around 50-60 per week. So, I was diagnosed as being an alcoholic, on top of whatever else I went in for. When I talked to the specialist, he brought it up, and after confirming that I wasn't having alcohol-related problems at work or drinking all 50 beers in one night, we came to the conclusion that the first doctor must have been an incredibly lonely and boring guy when he was in college. :)
 
14 units/week for women, 21 units/week for men. At least one day with no alcohol. That's the advice I recollect from the NHS.

A unit is a small glass of wine. A pint of average British beer is 2 units.

In reply to the opening post - it depends what you mean by a glass. Many "glasses" of wine are more than 2 units of alcohol, so if you have 4 of them a week you could be approaching your limit.
 
kittynh said:
The show (BBC) said that for a woman, 4 glasses of wine a week, or beers was the LIMIT. Per week.

A good buzz on the weekends was dead OUT.

Men got a little more leeway, but still, it seemed an impossibly small amount was "safe". The show was looking at long term damage to liver function.
Click to expand...

Sounds just like our American media.

"If you have more than one Oreo cookie per week, you are going to die a horrible death from congestive heart failure at age 33! OH NOES!!!111one1"
 
There is a J shaped mortality curve associated drinking alcohol. If you drink no alcohol you have the same average mortality as a woman drinking 2 drinks per day or a man drinking 4 drinks per day. Maximum health benefit is from one drink per day for females and 2 drinks per day for males (this is from memory)

eta: this doesn't average out so you can't drink 14 drinks in one night and get the same health benefits. :)
 
Ok...here's something sort of new on drinking and bowel cancer:

http://news.independent.co.uk/health/article2819599.ece

A study published yesterday suggests that a daily pint of beer or large glass of wine increases the risk of bowel cancer by 10 per cent. Two pints or two large glasses of wine increases the risk by 25 per cent, according to the results of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition study, which questioned almost 480,000 people across 10 European countries about their drinking habits.
Click to expand...

This leaves ordinary drinkers in a difficult position. In addition to bowel cancer, a drink a day is known to increase the risk of breast cancer in women by 7 per cent, and some other cancers. Bowel cancer is the second-most common form of the disease in men and women with 35,000 new cases a year and 16,000 deaths. Breast cancer is the commonest cancer in women with 40,000 new cases and 12,000 deaths. Heart disease and stroke kill more than 200,000 people a year.
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
You’ve had too much when you brush something off you shoulder and find out it is the floor.

Paul

:) :) :)
 
I don't drink at all. Never have, beyond a taste of this or that just to see if I actually wanted to start drinking. I don't.

What does this mean? One glass of <insert favorite booze> is too much for me. ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom