“The current guidance for men, two drinks, is not terrible,” said Timothy Naimi, a professor at Boston University. “But it’s clear that most of the time men drink alcohol, if they can limit it to one drink a day, they know better health than at two.”
Naimi, who is also a physician and alcohol epidemiologist at Boston Medical Center, is a member of the 2020 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee – the body of nearly two dozen scientists from across the country who wrote the report.
The commission reported that men who consume a maximum of one drink per day have a lower risk of dying from alcohol-related causes than those who drink more.
About 100,000 people die each year from alcohol consumption in the United States, according to the report. Drinks also cause between 3.5 to 5.5. percent of cancer deaths in the country and can lead to a number of chronic diseases, including liver disease, pancreatitis, gastritis, and coronary heart disease.
Some Americans started drinking more during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a Morning Consult poll, 16 percent of the 2,200 adults surveyed said they now drank more than before the pandemic hit the United States.
“There are a number of indicators that alcohol consumption has gone up, but I think the thing to concentrate on is the excessive alcohol consumption that happened before the pandemic,” Naimi said. “This is not new.”
One Australian study cited in the report found that men who drank an average of about two drinks a day had a 2.5 to 5 percent increase in alcohol-related deaths compared to those who consumed only one drink a day.
“Changing the daily recommended limit would result in a modest but significant reduction in the risk of (alcohol-related) deaths in men,” Naimi said.
Women are at higher risk of dying from or developing health problems due to alcohol consumption than men, researchers said. But the commission’s recommendation for a one – day limit for women has not changed.
“For every fixed amount of alcohol, women are a little more at risk than men especially because they are smaller, but (the risk) is not that different at lower consumption levels,” Naimi said. “If you see people drinking three, four, five, six drinks a day and more, then that difference between men and women is more.”
Binge drinking, which has five drinks on one occasion for men and four for women, accounts for about 88,000 deaths each year, according to the report.
The report said that binge drinking, as well as drinking in general, is on the rise in the United States. Of the individuals who consumed alcohol in the past month, about 40 percent were binge-drinking – some often multiple times a month.
Those who binge-drink also have a higher risk of developing than dying from heart problems, researchers said.
“Overall, alcohol is an unusual substance,” the report said. “Alcohol can be consumed at low levels with relatively low risk, and is consumed by American adults for a variety of reasons. When it comes to health, however, among those who consume alcohol, drinking less is better for health than drinking more. ”
Caroline Enos can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @CarolineEnos.
