Many happy wine-drinking Canadians woke up last month to find their world a little rocked by the release of new guidelines for alcohol consumption.
Conventional wisdom for years has been that drinking was fine up to a point—15 drinks a week for men, 10 for women.
There was even some thought that daily drinking—particularly wine—had some health benefits.
Well, no more.
What we’ve always known is that alcohol at any dose is toxic to the human body. The WHO released a position paper this year stating exactly that. It’s a bummer, but it’s true.
A Focus on Risk
The new guidelines are about understanding and reducing risk rather than a simple cut-off number:
- Zero risk = zero alcohol
- Low risk = 2 drinks per week.
- Moderate risk = 3-6 drinks per week
Once you go over 6 drinks per week, the risk climbs with each drink.
Risk of What?
What risks are we talking about? The big ones include:
- Cancer. There is no safe dose of alcohol when it comes to cancer, and its risk increases with each drink. Alcohol and cancer are so linked that there is increasing pressure to put warnings on labels just like we do with cigarettes.
- Heart disease and stroke. Increased risk at over 7 drinks per week, with risk increasing with each additional drink.
- Pregnancy. No safe dose.
- Fertility. No safe dose.
It’s also worth mentioning addiction as a risk. Alcohol can be habit-forming. And that means the low-risk ranges can put some people at risk of moving up the risk ladder as their consumption increases.
Standard Drink Sizes
“Drink” is a vague term. Here’s how the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA) defines a drink:
- A 12-oz. (341 ml) bottle of 5 percent alcohol beer or cider
- A 5-oz. (142 ml) glass of 12 percent alcohol wine
- A 1.5-oz. (43 ml) shot glass of 40 percent alcohol spirits
Beer and cider tend to be easier to track as you drink them from a fixed-size container. Spirits and wine tend to be “free-poured” into glasses, and therefore harder to measure. If you’re wondering where you might be fooling yourself, that’s a good place to start.
How to Manage Your Drinking
It seems that, whether we like it or not, less booze is better, no matter which way you slice it. If you want to change your alcohol habits, this article from the CDC is an excellent place to start.
One recurring theme across all sources is to be conscious of your drinking—to set limits and actually count your drinks. An excellent tool for this is the TRY DRY app. (Apple/Android). It’s science-based, free, and has no ads. Give it a shot!