When it comes to drinking, different people have different opinions, some people think that only drinking a lot of alcohol will hurt the body, if you usually just drink, then it has no effect on the body, and drinking is good for blood vessels, because alcohol can dilate blood vessels, but is this really the case?
As a doctor, I would like to remind everyone that the so-called drinking can dilate blood vessels, and moderate drinking is healthy for blood vessels, which is completely a lie from the winery, and alcohol, even if you drink very little, may cause damage to your health.
A large-scale study published in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet completely disproves this view. The study, which included 28 million drinkers in 195 countries, found that there is no such thing as a "safe intake" of alcohol, and that drinking alcohol is harmful to the body, regardless of the intake.
The data from the 2016 edition of the Global Disease Burden (GBD) study, with a sample size of 28 million people, including 694 individual and population alcohol consumption data, and 592 prospective and retrospective studies on the risk of alcohol consumption, participated in the study of drinkers ranging in age from 15 to 95 years old, with a time span of 27 years (1990~2016). This unprecedented study provides reliable support for this article.
According to the article, people who consume 10g of alcohol a day (equivalent to a can of beer, 100ml of red wine or 30ml of white wine) have a 0.5% higher risk of health problems than those who do not drink at all. And as the amount of alcohol consumed in a single day rises, this risk will rise with it.
As one of the world's top medical journals, The Lancet is well-known and its papers often represent the authority of the academic community.
Regarding drinking, it is basically divided into three situations: the first is to drink every day, but all you drink is small wine; the second, drink every day, and drink a lot of wine; The third is to just drink a lot of alcohol once in a while.
After seeing these three conditions, many people will think that only the second and third will pose a threat to health, and the first will not pose a threat to health, but from this study in The Lancet, we can find that even a small amount of alcohol can pose a health threat.
The harm of drinking alcohol to the body is mainly manifested in the following points.
1. Long-term drinking will increase the risk of cancer
Acetaldehyde, an intermediate metabolite of alcohol, can directly induce DNA mutations, so people who drink alcohol for a long time are more likely to suffer from cancer, and drinking alcohol can induce a variety of cancers, including throat cancer, esophageal cancer, stomach cancer, pancreatic cancer, liver cancer, etc.
Many people think that drinking only a small amount of alcohol every day should not hurt the body, but as everyone knows, the harm of alcohol to the body shows a cumulative effect.
2. Long-term drinking has a great impact on the heart
Long-term drinking alcohol can easily induce alcoholic cardiomyopathy, and drinking alcohol can also easily affect fluctuations in blood pressure and blood lipids, leading to more likely to induce hypertension and coronary heart disease.
A study conducted in South Korea was published in the European Journal of Cardiology, which enrolled 9.78 million people and followed them for eight years, to look at the effect of alcohol consumption frequency on atrial fibrillation.
The study found that among patients diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, regardless of age and gender, those who drank alcohol daily were at greater risk of developing atrial fibrillation than those who occasionally "drank heavily". The risk of atrial fibrillation increased by 2% for every 1ml increase in alcohol consumption in 1 week, and the risk was minimal in participants who drank alcohol ≤ once a week.
3. Long-term drinking will damage the liver
People who drink alcohol will have more or less liver problems, because alcohol will interfere with the metabolism of fat, so long-term drinking can easily lead to fatty liver, and with the continuous progress of the disease, long-term drinking can easily lead to alcoholic cirrhosis and even liver cancer.
4. Long-term drinking will damage the pancreas
Drinking a lot of alcohol at one time can induce acute pancreatitis, and if you drink alcohol for a long time, it is easy to induce chronic pancreatitis, chronic pancreatitis recurring, and it can also lead to pancreatic cancer.
5. Long-term drinking will damage the stomach
A large amount of alcohol can lead to acute gastric mucosal lesions, causing hematemesis, black stool, and if it is long-term drinking, it is easy to induce atrophic gastritis, gastric ulcer, and even gastric cancer.
Given the harm to your health caused by drinking, you should quit drinking even if you drink a small amount of alcohol, and if you drink high-strength liquor for a long time, you will find that even if you drink a small amount of alcohol, you will develop an addiction to alcohol.
After having alcohol addiction, it will become particularly difficult to quit drinking, and the dependence on alcohol is not only manifested physically, but also psychologically, if you suddenly stop drinking, the body has all kinds of discomfort, and the heart is also particularly irritable, depressed, and even very painful, then it indicates that alcohol addiction has been formed.
What can I do to quit drinking?
As a doctor, the advice to everyone is to stay away from the habit of drinking and the people who drink, such as if you go to a bar, KTV, or go out to dinner, it becomes unlikely that you don't drink, if you are always surrounded by a group of drinkers, it is especially difficult to quit drinking.
Quit alcohol requires great perseverance, and in the process of quitting alcohol, there may be the possibility of repeated failures, so it can be called a success in quitting alcohol if you really quit drinking for more than half a year.