Healthy People

Are you drinking too much?

February 21, 2012 at 9:29 am

Do you regularly kid yourself that you’re not a heavy drinker because you only ever have one or two glasses of alcohol a night?

The trouble is that with the stronger beers and wines now available, cheaper alcohol prices and the larger wine glasses and measures we pour ourselves at home these days, it’s all too easy to slip into the unsafe drinking zone without realising. What many of us still fail to understand is that you don’t have to be a drunk to be over the safe drinking limit.

A huge glass of 12 per cent red wine is going to contain considerably more than one unit of alcohol – but how many of us take that on board? Do you mentally switch off when you read health warnings about boozing in newspapers – wrongly believing you’re not at risk?

Apparently,  an estimated nine million of us are regularly drinking more than the government’s recommended 2-3 units of alcohol a day for women and 3-4 units a  week for men – not aware that  we are damaging our health.

The government has even launched a new campaign to alert us to the dangers of overindulging. It makes sobering reading; regularly drinking two large glasses of wine or two strong pints of beer a day, for instance, triples the risk of developing mouth cancer and doubles the risk of developing high blood pressure.

Is this just another Nanny State kill-joy decree from the health police though? Of course there are studies that have established health benefits for moderate drinking – including protection against heart disease – but the problem seems to be that many of us are drinking far too much so these benefits are cancelled out.

It’s not hard to tweak your lifestyle to get back in the safe drinking zone though and The Change4Life campaign offers handy hints and tips on how to cut down, such as having alcohol-free days and pouring smaller glasses. It’s a small change that may save your life.

Fed up with being told another of your daily pleasures is off limits or concerned about your drinking and ready to make a change? We’d love to hear your views – please post below.