A study entitled "Alcohol use and burden for 195 countries and territories, 1990–2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016" has determined that no one should ingest any alcohol. It leads to death, kinda like life.
Via The Lancet:
Alcohol use is a leading risk factor for global disease burden and causes substantial health loss. We found that the risk of all-cause mortality, and of cancers specifically, rises with increasing levels of consumption, and the level of consumption that minimises health loss is zero. These results suggest that alcohol control policies might need to be revised worldwide, refocusing on efforts to lower overall population-level consumption.
I have found that I can drink less and less as I get older. While I enjoy my Jameson, whiskey leaves me feeling awful and foggy the following day. I've passed the point where that feeling is worthwhile.
The belief, posed by my MD father, is that genetically our bodies (and my sister, but not my brother who is too ‘like my mom’) do not produce enough aldehyde dehydrogenase to break the acetaldehyde down and we essentially are poisoning ourselves, as the paper says.
Image via NIH.gov
