Putting up a Wall against Alcohol

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Your drinking habit may be affected by genetics, environment, family, sociocultural factors (e.g. alcohol is part of many social events in Europe, where alcohol consumption is high), religious orientation (e.g. Muslims do not drink alcohol), economy, etc.

Drinking alcohol is harmful and dangerous.

According to World Health Organization:

"Alcohol consumption has health and social consequences via intoxication (drunkenness), dependence (habitual, compulsive and long-term drinking), and other biochemical effects."

"In addition to chronic diseases that may affect drinkers after many years of heavy use, alcohol contributes to traumatic outcomes that kill or disable at a relatively young age, resulting in the loss of many years of life to death or disability...Overall there is a causal relationship between alcohol consumption and more than 60 types of disease and injury."

"Alcohol is estimated to cause about 20-30% worldwide of oesophageal cancer, liver cancer, cirrhosis of the liver, homicide, epilepsy, and motor vehicle accidents."

"Worldwide alcohol causes 1.8 million deaths (3.2% of total) and 58.3 million (4% of total) of Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs)."

"Unintentional injuries alone account for about one third of the 1.8 million deaths, while neuro-psychiatric conditions account for close to 40% of the 58.3 million DALYs."

I obtained the above information from here: http://www.who.int/substance_abuse/facts/alcohol/en/index.html

Go here for much more: http://www.who.int/topics/alcohol_drinking/en/


Alcohol is a significant risk for breast cancer, even a single drink a day*.

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To give you a more local picture, let's consider alcohol-related death and injury, specifically in Canada.

In 2001, Rehm and colleagues** at Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health attributed 4,010 of all deaths (those under age of 70) to alcohol. Keep in mind, they took into account, "the deaths prevented by moderate consumption of alcohol."

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According to their research, 144,143 years of life were lost prematurely only in 2001, due to alcohol. Main causes of death were unintentional injuries, malignant neoplasms (i.e. cancer), and digestive diseases.

*Hamajima N, Hirose K, Tajima K, et al; for the Collaborative Group on Hormonal Factors in Breast Cancer. Alcohol, tobacco and breast cancer — collaborative reanalysis of individual data from 53 epidemiological studies, including 58,515 women with breast cancer and 95,067 women without the disease. Br J Cancer 2002;87:1234-45.

**Rehm J, Patra J, Popova S. Alcohol-attributable mortality and potential years of life lost in Canada 2001: implications for prevention and policy. Addiction 2006;101:373-84.

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