The Wine & Spirit Trade Association said it would talk with health officials over a new recommendation that men should only drink 14 units of alcohol a week, down from 21 units. The original guidance was published in 1995, before many links between alcohol and cancer were detected.
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Before, pregnant women were told to abstain from alcohol but if they did drink, they were told not to consume more than one to two units of alcohol once or twice a week.
Previously, women were advised to drink no more than 2-3 units a day and men no more than 3-4.
If you have one or two heavy drinking sessions, you increase your risks of death from long-term illnesses and from accidents and injuries.
THE city council is urging people to cut down on their alcohol intake following national warnings that weekly limits should be reduced to avoid major health problems.
“Drinking any level of alcohol regularly carries a health risk for anyone, but if men and women limit their intake to no more than 14 units a week it keeps the risk of illness like cancer and liver disease low”, Dame Sally Davies, the chief medical officer in England, said in a statement.
The committee has been collecting and analyzing studies on cancer and alcohol consumption since 2013, which they report show some cancers are more common among people who drink more.
The CoC review found that drinking even a small amount of alcohol increases the risk of some cancers compared with people who do not drink at all.
As a result of the changes in the British guidelines, men in the Republic can drink three pints a week more than their counterparts in the North and still be considered at “low risk” of harm from alcohol.
Short-term risks can be avoided by limiting the amount of alcohol consumed on any one occasion, drinking more slowly, drinking with food and alternating alcoholic drinks with water.
The guidelines also mention the frequency recommended.
The recommendation, which were criticized by some as “nanny state” scaremongering, is based on the notion that any level of alcohol consumption increases cancer risks.
“Some things that affect your breast cancer risk you can not control, like getting older”.
There is no “safe” level of regular drinking, the UK’s chief medical officers have said.
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If you are pregnant or planning a pregnancy, the safest approach is not to drink alcohol at all, to keep risks to your baby to a minimum. The group concluded there was no justification for drinking for health reasons. “Instead, people have a right to accurate information about alcohol and its health risks so that they can make informed decisions about their drinking behaviour”.
