Do you know drinking alcohol can cause many diseases? Researchers from Oxford Population Health and Peking University in China found something shocking.
They discovered that drinking alcohol can increase the chances of getting more than 60 diseases in Chinese men. What’s more, many of these diseases were never linked to alcohol before!
The researchers shared their findings in a medical journal called Nature Medicine.
The Big Problem with Alcohol
Did you know around 3 million people die each year because of alcohol? This is a problem in many countries, especially the poorer ones like China.
We know heavy drinking can lead to diseases like liver damage, stroke, and some types of cancer. But this study found that drinking alcohol can cause even more diseases.
What the Study Found
The researchers used information from a big study in China. The study included more than half a million people. They asked these people about their lifestyle, including how much alcohol they drink.
The study found that about one in three men in China drink alcohol at least once a week. But only 2% of women do the same.
The researchers studied over 200 different diseases. They found that drinking alcohol increased the risks of 61 diseases in men.
These included diseases like gout, cataracts, and stomach ulcers. Before this study, these diseases were not known to be linked to alcohol.
What Does This Mean?
This study showed that drinking alcohol can cause many diseases. It also showed that how you drink alcohol can affect your health.
For example, drinking alcohol every day, drinking a lot at once, or drinking outside meal times can increase the risk of certain diseases.
For every four drinks a man has each day, his risk of getting a disease linked to alcohol increases by 14%.
Interestingly, this study did not find that moderate drinking (one to two drinks a day) protected against heart disease.
The study also used genetic information to make sure the diseases were really caused by drinking alcohol.
The Bigger Picture
Drinking alcohol causes many more diseases than we thought before. This is a problem in China, but also in other parts of the world.
In East Asia, there are common genes that make drinking alcohol very uncomfortable. People with these genes tend to drink less alcohol. This helped the researchers confirm their findings.
This study helps us understand how big the problem with alcohol really is. It can help us find ways to reduce drinking and improve health in different countries.
If you care about alcohol drinking, please read studies about the root cause of alcohol addiction, and how alcohol, coffee and tea intake influence cognitive decline.
For more information about wellness, please see recent studies that alcohol abuse can be a symptom of dementia, and results showing new way to treat alcohol-associated liver disease.
The study was published in Nature Medicine.
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