A new study by United European Gastroenterology warns that drinking as little as two glasses of wine each day increases the risk of developing bowel cancer by 21%. This includes the risk of developing colorectal and oesophageal cancer.
Drinking more than four alcoholic drinkers a day increases the risk of developing other forms of cancer. This includes liver cancer, gastric cancer and pancreatic cancer.
This research is alarming, particularly since the average person in Britain drinks around 2.1 alcoholic drinks each night.
The research may significantly increase the number of deaths links to alcohol consumption. The above forms of cancer kill around three million people in across Britain each year.
These cancers account for a third of all cancer-related deaths across the world.
The report claims the majority of people living in Europe are classed as ‘moderate’ drinkers. This means we drink between one and four drinks per day.
The average number of alcoholic drinks consumed per person across Europe is 1.9 per day. In Britain, this figure stands at 2.1 drinks. This means we are above the European average in how much alcohol we consume per day.
This means Brits are more likely to suffer from bowel or oesophageal cancer due to drinking when compared to people living elsewhere in Europe.
Incidentally, Europe experiences the highest levels of alcohol consumption compared to other regions of the world. It’s said that around 20% of people in Europe are drinking heavily at least once a week.
This fact means Europeans are much more likely to suffer from poor health and early death due to their drinking compared to people living elsewhere in the world.
The report says 90% of Europeans are totally unaware of these risks linked to their drinking.
Alcohol consumption is surely embedded in European culture, and undoing this culture will take many years and cost billions of pounds. A change in how alcoholic drinks are taxed will also require revision. At present, many European countries have avoided introducing minimum alcohol unit pricing, and this is perhaps the route that will need to be taken given the facts this study has uncovered.
Governments in Europe should also consider introducing laws that will compel alcohol producers to include better labelling on their products that disclose the risk of developing cancer when their products are consumed.
Markus Peck, a Professor at the Medical University of Vienna said: ‘One of the main challenges in addressing high drinking levels is how deeply embedded alcohol consumption is within the European society, both socially and culturally.
‘Political action like minimum pricing and reducing access to alcohol needs to be taken now to prevent many future casualties.
‘Research then has to follow to help generate data and allow us to fine-tune future political activity’.
Posted on Monday, June 26th, 2017 at 9:39 am in Latest News.