Alcohol Abuse

“Middle class professionals… are the country’s biggest problem drinkers,” is the stark and somewhat misleading claim in The Daily Telegraph, with similar claims appearing across the UK media.
The story is based on a study looking at just 49 ‘white collar’ people’s attitudes towards alcohol consumption.

Many of us enjoy a drink in the pub after work without realising how social drinking can damage health. Phil didn’t realise the harm his alcohol intake was doing until he was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver. He talks about his experience and the shock he felt at being diagnosed.

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NHS Choices

More research needed about home drinking

glass of alcohol

Image: iStockphoto

A leading expert on alcohol abuse has expressed concern about the lack of research about home drinking. Dr John Fosterfrom the University of Greenwich is the first UK researcher to review all the research available about the drinking of alcohol by adults at home.

The article titled Home Drinking in the UK: Trends and Causes by Dr John Foster at the University of Greenwich had been published in Alcohol and Alcoholism.

Dr Foster from the university’s School of Health & Social Care says: “An increasing amount of alcohol is now consumed in our homes especially among the over-30s. Home drinking is invisible and individuals have to set their own boundaries about acceptable levels of consumption and behaviour. Yet shockingly little research has been carried out on this important problem in our society.”

What research there is indicates that home drinking is often linked to increasing income, high income and higher social class. Those drinking at home do not tend to ‘binge drink’, though ‘pre-loading’, or drinking before going out for the evening, is related to heavy drinking and increasing risk-taking, especially in young people.

“It takes many years for the health consequences of change in behaviour to appear and the increase in drinking at home is likely to be associated with higher cancer rates and cardiac-related problems in the future. Increased research is essential so that policy makers have more information about why adults drink at home and in particular their awareness of the associated risks.”

His research shows that there have only been six articles published about home drinking by adults in the last 10 years. These show that there has been a steady increase in the consumption of beer away from pubs and bars since at least 1970. However, since 2000, this has accelerated: 83 per cent of all wine drunk is consumed at home, according to figures from the British Beer & Pub Association (2006). Most of this alcohol is bought from large supermarkets. A recent internet survey found that only 11 per cent agreed that higher prices in supermarkets would make them use pubs and bars more.

In addition to this review Dr Foster has published work in the Journal of Public Health that indicates the reasons people drink revolve around cost, convenience and relaxation, and that the long term health risks are at best underplayed and at worst ignored.

John H. Foster and Colin S. Ferguson, Home Drinking in the UK: Trends and Causes, Alcohol and Alcoholism (2012), February 27, doi: 10.1093/alcalc/ags020, http://alcalc.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/02/27/alcalc.ags020.abstract?sid=0bb819f6-f4b0-48fa-a5bd-99e4388a1045

barin volume

The scientists used MRI data mapped onto an existing atlas of the mouse brain to compare the effects of drinking ethanol and water on brain volume overall and region-by-region in mice with and without dopamine D2 receptors. Alcohol-drinking mice that lacked dopamine receptors had lower overall brain volume and reduced volume in the cerebral cortex (blue) and thalamus (purple) compared with D2 receptor-deficient mice drinking water. Alcohol-drinking mice with dopamine receptors did not show these deficits in response to drinking alcohol, suggesting that dopamine receptors may be protective against the brain atrophy associated with chronic drinking.

Brain scans of two strains of mice imbibing significant quantities of alcohol reveal serious shrinkage in some brain regions — but only in mice lacking a particular type of receptor for dopamine, the brain’s “reward” chemical – but only in mice lacking a particular type of receptor for dopamine, the brain’s “reward” chemical. The study, conducted at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory and published in the May 2012 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, now online, provides new evidence that these dopamine receptors, known as DRD2, may play a protective role against alcohol-induced brain damage. [continue reading…]

Social Benefits of Heavy Drinking Outweigh Harms

man drinking beer

iStockphoto

A study by University of Washington psychologists shows some people continue to drink heavily because of perceived positive effects, despite experiencing negative effects such as hangovers, fights and regrettable sexual situations.

According to participants in the study, boosts of courage, chattiness and other social benefits of drinking outweigh its harms, which they generally did not consider as strong deterrents.

The findings offer a new direction for programs targeting binge drinking, which tend to limit their focus to avoiding alcohol’s ill effects rather than considering its rewards.

“This study suggest why some people can experience a lot of bad consequences of drinking but not change their behavior,” said Kevin King, co-author and UW assistant professor of psychology.

“People think, ‘It’s not going to happen to me’ or ‘I’ll never drink that much again.’ They do not seem to associate their own heavy drinking with negative consequences,” he said.

The paper was published online May 30 in Psychology of Addictive Behaviors. [continue reading…]