The Catch-up: Drinking wine even worse than we thought (especially if you're a woman)
What happened?
A bottle of wine increases a woman’s cancer risk by as much as smoking 10 cigarettes a week, according to new research. For men, one bottle has the equivalent risk of smoking five cigarettes each week. Men and women are advised to drink no more than 14 units of alcohol a week, less than a bottle and a half of wine.
Men vs women
The study revealed that wine affects women significantly more than men, because they are more vulnerable due to an increased risk of breast cancer from drinking alcohol.
The researchers found that in non-smoking men the increase in the absolute lifetime risk of cancer from drinking one bottle of wine per week was 1.0%. That means if 1,000 non-smoking men each drank one bottle of wine per week across their lifetime, 10 of them would develop cancer as a result. For non-smoking women this was approximately 50% higher with a cancer risk of 1.4%.
‘Not widely understood’
The researchers said they wanted to make the stark comparison to drive home the consequences of drinking too much alcohol. Dr Theresa Hydes, one of the study authors, said: “It is well established that heavy drinking is linked to cancer of the mouth, throat, voice box, gullet, bowel, liver and breast. Yet, in contrast to smoking, this is not widely understood by the public.”
Read more
Drinking a bottle of wine like smoking 10 cigarettes (HuffPost)
Here are five types of problem alcohol drinkers (Yahoo Style UK)
Alcohol is killing women at an alarming rate (The Independent)
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Man Utd show their faith in Solskjaer
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Meet the Scottish pensioner who ‘feels no pain’
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64
A giant fatberg lurking under a Devon seaside town has finally been successfully broken up. The removal of the 64m (210ft) object, which contained congealed oils, grease and wet wipes among other detritus, took a team of hardy workers seven weeks to break down. The mass was taken to a local sewage treatment works in more than 30 tanker loads – each carrying 136 cubic metres (3,000 gallons). Read the full story here (The Guardian)
