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Warning: This article might ruin your weekend.
If you clicked the link to this story, chances are you are concerned about how your drinking is affecting your overall health. That’s smart. It never hurts to brush up on the latest science surrounding America’s favorite inebriating substance to learn just how quickly the drunkard lifestyle is killing us.
Well, we hate to break it to you, pal, but this piece is not going to put your mind at ease – not at all. The situation with alcohol and its cruel ability to produce an abundance of health problems seems to be getting worse. We keep hoping there is a scientist out there somewhere who will eventually be awarded the Nobel Prize for a discovery that points to excessive beer drinking as the key to longer life, but unfortunately that’s a pipe dream that doesn’t appear to be happening anytime soon.
No sir, the latest research suggests that drinking even one beer a day increases one’s chances of early death. Just a single 12-ounce brew over the course of 24 hours is now associated with an elevated risk for cancer, according to the findings published in the latest journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.
Of course, we’re getting this news after the federal government spent years telling us that it was safe for men to consume two alcoholic drinks per day. Not that we ever followed those guidelines. Who could? But, still, we’re feeling a bit cheated over here.
So, if you have been hitting the sauce all week in preparation for the weekend bar scene, please know that science is betting against you making it out alive.
“This study is the first to show that daily drinking is dangerous,” said Dr. Sarah Hartz, lead researcher and an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Washington University School of Medicine, in an interview with Newsweek.
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“We’re all going to die an early death. LOL”
Unfortunately, this wasn’t some small study that we can completely disregard. Researchers dug into the personal data of more than 340,000 people between the ages of 18 and 85 and another group of over 93,000 military veterans between the ages of 40 and 60 – considering variables such as age, race, gender and whether the respondent was a smoker.
Although the team couldn’t find evidence to support the claim that alcohol is good for the heart, they did find substantial proof that even occasional drinking leads to cancer. “Because of the large samples and that the same result was seen in such different groups, we are fairly confident that the results are correct,” Hartz said.
When it comes to gauging how much booze is really safe for human consumption, science can be all over the map. There are so many additional variables that play a role in the deterioration of a person’s health that establishing a definitive, safe level of booze for the whole of society simply isn’t possible.
While one guy might be able to drink six beers a day throughout his entire life without encountering any health problems, another guy may enjoy the occasional beer on the weekends and end up dropping dead at a young age.
Interestingly, however, some new developments on the horizon could eventually determine how much alcohol is safe for every individual. Hartz says that as the world of personalized medicine matures, doctors will have the ability to test patients for various diseases and outline a safe drinking level based on those results. But until then, she remains adamant that no amount of drinking is safe.
“There are many things that we chose to do that are unhealthy, and drinking should be considered one of them,” she said.
Well then.
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Mike Adams is a freelance writer for High Times, Cannabis Now, and Forbes. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.