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Health authorities in Canada have released new guidelines on alcohol consumption, recommending one to two standard drinks per week as "low risk".
What do Australia's guidelines say?
Australia's guidelines to reduce the risks associated with drinking alcohol were revised in December 2020. They recommend healthy men and women should drink no more than 10 standard drinks a week and no more than four on any one day.
"The less you drink, the lower your risk of harm from alcohol," they state.
Professor Kuntsche said these revised guidelines are more restrictive than the previous ones.
"But countries like Canada are further ahead in that game. I really welcome their approach towards even more conservative guidelines," he said.
Ms Hughes said the 2020 revisions reflect an "enormous piece of work" and that Cancer Council is not calling for a review.
Calls for mandatory alcohol labelling
The report also recommends mandatory labelling of all alcoholic beverages with health warnings.
It states evidence has shown that added warnings can increase public awareness of the causal link with cancer and reduce consumption.
Professor Pettigrew said this has been proposed for some time in Australia but has yet to come to fruition.
"It took more than a decade to get a pregnancy warning label approved for alcoholic beverages in Australia," she said, adding plans are currently underway to implement warnings on alcoholic beverages in Europe.
"There is much to gained from ensuring drinkers are informed," she said.
Ms Hughes said Cancer Council is aware of the role warning labels can play in improving community awareness, but that this shouldn't be the only way consumers are made aware of alcohol-related risks. "It's not just the label - that would need to be part of a bigger strategy to raise awareness of alcohol-related harms," she said.
What's next for Australia?
Professor Pettigrew said she hopes Australia "will continue to move in the same direction with our guidelines to ensure the community understands the risks associated with alcohol consumption".
For Professor Kuntsche, ongoing discussion about guidelines and new evidence is crucial to change drinking norms in the long run.
"When it comes to alcohol, one thing that should not be forgotten is we don't have to drink. But we have our consumption norms. And that's the big problem," he said.
Analysis from the 2019 National Drug Strategy Household Survey found that about three in four Australians aged 14 and over had consumed alcohol in the previous 12 months.
Almost one in two people (45 per cent) approved of regular use of alcohol by adults - higher than for any other drug.
"If we keep the discussion going, I hope the cultural norms will shift towards more restrictive consumption norms - and in this context, the guidelines are very important," he said.
Ms Hughes said raising awareness of the guidelines and investing in promotion is crucial. "There is still a big way to go to tackle the alcohol culture in Australia," she said.
"Alcohol is identified as a priority substance in the National Drug Strategy, with the consumption of alcohol contributing toward a range of adverse health outcomes, and significantly increasing Australia's burden of disease," it said.
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Well, the Canadians have ‘stepped up’ in the now well-established Alcohol and Cancer correlation and causation.
The cancer connection with alcohol had been ‘lurking’ for many years, but in the last four or so years, it has been undeniably established. Canada is just the most recent place that the bold declarations have been made in the Public Health arena. (one must wonder though, if this profiling isn’t in some way an attempt to get eyes off the cannabis crisis and growing harms – but one can only speculate.)
For example in 2018 after reviewing data and research as far back as 2016, The Lancet sent a ‘shot across the bow’ of the alcohol industry declaring that For Your Health, No Amount of Alcohol Is Safe and it was a harbinger of looming data that cancer appears to be a risk factor.
In 2017 Australian research and analysis found more than a correlation between alcohol consumption and various cancers Alcohol consumption and liver, pancreatic, head and neck cancers in Australia: 2017
A significant Japanese study of large cohort was released in 2019 making the disturbing claim that, Drinking just ONE glass of wine or pint of beer each night 'may raise your cancer risk by 5%' as scientists warn the safest amount of alcohol is NONE
2021 saw the World Health Organisation Chime in with their findings, unabashedly starting causal links with Cancer, Alcohol is one of the biggest risk factors for breast cancer (W.H.O)
Canadian Health experts and researchers are now lobbying their policy makers and politicians to have ‘cancer warning’ labels on all alcohol, such is the concern over this Class one carcinogen.
It’s time all jurisdictions adopted this measure, not just for the Cancer issue, but F.A.S.D and other diseases caused by this legal substance.
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23/11/2022
Drinking even small amounts of alcohol during pregnancy can change a baby’s brain structure and delay its brain development, according to a new study.
Scientists analysed MRI scans of foetuses whose mothers had reported drinking alcohol during their pregnancies, comparing them with the scans of babies whose mothers hadn’t.
They found that even in cases of low level alcohol exposure, changes to the brain structure were "significant"
"We found the greatest changes in the temporal brain region and STS," Kasprian said.
"We know that this region, and specifically the formation of the STS, has a great influence on language development during childhood".
Brain changes were seen in the foetuses even at low levels of alcohol exposure.
"Seventeen of 24 mothers drank alcohol relatively infrequently, with average alcohol consumption of less than one alcoholic drink per week," Kienast said.
"Nevertheless, we were able to detect significant changes in these foetuses based on prenatal MRI".
Delayed brain development
Three mothers drank one to three drinks per week, and two mothers drank four to six drinks per week.
One mother consumed an average of 14 or more drinks per week. Six mothers also reported at least one binge drinking event (exceeding four drinks on one occasion) during their pregnancy.
According to the researchers, delayed foetal brain development could be specifically related to a delayed stage of myelination and less distinct gyrification in the frontal and occipital lobes.
The myelination process is critical to brain and nervous system function. Myelin protects nerve cells, allowing them to transmit information faster. Important developmental milestones in infants, such as rolling over, crawling, and language processing are directly linked to myelination.
Gyrification refers to the formation of the folds of the cerebral cortex. This folding enlarges the surface area of the cortex with limited space in the skull, enabling an increase in cognitive performance. When gyrification is diminished, functionality is reduced.
"Pregnant women should strictly avoid alcohol consumption,” Kienast said. “As we show in our study, even low levels of alcohol consumption can lead to structural changes in brain development and delayed brain maturation".
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Transfer of cannabinoids into the milk of dairy cows fed with industrial hemp could lead to Δ9-THC exposure that exceeds acute reference dose
Abstract: The industrial hemp sector is growing and, in recent years, has launched many novel hemp-derived products, including animal feed. It is, however, unclear to what extent individual cannabinoids from industrial hemp transfer from the feed into products of animal origin and whether they pose a risk for the consumer. Here we present the results of a feeding experiment with industrial hemp silage in dairy cows. Hemp feeding included changes in feed intake, milk yield, respiratory and heart rates, and behaviour. We combined liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry-based analyses and toxicokinetic computer modelling to estimate the transfer of several cannabinoids (Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ9-THC), Δ8-THC, Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinolic acid, Δ9-tetrahydrocannabivarin, 11-OH-Δ9-THC, 11-nor-9-carboxy-Δ9-THC, cannabidiol, cannabinol and cannabidivarin) from animal feed to milk. For Δ9-THC, which has a feed-to-milk transfer rate of 0.20% ± 0.03%, the acute reference dose for humans was exceeded in several consumer groups in exposure scenarios for milk and dairy product consumption when using industrial hemp to feed dairy cows.
For complete research click PDF Here
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New Global Initiative to Challenge Alcohol Harms
“10% of all deaths among people 15-49 are alcohol related!
“10 Seconds is how often someone somewhere dies from alcohol-related harms!”
“Every year, alcohol use cuts millions of lives short and causes even more widespread suffering,” said Adam Karpati, Senior Vice President, Public Health Programs at Vital Strategies. “The onus can't be on individuals. We must reset from an environment where the alcohol industry is empowered to push alcohol into nearly every aspect of our lives, including schools, sports, and media. We need policies that protect kids, make healthy choices the easy choices, and check industry’s influence. RESET Alcohol will do just that through strong partnerships with government and civil society leaders who are committed to action.”
RESET Alcohol is a collaboration of six global organizations: Vital Strategies, which is leading the initiative; Movendi International; the University of Illinois Chicago; the Global Alcohol Policy Alliance (GAPA); the Non-Communicable Disease (NCD) Alliance; and World Health Organization (WHO).
(The Dalgarno Institute are standing members of Movendi International, and are pleased to endorse this growing endeavour – it is way past time the predatory Alcohol Industry was seriously brought to account #alcoholawareness)