Have you heard that drinking red wine is good for you? Yeah…it’s not.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but if you’ve been having a glass of wine or a shot of tequila on the assumption that one drink a day is actually good for you, a new study disproves that myth. We are stuck with the reality that any amount of alcohol is just not good for us.
What a way to celebrate the Labor Day weekend in the United States, right? This is episode number 82 of Plain English and today is Monday, September 3, 2018. Labor Day, the traditional end of the summer in the United States, is today. I’m Jeff and the producer of the show is JR. As you know, Plain English is a podcast for people who are learning English. The audio goes nice and slow so you can understand every word. And if you’d like to follow along and read a transcript of the program, you can find those transcripts at PlainEnglish.com/82.
JR and I love to hear from listeners, so don’t be shy about sending us a note. Our email addresses are [email protected] and I’m [email protected].
No amount of alcohol is good for your health
Do you remember hearing that there are health benefits to having one alcoholic drink per day? Maybe you’ve heard red wine is good for you—I’ve heard that for a long time. Scientists have long said that having some red wine helps prevent heart disease and has a range of other benefits.
I have never put too much stock in those studies, and I hope you haven’t either. That’s because a new paper in the medical journal The Lancet says that there are actually no net health benefits to drinking alcohol. They do acknowledge the previous studies that say one drink per day can actually reduce your risk of heart disease. But whatever benefit might exist on that front is offset by higher risks of acquiring other diseases like cancer, diabetes or tuberculosis.
The risks to your health of drinking are relatively minor for light drinkers, but increase rapidly as people have more than one drink per day. The authors find that having just one drink per day makes a person 0.5 percent more likely to get cancer, diabetes or tuberculosis. That doesn’t sound too bad, but if you have an average of two drinks a day, your risk goes up by 7%. If you’re a heavy drinker and have five drinks a day, then your risk of getting cancer or another illness goes up by 37%. That is all not to mention the other bad things that can result from drinking, such as traffic accidents.
Alcohol remains a leading cause of death. It is involved in 12 percent of male deaths and 4 percent of female deaths in 2016. It is the leading cause of death and disability for people between 18 and 49 years old.
The research paper looked at data from 195 countries and covered a long period of time, 1990 to 2016. The study’s author says, “The myth that one or two drinks a day are good for you is just that – a myth.”
So that raises a question in my mind—how much are people actually drinking? The UK government says people should not consume more than two drinks per day, or 14 per week. But in Britain, both men and women have an average of three drinks per day. The study also showed the countries where drinking is most prevalent. Among men, they are Romania, where men have an average of eight drinks—yikes, eight drinks a day, followed by Portugal, Luxembourg, Lithuania and Ukraine with about seven.
When I saw this, I was really surprised. In Britain, they have a relatively mild three servings a day. Now, I like beer and wine, but I definitely don’t have an average of three drinks a day. There are certainly days where I have three drinks, but in the course of a week, I probably average one a day or less. In fact, I just spent a whole week at a hotel for work and I had to eat all my meals at the hotel restaurant, sometimes with clients, and I found myself having one or two drinks with dinner for most of the week. By the end of the week, I was ready for a break—I made a huge pot of iced tea as soon as I got home. I guess I’m one of those people bringing the average down.
Another important question when a study like this comes out is, what exactly am I supposed to do with this new information? The study’s authors are saying that no amount of alcohol is good for your health. That having one drink a day increases your risk slightly of getting cancer. But I don’t think we need to take from this that we can’t have any alcohol. I think it does clarify that if you think you’re helping your health by having red wine, you’re probably just kidding yourself. And if you’re having five drinks a day—well, now you know your risk of getting cancer or another disease from alcohol consumption is significantly higher than if you were having just one a day.
In other words, where I think this leaves us is more or less where we were to begin with: knowing that moderate drinking isn’t good for your health, but probably isn’t too bad either. But your risk goes up the more you drink. Then again, we probably all knew that to begin with right?
I want to welcome the newest listener to Plain English—he is Aqueel from Iraq. You know, most of the people who listen are here to learn English, but as you’ve heard in the past we have a few English teachers listening too, and Aqueel is an English teacher the city of Basra, Iraq. Listen to this. Aqueel is in charge of a classroom of 50 students at a government school. Fifty students in his classroom. Ages 13 to 17. Aqueel’s Twitter bio says he’s an English teacher and he loves his job. Wow—Aqueel, you are my hero for commanding a classroom of fifty teenagers. Thanks for checking us out and I hope you can introduce the program to some of your students.
I also want to say hi to Luis from Guatemala, who joined us for the World Cup episodes and has been with us ever since, and Ana from Sao Paolo, Brazil, who is getting ready to give a presentation in English in September and is using Plain English to practice. We know you’ll do great, Ana, and thanks to Luis, Ana, and Aqueel for being new listeners to Plain English.
Great stories make learning English fun
