MEN’S HEALTH DRINKING IN AUSTRALIA ‘Bundy, champers, stubbies, grog’ – most, if not all, Australians are familiar with alcohol culture. According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s (AIHW) ‘2007 National Drug Strategy Household Survey’, 90% of Australians have tried alcohol in their lifetime, and 83% would have consumed it in the past 12 months. As noted by the Australian Drug Foundation, alcohol is the most commonly used drug in the country. The AIHW’s survey also identified that 50% of Australians drink at levels that put them at higher risk of alcohol-related harm (AHR) in the short-term and about one quarter of Australians at levels that put them in higher risk of ARH in the long-term. Forty-one% of Australians drink weekly and 8% daily, which contributes to alcohol’s huge burden of death, disease and injury across the country. As reported by Victoria’s Turning Point Alcohol and Drug Centre, there were 5,554 deaths attributable to alcohol in 2010 - 3,467 of those were men. In the same year, 101,425 of male hospitalisations were alcohol-related, while injuries were responsible for the largest proportion of alcohol-related deaths (ARD) in men. ARDs were also responsible for 84,945 years of life lost in men that year. Alcohol is a major factor in thousands of road and other accidents annually, and is at the core of many social problems such as public and domestic violence, family breakdown, child abuse and child neglect. DRINKING GUIDELINES Established by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), the Australian Guidelines to Reduce Health Risks from Drinking Alcohol aim to form the evidence base for future policies and provide community resources on reducing the health issues associated with alcohol. The NHMRC conveys that the lifetime risk of ARH increases with the amount consumed and that for men and women, drinking only two standard drinks per day will reduce the risk of ARD or alcohol-related injury (ARI). Drinking less frequently over a lifetime – two standard drinks per week instead of day, for instance – also reduces this risk. For low-level, moderate drinkers, the level of risk of ARH is similar for men and women. However, as the level of drinking increases, the lifetime risk of ARD increases more quickly for women, and the lifetime risk of ARI increase more quickly for men. The Australian Bureau of Statistics identifies different attitudes between men and women towards health and health services, due to both biological and gender factors. This is associated with the fact that men are more likely to engage in risk-taking behaviour such as substance abuse and drink driving than women, which may partly explain why the risk of ARI is higher in men. ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL An individual’s ability to ‘handle’ their booze often distorts their perception of the damage. For instance, a man who doesn’t feel inebriated until his seventh drink, while his friend feels tipsy after two, may think that his health isn’t as vulnerable to alcohol. In fact, any consumption of alcohol has some level of impact on health, with certain quantities presenting more danger than others. There is a range of factors that also contribute to the variability in our biological responses to alcohol, determined by sex, body size and composition, age, experience in drinking, genetics, nutrition and individual metabolism. The NHMRC also identifies some social determinants that contribute to increased risk of ARH, including the clustering of risk-taking behaviour (smoking and binge drinking), particularly in men, and level of risk posed by the setting (driving from location after drinking). Although men experience lower blood alcohol concentration (BAC) than women because of their size, leaner tissue and larger livers, men’s higher rate of risk-taking behaviour means their risk of ARH exceeds that of women over a lifetime, within any drinking pattern. Mental health, existing health conditions, medication and family history of alcohol dependence also impacts an individual’s drinking experience and their level of risk of ARH. REGULAR DRINKING VERSUS BINGE DRINKING Over the years, research has been dedicated to debunking the myth around whether regular moderate drinking (two standard drinks per day) is healthier than binge drinking (for example, 10 standard drinks on a Saturday night). More recently, there have been a number pointing to regular low-moderate consumption as beneficial to health. Research by the University of Rochester in the United States tested the theory over a month by feeding one group of mice the human equivalent of two drinks every day, and another group seven drinks two days in a row, in an attempt to simulate regular moderate drinking and weekend binge drinking. A third group was given no alcohol. Unsurprisingly, the ‘binging’ mice had 19% higher levels of LDL cholesterol – the bad kind – than the ‘sober’ mice. However, quite surprisingly, the ‘moderate’ mice had lower levels of LDL 38 Pindara Magazine 2015\2016
Pindara Private Hospital Magazine - Issue Six
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