The “myth of the drunk Irish man” is probably inaccurate, according to the author of a major international study on alcohol consumption which finds Irish men’s habits comparable to other Europeans.
However, it also found that Irish women were found to consume the seventh highest level of “average daily drinks” at 3.1, although this is the only area of alcohol use in which Ireland had a top 10 ranking.
The research, published in the Lancet today, also finds there is no safe level of alcohol intake and the healthiest approach is to drink as little as possible, if anything at all.
The study said that over a single year, one alcoholic drink a day increases the risk of developing one of 23 related health problems by 0.5 per cent. This rose to 7 per cent for those who had two drinks a day. One drink is defined as being 10g of alcohol.
The Global Burden of Disease Study looks at alcohol use and its health affects in 195 countries between 1990 and 2016 and found drinking to be related to 2.8 million deaths each year.
“The long-standing myth of the drunk Irish man is likely incorrect,” the study’s lead author Dr Max Griswold, of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, told The Irish Times.
Source: Mark Hilliard, The Irish Times, 24/08/18
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