[quote pam290358]@Belladonna12. Well to my mind, taking part in a study is voluntary, and I wouldn’t have thought there’s much point in volunteering to help research if you’re going to lie !! Whereas a MW or any other health professionals’ questioning around consumption may be perceived as having repercussions - which is probably why some posters on the thread have encouraged lying. Having said that, I haven’t suggested that anyone is lying to anyone - the OP certainly didn’t lie to the MW, she was truthful about the amount she drank as she saw it, but the MW clearly had concerns about the true amounts consumed because the OP reported they were home measures, and the fact that it had been regular drinking. I really wasn’t trying to answer whether the MW was right or wrong in referring on - I assumed the OP had hit some kind of target from the questioning and the MW had no choice. But for reasons I’ve stated numerous times, I don’t believe the NHS approach to be either ridiculous or overzealous ‘policing’. They must see an awful lot of disease caused by alcohol abuse and I presume this is the reason for the low threshold. Prevention is better than cure, and from their point of view it’s aimed at saving money in the long run in treating disease caused by long term alcohol abuse.
I tried to address the OP’s question as to whether other people thought she was drinking too much, by giving a truthful account of my own experience, and the advice given to me by several health professionals, which is that low levels of alcohol, drunk on a regular basis can be harmful for several reasons. Home drinking can mean you’re drinking more if you don’t measure the amounts properly, drinking regularly can be habit forming and can lead to problems long term, and, as several posts on here have demonstrated, some people have little or no idea what constitutes a unit of alcohol or how to use the recommended weekly units. You, and several other posters jumped on me, citing various other reasons why fatty liver had developed. Do you really think that these hadn’t been discussed and ruled out ? The liver function tests indicated fatty liver and I HAD been drinking more, and on a regular basis, and they had been home measures. On retesting several months later - after I stopped alcohol intake altogether - the results were normal. I really don’t think there can be much argument as to what caused the problem in the first place.
Since that time, I’ve tried to learn more about how alcohol affects the body, because I don’t want to get into that position again - not least because I’ve seen alcohol related illness in my own family and it’s devastating for all concerned. I tried to share some of what I learned here, and I’m quite shocked by the lengths people will go to - either by persistent argument or sheer unpleasantness, judging by some of the posts - to try to disprove something which, for whatever reason, clearly makes them uncomfortable.
In the end, how much you drink is a personal choice - you have to weigh the risks against your own consumption/enjoyment. I’m not saying, and have never advocated not drinking.
@DingDongThongs. I’m so very sorry for your loss. I lost a much loved close relative in similar circumstances about 5 years ago. She was drinking regularly, as much as a bottle of red wine most nights and didn’t see any harm in it - wouldn’t follow medical advice to either cut down or stop, and wouldn’t listen to friends or relatives who were worried for her. Regular vigilance liver scans showed she was deteriorating, but she was never diagnosed with actual cirrhosis, and I think she used this to comfort herself and stay in denial. She had a shock diagnosis of advanced lung cancer after collapsing, and died a couple of weeks later. The cancer was determined to have started in her liver from a lesion that the scans had missed, and had spread rapidly to her bones and lungs. It’s so difficult to watch someone harming themselves for so long like this - inevitably the person won’t admit to a problem, which makes helping them impossible. You find yourself in the awful position of standing by helplessly and waiting for something terrible to happen. I admit, that experience is also probably why I’ve been so vocal on this thread, because when you read between the lines, a lot of people seem to be demonstrating a similar reluctance to accept that they may be harming themselves further down the road. Damage from alcohol is largely silent for many years, and by the time it does start to cause problems it’s more difficult to deal with because the person is older, damage may be extensive, or the person may be much more dependent. I lost my husband to cancer a couple of years ago, and I know how awful the journey is. My sincere condolences.[/quote]
People haven't necessarily volunteered to be in a study about alcohol. A large proportion will have use annonymised medical records. Others may have been asked when attending medical appointments if they would take part in a questionnaire. People who don't want to divulge how much they drink won't necessarily refuse to answer the question. It's easier to lie. Even if they were volunteers why do you think they would no underestimate how much they drink at home?
Your experience of liver damage seems irrelevant to OP as she is not drinking during pregnancy.