Did anybody see the Panaroma about binge drinking last night?

[Orangelight23]

Real eye opener for me. Women in their 30s being diagnosed with liver disease. I must admit I have myself been drawn into wine culture and drinking wine to relax.

It's made me have a real think about my alcohol intake to be honest.

No because life is too short and I like wine 🍷

This attitude is the problem - why is alcohol excess fine when it causes a huge amount of medical & social harm & criminal behaviour? Costs in England are estimated at £27 billion - double the revenue from alcohol taxes. We'd pretty much wipe out the UK debt black hole if alcohol didn't exist, plus have far less human misery from child abuse & neglect & physical & sexual violence, drink driving & alcoholism.

https://www.ias.org.uk/news/27-4-billion-cost-of-alcohol-harm-in-england-every-year/

Plus if you knew half of the stuff that was in food you wouldn't eat that either. There are things in certain foods that contribute to getting cancer.
But who doesn't love a good fry up or Macdonalds?

@AquaPeer there are other and better sources of information. I'm sorry but it's extremely naive to trust their framing and messaging without question, given it is alcohol funded. Would you do the same for the Tobacco industry?
By all means people can read this stuff, but it's always good to be critical of sources.

We occasionally (once a month if we're lucky) go to our local microbrewery's 'tap day' and the level of consumption there is epic. One chap who we hadn't seen for a while was there last weekend. Turned out he'd suffered a heart attack earlier in the year and proudly explained how he'd subsequently completely changed his lifestyle. One of the changes included reducing his alcohol consumption - instead of drinking 8 pints in 4 hours on tap day, he'd reduced it to 4 pints...

My MIL must have consumed vast quantities of gin during her lifetime and still has a couple each evening now she's in her early 80s. She was also a pretty heavy smoker until 5-10 years ago. She does sod all exercise. I do wonder if some people have the ability to kick the arse out of their life and still remain relatively unscathed (genetics?). 🤔

I lost my dbro to liver failure. He was a social drinker. Had literally a few days from ascites to breathing his last.
I haven't drunk alcohol since.

I would say that's par for the course for 90% of my work colleagues. All educated middle aged and older professionals.

These are the genes we need to study and proliferate!!

I hope your MIL had loads of kids.

I'm going to encourage my son to have kids with a woman who comes from a long line of smoking and drinking family that all lived to very old age .

Maybe this is the message we should be spreading rather than 'drink less'.

Another thing about alcohol and health are the levels of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, which can lead to intellectual and behavioural issues. The UK has the 4th highest level of this in the world, about at least 2-4% of population.
On one hand we talk a lot about the explosion in behavioural disorders, but very little is spoken about the contribution of alcohol to that.

I agree with this. The one positive thing I've done in terms of 'vices' is never being much of a drinker (after a heavy binge period from 15-20 I've only ever drunk when 'out out' which got less the older I got) I've eaten badly, was a social smoker, sunbathed, hardly ever excercised, too much stress, too little sleep, until I turned it round at 50. And although I say it as shouldn't, I look WAY better than I deserve to. Notably, my skin and eyes are clear and I have very little belly fat, still a 24" waist. I credit it entirely to not drinking, probably the avoidance of shed loads of sugar. As I've broken literally every other 'rule'.

That's interesting. How would you determine whether someone had liver damage if their liver function tests were normal?

I like a drink. I know when to stop. I don’t want to give up x

I think a scan will show the damage?

I didn't watch this (thank god!)
I definitely drink more than the recommended amount of units per week. I'm trying to cut back but I love a drink at the end of the day. It relaxes me. I hope I'm not fucking up my health.

That made me laugh! She did indeed have 4 kids.

My late FIL was also a very heavy drinker (the stories of his 'hilarious' drunken exploits are the stuff of legend) and smoker. He made it to 80, albeit with T2 diabetes and subsequently lung cancer.

Sorry I'm talking about people in general not myself. I mean I'm pregnant so haven't drank since I found out even then I've never been a big drinker the occasional cold beer here or there or Bailey's coffees. Had my first child quite young so missed out on the wild partying most people go through.
It just surprises me when I hear the stories about women in their 30s getting diagnosed with liver disease after drinking a glass of wine a night, because SO many people drink that much if not more.

If someone gets liver disease at 56, she was a heavy drinker, whether you knew about it or not. Plenty of people hide it. I’m sorry for your loss though, I’ve lost people to alcoholism and it’s tragic.

So not something that you could routinely request?

It's very frightening reading some of the stories on this thread and that documentary was (pardon the pun) a very sobering watch. We moderate our alcohol consumption, but I do wonder about cutting it out completely.

So you are just going to conveniently ignore people pointing out that medications can cause liver damage?

I'm a non-drinker and I find the complete obsession with alcohol in this country bewildering!

People seem to think they can't enjoy a meal/night out/party/evening in front of the TV without a drink.

This definitely needs to be studied a lot more if you ask me I know quite a few families where the parents are drinkers and the children have a flat philtrum and low iq which are the main signs.
It seems to only get diagnosed when the child is in foster care or has been adopted obviously it takes a lot of balls for a doctor to tell a parent they caused their kids own disability.

If you’d ever watched anyone die from cirrhosis you wouldn’t be flippant about drinking too much. Liver disease has no symptoms until it’s too late, if you are regularly drinking over the recommended amount I’d advise you to get a liver function test.

I think they do these scanning sessions for people who are worried

Also it says here about asking for one so it seems people can do this

https://britishlivertrust.org.uk/information-and-support/liver-conditions/alcohol-related-liver-disease/#:~:text=Ask%20your%20doctor%20for%20a,over%2050%20units%20a%20week.

I’m not aware of another app where you can enter your drinks, have units and tolerances calculated and get dashboards of your data /history- but I would love to hear of one, because drink aware is very basic in terms of the choice of drink you can enter, which is frustrating

Thank you so much for this information - that's really helpful.