Well, several new studies are
out about the effects of alcohol
that it has on men and women.
So joining us this morning is
our Nine News health expert, Dr.
Pyle Coley. Good morning.
Good morning.
Thanks for being with us. Yeah.
So this study is really interes.
One of them actually specificaly
targets women and one of them ir
both saying even one drink a dan
call can up your blood pressure even if
you don't have issues with hypertension.
Can you talk to us a little bit
about that's kind of crazy? It .
And so as physicians, this doesn't come
all that much as a surprise to ,
but we really thought that it required
a lot of alcohol in order for yo
start to see adverse health eff.
In fact, the US guidelines said
women can have one drink a day,
men can have two drinks a day.
But this is really making us question
that because as little as one
drink a day raised your systolic
blood pressure for both genders,
raised your diastolic blood pressure for men,
and again, as you said,
air kites even in people who dit
have high blood pressure before.
But if you already started to
have high blood pressure kind of
pushed you over the edge.
I want to ask for clarification,
is this what one actual drink should be?
Or is this one American?
When we go to our primary care d
they ask how often many or you ,
how many drinks do you have a w?
And then they'll pull out the we
glass and say where do you pour it to?
They're like actually you've had three
glasses whether you know it or .
It's interesting you mentioned
that because in Europe the the e
drink a day is about half of wht
it is here in the United States.
And if we went to restaurant and
they poured us half of what our
usual wine glass would look lik,
we would feel like we've been cheated. Yeah.
So we really do need to be
mindful of the dose because there appears
to be a clear dose dependent relationship,
meaning the more that you drink,
the worse it is.
And for women, it seems to be w.
Because if you think about body sizes,
we're smaller, so we have a
smaller volume of distribution.
So that same amount of alcohol s
into less volume, so to speak.
We also have less of the enzyme
called alcohol dehydrogenase,
which breaks down the alcohol.
That means that bad alcohol lins
longer and can cause toxic effe.
Well, I did you bring up women and we're
learning from new data that it's actually
affecting women and in a fatal way too.
Yes, so overall alcohol related deaths
are increasing both men and wom.
But what we're seeing is the ger
gap is narrowing, which means it used
to be that men die significantly more.
But now we're starting to see me
and more women having alcohol related
mortality and we're talking can,
we're talking heart disease,
we're talking cirrhosis or liver disease,
all kinds of different mechaniss
of alcohol related deaths.
So again, to me, this is a wake up call,
not just about the total amountf
alcohol in both genders, but also women.
It's, it's become part of our
culture to keep up with the boys
to drink as much as they do.
Why is that? Yeah.
Do you feel like it's more so because women
are actually just drinking more in general?
Is that more of where this risk is coming?
Yes, because we are trying to keep up. Yes,
We're drinking more and we have
less awareness of the risks.
And so I think we need to underd
that women are different than mn
biologically and the way that we
metabolize alcohol is different.
So the amount that we are drink,
the pace at which we're drinking needs
to really be commensurate to th.
And as physicians,
I think we need to do a better
job of now emphasizing that
no amount of alcohol is safe,
so that all adage of a, you kno,
glass of wine a day is good for your heart.
We're really turning that on its head because
a lot of those studies were confounded.
If you think about how we drink alcohol,
we usually do it in social sett,
so we're eating out as well.
We could be, you know, in a bar.
It could be affecting our sleep.
It makes us feel like we're
socializing with others.
So it could be having positive
mental health impacts.
So it's very hard to study alcohol in
isolation in terms of what its effects are.
So we just have a few seconds l.
This is a lot of information we
just threw at everybody at home.
It's probably information
you didn't want to hear,
but we have to tell you that an.
What is the big take away that f
we're going to remember one thig
about this that we should know,
dose dependent, less 2 drinks or less
a week probably OK for both gen.
But the minute you're starting to get
into three to six or more than seven,
you're really getting some of te
incremental increases in health risks. Now
what does it say about Scotch?
Because that's Ed greens drink.
Dr. Powell Corley.
The dose of alcohol.
OK, OK. And I'm sorry,
I'm trying to help you out here.