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Topics: Alcohol, Food And Drink, Health
Brenna Cooper
It's common knowledge that drinking alcohol isn't good for your health, we're all well aware of that by now - and yet we still do it anyway.
Whether its a glass of bubbly to celebrate a special occasion or a wild night out on the tiles, most of us enjoy a drink.
According to statistics from Alcohol Change, around 49 percent of adults drink once a week, while 82 percent of adults surveyed revealed they had enjoyed a couple of bevs in the past 12 months.
However, new research has now revealed exactly how damaging knocking back the booze can be to your health, with researchers at the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research detailing how many days you could be shaving off of your lifespan due to drinking alcohol.
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The research revealed that consuming just two alcoholic drinks per week could shave between five to six days off your life.
Perhaps you enjoy relaxing with a cold beer or glass of wine at the end of a long day of work? Well, that could be costly in your later years, as having seven alcoholic drinks a week could lead to you losing two and a half months from your life.
And if you're a heavy drinker we've got some bad news for you, as knocking back 35 alcoholic drinks every week means you could lose at least two years from your life.
Now, before someone chimes in and says 'I knew somebody who drank every day and lived until the age of 90' this research is an average estimate at how alcohol can impact your life, meaning there will be exceptions to this rule.
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Perhaps you might be thinking that limiting having an alcoholic drink to special occasions or practicing viral trends such as 'zebra striping' may limit the negative impact of alcohol on your body. Unfortunately not.
According to Dr Tim Stockwell, who serves as the director at the CISUR, argues there is no safe way to drink alcohol.
His arguments are also backed up by research from the World Health Organisation, which outlines that consuming alcohol puts you at an increased risk of liver diseases, heart diseases as well as increasing your risk of developing cancers of the head and neck, colorectal, breast and liver.
"Alcohol is our favourite recreational drug. We use it for pleasure and relaxation, and the last thing we want to hear is that it causes any harm... it’s comforting to think that drinking is good for our health, but unfortunately, it’s based on poor science," he told the Daily Mail.
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Of course no one is forcing you to abstain from alcohol, but there's no harm in knowing exactly how drinking will impact your body.