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Europeans are world's heaviest drinkers - WHO report

A barmaid pours a pint of beer at The Builders Arms pub in east London


LONDON (Reuters) - People in Europe drink more alcohol than in any other part of the world, downing the equivalent of 12.5 litres of pure alcohol a year or almost three glasses of wine a day, according to report by the World Health Organisation and the European Commission.

But while the title of world's heaviest drinkers goes to the European Union as whole, where consumption is almost double the world average, there are also wide variations in drinking levels between sub-regions, as well as big differences in how frequently, where and when people drink.

Zsuzsanna Jakab, the WHO's regional director for Europe, said Europe's "dubious honour" of having double the global average alcohol consumption has "clear, recognized health consequences for drinkers, those around them and society."

In a breakdown of drinking by sub-region, the heaviest drinkers were in central-eastern and eastern Europe - consuming 14.5 litres of pure alcohol per adult per year compared to 12.4 litres in central-western and western Europe, 11.2 litres in southern Europe and 10.4 litres in Nordic countries.

But the report found a different picture when it analysed these data weighted against indicators of so-called hazardous drinking - such as drinking outside mealtimes, drinking in public places and irregular, heavy so-called "binge" drinking.

In this context, Nordic countries clocked a hazardous drinking score of 2.8 - in a range where 1 is least detrimental and 5 is most detrimental - while central-eastern and eastern Europe scored only slightly higher at 2.9.

Central-western and western Europe and southern Europe had hazardous drinking scores of 1.5 and 1.1 respectively.

The report noted that there are more than 40 alcohol-related illnesses and disorders, including alcohol dependence and harmful alcohol use, liver disease, alcohol-induced chronic pancreatitis, alcohol poisoning, and fetal alcohol syndrome.

There are also many more problems where alcohol can be a contributing factor, such as injuries and deaths from road crashes as well as illnesses like cancer and heart disease.

The report found that in the European Union (EU), almost 12 percent of all deaths in 2004 among people aged 15-64 were due to alcohol - equivalent to 1 in 7 deaths in men and 1 in 13 deaths in women. Just over 3 percent of deaths were due to alcohol consumed by others.

Worldwide, some 2.5 million people die each year from the harmful use of alcohol, accounting for about 3.8 percent of all deaths, according to previous WHO data.

Steps to curb alcohol use also feature three times in the WHO's top 10 "best buys" for public health policies to reduce the burden of chronic diseases, which kill 36 million people a year worldwide.

The WHO backs policies such as regulating alcohol pricing, targeting drink-driving and restricting alcohol marketing which it says have been shown to be effective in cutting drinking levels. "The alcohol-related burden on health in Europe is avoidable," Jakab said.

(Reporting by Kate Kelland)

http://ph.news.yahoo.com/europeans-worlds-heaviest-drinkers-report-194109394.html

Coffee drinking not linked to chronic illness: study

A cafe employee poses for a picture as she drinks from a cup at the Kofein cafe

REUTERS - Coffee drinkers have no more risk of getting illnesses such as heart disease or cancer, and are less likely to develop type 2 diabetes, according to a German study involving more than 40,000 people over nearly a decade.

The findings, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, came in the wake of many previous studies that produced conflicting results, with some tying coffee drinking to an increase in heart disease, cancer, stroke and more.

"Our results suggest that coffee consumption is not harmful for healthy adults in respect of risk of major chronic disease," said Anna Floegel, lead author of the study and an epidemiologist at the German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke.

The researchers collected information at the beginning of the study on coffee drinking habits, diet, exercise and health from more than 42,000 German adults without any chronic conditions.

For the next nine years, the team followed up on the participants every two or three years to see whether they developed any health problems, particularly cardiovascular disease, stroke, heart attack, diabetes and cancer.

They found that coffee drinkers and non-drinkers were similarly likely to develop one of those illnesses.

For instance, 871 out of 8,689 non-drinkers developed a chronic disease, compared to 1,124 out of 12,137 people who drank more than four cups of caffeinated coffee a day -- about 10 percent in both groups.

On the other hand, the researchers found that coffee drinkers were less likely to develop type 2 diabetes, the form that does not need insulin and is linked with obesity, than those who didn't drink coffee.

Among those who drank four cups a day, 3.2 percent later reported that they had type 2 diabetes, compared to 3.6 percent of people who drank no coffee.

After taking into account factors that could influence diabetes, such as weight and smoking, the researchers determined that frequent coffee drinkers were 23 percent less likely to develop diabetes, a result that squares with other studies.

That doesn't mean that coffee is responsible for preventing type 2 diabetes, but experiments in animals have hinted that certain chemicals found within coffee could positively affect metabolism.

"We do not encourage people to start drinking coffee if they do not enjoy this, but the overall evidence on coffee and health suggests that there is no reason for persons without specific health conditions to reduce their coffee consumption in order to reduce their risk of chronic diseases," said Rob van Damn, a professor at National University of Singapore, who was not involved in the study. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/zbuAYd

(Reporting from New York by Kerry Grens at Reuters Health; Editing by Elaine Lies and Michael Perry)

http://ph.news.yahoo.com/coffee-drinking-not-linked-chronic-illness-study-015810216.html

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