Alcohol consumption | “Recommendations must change”

One or two glasses a day for women, two or three for men, no more than five times a week? These benchmarks must be revised downwards, estimates a committee of Canadian experts, according to whom the risk becomes “high” from seven drinks per week.

Catherine Handfield
The Press

On Monday, the Canadian Center on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA) released plans to update Canada’s Low-Risk Alcohol Drinking Guidelines. This report is first presented to the public before the publication of the final results on 15 November.

According to the group of experts co-chaired by Quebec sociologist Catherine Paradis, “science is evolving” and “recommendations concerning the quantities of alcohol must change”.

The report therefore proposes a “risk continuum” to the population, based on international data and mathematical modelling. The alcohol-related risk would thus be “negligible to low” with one or two drinks per week, “moderate” with three to six drinks per week, and “high” with six or more drinks per week.

“We are well aware that these new benchmarks will be surprising, destabilizing, shocking for some people, but the population has the right to know,” says Catherine Paradis, acting associate director of research at the CCSA.

These new benchmarks have “three reasons for being”: alcohol can cause at least seven types of cancer, including breast and colon cancer; alcohol is “not good for the heart”; and finally, alcohol increases the risk of violence.

“Alcohol is a carcinogen, and contrary to popular belief, current data shows that drinking a little alcohol does not significantly reduce the risk of heart disease. When it comes to alcohol consumption, less is better”, summarizes Catherine Paradis.

The group intends to recommend that Health Canada adopt regulations to mandate the labeling of these new Canadian landmarks, health warnings and nutritional information.

It should be noted that the current recommendations proposed by Éduc’alcool (10 or 15 glasses per week) come from an analysis conducted by the CCSA between 2009 and 2011. With the exception of Catherine Paradis, no Quebec scientist sat on the committee. experts who piloted the new report.

Mixed reactions

Director of Prevention at the Montreal Heart Institute, Dr.^r Martin Juneau sits on the “independent and voluntary” scientific committee of Éduc’alcool. It is true, he says, that alcohol consumption is trivialized in Quebec and that many Quebecers drink too much. Drinking a bottle of wine for two, every evening, “it’s too much”.

“Where I disagree with the new recommendation is that for them the only correct consumption is zero,” says the D^r Juneau. According to his reading of even the most recent scientific literature, there is a protective effect associated with low wine consumption for cardiovascular disease.

“If we take wine consumers by quintile, from the least heavy drinker to the heaviest, there is a protective effect of wine that we don’t see with spirits and beer,” says Dr.^r Juneau, according to whom the window is “narrow”: one glass per day, maximum two.

The D^r Juneau also wonders about the effect of these new benchmarks from a public health point of view.

The cardiologist stresses that drinking advice should vary from person to person, with each case being different.

The D^r Réal Morin, medical specialist in public health and preventive medicine at the National Institute of Public Health, sees for his part in the report of the CCSA expert group a rigorous work.

“It’s a report produced by top researchers, very qualified scientists, who have done very thorough work,” he said. We will certainly build on this work to think about our own issues on alcohol and public health. »

Alcohol is a risk factor, recalls the D^r Morin, and its scope is not well known to the population. According to him, the report refutes this idea that alcohol can be good for your health. “No, alcohol is never good for your health”, says the D^r Réal Morin, who gives credit to scientists who question the protective effect of alcohol. “Less is always more,” he says. This is something important for the public to know. »

Éduc’alcool did not wish to comment on the conclusions of the report on Tuesday, preferring to first analyze the content of the update project with its scientific advisers.