Three dry days a week reduces risk of alcohol related liver disease

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDOct 24 2011

According to British researchers drinkers should have three alcohol-free days a week if they want to avoid the risk of liver disease.

The Royal College of Physicians said the present official guidance on healthy drinking limits is ‘extremely dangerous’ and must be rewritten – because it implies that drinking every day is fine. Government advice states men should drink no more than four units a day and women no more than three.

The doctors from RCP said the risk of liver disease, alcohol dependence and serious illness increases if people drink every day rather than taking time off. They also urged Ministers to consider imposing stricter guidelines on pensioners – perhaps as little as seven units a week for older women and 11 for older men. Older people’s bodies are more affected by regular drinking, which puts them at risk of dementia, depression and falls, they said. Yet pensioners are currently given the same guidelines as all adults.

In their submission to MPs on the Commons science and technology committee, the doctors said, “Government guidelines should recognize that hazardous drinking has two components: frequency of drinking and amount of drinking. To ignore either of these components is scientifically unjustified. A simple addition would remedy this – namely a recommendation that to remain within safe limits people have three alcohol-free days a week.” They added, “The implied sanctioning of a pattern of regular daily drinking is potentially extremely dangerous…Frequency is an important risk factor for development of alcohol dependency and alcoholic liver disease.”

The paper added, “Further studies have shown an increased risk of cirrhosis for those who drink daily or near-daily compared to those who drink periodically or intermittently.” Young regular drinkers were particularly at risk, it said. A 2009 study showed increases in UK liver deaths “are the results of daily or near-daily heavy drinking, not episodic or binge drinking. This regular drinking pattern is discernable at an early age”, the paper said. Middle-class women are particularly at risk of daily drinking as they often have a glass or two of wine after work, followed by more at the weekend.

One unit is the equivalent of one small glass of wine (125ml or 8g of alcohol) or half a pint of lager. More than 16,000 people die from liver disease, usually caused by excessive drinking, every year in the UK. It is Britain’s fifth biggest killer and the only major cause of death increasing year-on-year. Twice as many people die of it now than in 1991 and rates have soared by 13 per cent since 2005. The British Liver Trust says liver disease is the biggest cause of premature death for women, and the second only to heart attacks for men. Government experts expect the cost of treating people with liver disease will soar by 50 per cent in four years to more than £2billion.

Sir Ian Gilmore, RCP special adviser on alcohol, said, “We recommend a safe limit of 0-21 units a week for men and 0-14 units a week for women provided the total amount is not drunk in one or two bouts and that there are two to three alcohol-free days a week. At these levels, most individuals are unlikely to come to harm.”

Speaking to the BBC News Channel after his address to the Royal College of GPs' conference in Liverpool, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said alcohol abuse needed to be addressed. “Essentially in this country we have two ways in which people abuse alcohol. One is binge drinking - far too much drink at one time - the other is chronic alcohol abuse and we need to act on both, and we are acting on both.”