Chief Medical Officer Issues Warning Over Women’s Drinking

Sample News Big

As Mouth Cancer Action Month draws to a close, Britain’s Chief Medical Officer has warned that women are drinking too much, as rates of liver disease are on the rise in the UK.

Drinking is a major risk factor for oral cancer and the British Dental Health Foundation has been working to raise awareness of the increasingly prevalent condition over the past 3 weeks as part of Mouth Cancer Action Month; however, as the campaign runs into its final days, women are being warned of other risks associated with drinking too much alcohol.

Britain’s Chief Medical Officer, Professor Dame Sally Davies, said that women are at risk of liver disease because they are drinking too much; in the last decade alone, the number of women affected by liver disease has increased by a fifth, while rates in other European countries have decreased.

According to Professor Dame Sally Davies, women are putting their health at risk because they are trying to drink as much as men; she added that young women drink much more than previous generations, with some consuming more than a week’s worth of alcohol on a regular Friday or Saturday night.

Binge drinking is a huge problem among young women, but women who drink on a regular basis are also at risk; professional women who go for a drink after work most days or go home to a couple of glasses of wine with their dinner are probably exceeding the recommended intake of alcohol without even realising it.

Professor Dame Sally Davies added that women do not realise that their lives are not capable of managing alcohol in the same way as a man’s liver and advised women that they should be drinking “considerably less than men.” Reasons attributed to increases in alcohol consumption among women include price and changes in culture and attitudes to drinking.

Professor Dame Davies’ comments come shortly after she published a report on the nation’s drinking habits; liver cirrhosis now kills 16 people out of every 100,000 and Davies said that it should act as a “stark reminder of the preventable damage that eating too much and drinking too much alcohol can do” and she called for “urgent action.”

Join this Discussion

Comments are closed.