Health chiefs are urging the Government to consider following Canadian health authorities’ new advice which recommends drinking just a pint a week.
Beaumont liver specialist, Dr John Ryan, said that the soundings from Canada shows that “there is no safe limit for drinking alcohol.”
The new guidelines on safe drinking from the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA) concludes that any alcohol consumption is harmful and it makes the call to introduce new recommended lower weekly quotas of just two drinks a week.
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The CCSA actually goes further than a two drinks limit and calls for people not to drink at all to avoid the health risks caused by alcohol.
And a top medical expert in Ireland believes their concerns have merit and he is urging the Government here to consider the Canadians’ move to cut down on our own cases of heart disease, stroke and cancer.
Dr John Ryan is a hepatologist consultant (liver specialist) at Beaumont Hospital in Dublin and he said: “These guidelines reflect that there is no safe limit for drinking alcohol…. They seem very stark and severe, but that’s where they’re coming from.”
Dr Ryan was speaking on RTE’s Today with Claire Byrne programme.
He added: “Two standard drinks might just be a pint, or a large glass of wine, so you’d get through that very, very quickly and it’s probably a good thing that we’re debating it and highlighting our relationship with alcohol individually and thinking to ourselves how best we might be able to cut down on our drink or in any kind of safer way.”
A spokesman for the HSE last night said: “We are aware of these new guidelines in Canada and will form an opinion once we've reviewed them.”
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