Proposed update to Canada’s alcohol guidelines suggests as few as 3 drinks per week

Canada’s decade-old drinking guidelines warns of increased health risks from as few as three drinks per week and calls for mandatory labelling of all alcoholic beverages.In its suggested update to Canada’s Low-Risk Alcohol Drinking Guidelines, the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA) eschews offering a specific daily or weekly limit in favour of outlining a continuum of risk and urging “less is better.” ‘Young people should not drink’: World study challenges alcohol guidelines The Ottawa-based centre says risk is negligible-to-low for two drinks per week, moderate for three-to-six drinks per week and increasingly high beyond that.It’s a stark shift from current guidelines that were released in 2011, which limit alcohol use to 10 drinks a week for women and 15 drinks a week for men.But the CCSA says a review of more than 5,000 peer-reviewed studies shows that even very small amounts of alcohol can be harmful, with alcohol now recognized as a risk factor for an increasing number of diseases.The CCSA says that includes at least seven types of cancer, with alcohol to blame for nearly 7,000 cases of cancer deaths each year.

It says most cases are breast or colon cancer, followed by cancers of the rectum, mouth and throat, liver, esophagus and larynx.The report also dispels the notion that drinking in moderation protects against heart disease, pointing to recent research that found drinking a little alcohol neither decreases nor increases the risk and that at higher levels, alcohol is a risk factor for most types of cardiovascular disease.The CCSA notes that a significant proportion of alcohol-attributable deaths in Canada were among people following the 2011 guidelines.The CCSA opened online public.