Monday 11 January 2016

New Alcohol guidelines- get the facts and research data

Last week the UK introduced new health guidelines on the drinking of alcohol.
Our academic links can help you understand this and explore in more details research and statistics related to alcohol and health

Read the full text of the government consultation. The supporting documents give lists of the medical evidence behind the decision. These include the Health Evidence Expert Group report
and University of Sheffield specialist alcohol research unit.
The Guardian has created a useful infographic which makes a comparison internationally with guidelines from other nations . This shows considerable variation in levels. A point also raised by research published by University of Surrey researchers in 2012

Alcohol and health - medical evidence
Try searching NHS evidence for references to guidelines and research studies covering alcohol related disorders. There are also studies on the economic cost of alcohol to NHS services. 
Cancer Research UK has a list of references to articles that support the link between alcohol and certain cancers.
Search Pubmed for references to articles in academic and medical journals covering this topic.
Also try Findings which is supported by Alcohol UK edited by Mike Ashton which alerts to the latest research reports.

Who drinks- statistics
What percentage of the population drink regularly? find the data using these resources.
The Office for National Statistics  Opinions and lifestyle survey regularly asks questions on adult drinking habits
Health Survey for England 2014 also records levels
Smoking drinking and drug use amongst young people. 
in 2015 the OECD published a report on the high economic and social cost of alcohol consumption. It found that highly educated women tended to drink more.
 While overall consumption has decreased in OECD nations in the last 20 years, it has risen for educated people. Get the full facts from OECDilibrary (LSE)
The Institute of Alcohol Studies has summaries of recent research on consumption trends and discussion of their significance and causes.

Practical advice
Find out how much you really drink and how much you save by cutting back by using the Drink aware app Note this may still have the older guidelines for men
NHS choices guidance and advice.


LSE staff and student scan also use our subscription based medical databases. These include:
Web of science.
Cinahl
scopus

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