Is having one or two drinks a day bad for you?

There's nothing like a glass of wine after a long day's work to take the edge off, wouldn't you agree?  Or, should you prefer instead, a couple of beers after dinner?

As long as you don't reach the point of inebriation, no harm, no foul...right?

Not according to a study released by The European Association for the Study of the Liver on April 25th of this year.

Their data shows that "the cirrhosis burden" caused by alcohol increases by 11.13% when moving from moderate to what they classify as heavy drinking:  up to one drink a day for women and two drinks a day for men.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 6% of deaths worldwide are caused by drinking alcohol.  The majority of these deaths come from alcoholic cirrhosis (half of all cirrhosis cases are caused by alcohol.)

Here are a few other interesting statistics about alcohol:

-Worldwide 16% of drinkers aged 15 years or older engage in heavy episodic drinking. (WHO)
-In general, the greater the economic wealth of a country, the more alcohol is consumed and a smaller number of people abstain. (WHO)
-Almost 50% of men and two-thirds of women do not consume alcohol. (NCADD - National Council on Alcohol and Drug Dependence, Inc.)
-Alcohol is the world's largest risk factor for disease burden; it's the highest risk factor in the Western Pacific and the Americas and the second largest in Europe. (NCADD)

Quote: - "Herb is the healing of a nation, alcohol is the destruction." - Bob Marley