Lunch with the neurologist was to research a book, but I grabbed the opportunity for free advice and asked what was one thing I could do to protect my own brain.
“Stop drinking,” she said.
Illustration: Dionne Gain. Credit:
“Thanks, but I hardly drink.” I stated my personal number of weekly standard drinks a week, adding: “I’m not lying.”
“You asked what was the one thing you could do,” she said, “and I’ve told you. Anyway, aren’t we meant to be talking about this book?”
It was the second time in a month a medical specialist had told me to quit a habit I didn’t even have. The first was my cardiologist, who said the most underreported medical story in our time is the carcinogenic effects of alcohol. “It causes as much cancer as smoking,” he said. “You’re a journalist, you should be writing about it.”
So this month, when Barnaby Joyce became the horizontal poster boy for Febfast, or lent for him and other observant Christians, I’m “celebrating” two years on the wagon and finally doing what the doctors told me to do.
Second things first: my cardiologist is, of course, right. Alcohol increases the risk of cancer to every body part it touches as it goes down: the mouth, the throat, the oesophagus, the stomach, the liver, the colon and the rectum. Continuing its trajectory, alcohol may also cause cancer of the toilet bowl.
Alcohol also increases the risk of cancer in places it doesn’t touch: breast and skin cancer are more common in drinkers. Let The Lancet speak: “A recent study that included data from more than 1,000 alcohol studies and data sources, as well as death and disability records from 195 countries and territories from 1990 to 2016, concluded that the optimal number of drinks to consume per day to minimise the overall risk to health is zero.”
Wowsers! There’s only one thing more boring than a heavy drinker
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16.02.2024
Lunch with the neurologist was to research a book, but I grabbed the opportunity for free advice and asked what was one thing I could do to protect my own brain.
“Stop drinking,” she said.
Illustration: Dionne Gain. Credit:
“Thanks, but I hardly drink.” I stated my personal number of weekly standard drinks a week, adding: “I’m not lying.”
“You asked what was the one thing you could do,” she said, “and I’ve told you. Anyway,........
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