Alcohol Truths: How Much is Safe?

One of the questions people often ask about drinking alcohol is how much is safe?   In this episode of Breaking the Bottle Legacy, Molly Watts discusses the idea of safety in terms of physical health, social health and financial health. When evaluating your decision to drink or not, the advice offered here is to use the best data you can to create your own risk/rewards analysis.  There are considerations to make when choosing to drink and there may be valid reasons as to why you want to include alcohol as a lifestyle choice.  Research indicates that alcohol offers no health benefits that outweigh the health harms for our physical health. If you do not already drink, the recommendation is that you should not start drinking for any proposed health benefit.  If we accept the fact that alcohol is not offering health benefit, then the goal becomes harm reduction.  The therapeutic effects of alcohol are very limited and are dose-dependent. To offer any positive effect, alcohol should be consumed in limited amounts.  Beyond physical health, our social health is important and also offers some physical health benefits when we are socially healthy. To that end, alcohol has been show to increase social behaviors and has been a part of cultural and social growth for centuries. For this reason, it is reasonable to want to include alcohol as a part of social interactions.  Lastly, alcohol presents an opportunity cost when it comes to financial health. It's important to be aware of the money that you spend on alcohol and to make sure that it aligns with your long-term financial goals.  In the end, you need to evaluate your relationship with alcohol in all areas: physical health, social health and financial health to determine what is a safe level for you.  For a FREE report "Alcohol Truths: How much is SAFE?" please visit www.mollywatts.com    ★ Support this podcast ★