A heavy New Year may have seen us vowing to stay off the booze in 2009 – but how long will it last? Well, certainly not until 2010 if the statistics are to be believed.
Grant Woodward reports.
EVERY New Year's Eve it's the same old story.
We tell ourselves to take it easy, only to end up overindulging and then waking up on January 1 cursing a super-size hangover.
Most men react to the pounding headache and feelings of nausea by vowin
g to steer clear of anything alcoholic for the forseeable future.
But before we know it that New Year's resolution is flying out of the window and the booze is flowing freely again.
No wonder then that new research shows that fewer than one in 10 men will consume less alcohol in 2009, despite warnings over the effects of excessive drinking.
Just nine per cent said they planned to cut down, even though a third are known to regularly drink more than the recommended 21 units of alcohol each week.
The poll for
The Rough Guide to Men's Health found that younger men were the least likely to want to cut down drinking, with just six per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds saying they had made it their New Year's resolution.
Men aged 35 to 44 were the most likely to give up or cut down on alcohol – but even then it was only 13 per cent.
So what are the risks?
Well, government figures suggest there are 6,000 deaths from coronary heart disease in men each year directly linked to alcohol.
And of the 1,700 deaths from mouth cancer each year, 400 are linked to heavy drinking.
In England and Wales, alcohol misuse also leads to 33,000 hospital admissions each year for alcohol-related liver disease.
Tony Goodall, Leeds's Government-appointed alcohol tsar, believes many men are kidding themselves that repeated heavy drinking is not taking its toll.
"Men in particular underestimate the potential dangers from alcohol because the long-term damage it causes is completely unseen," he says.
"There are no warning signs with alcohol. You only know what it's done to you when you've already passed through the red light."
Tony – who is looking at drinking habits as part of the Yorkshire-wide Great Drink Debate – estimates that upwards of one third of the population is drinking at levels that are damaging to health.
"In future we will see an explosion in drink-related illness and disease because we are simply storing up problems for the future.
"The trouble is that the drinks industry encourages people to drink more alcohol. It says it doesn't but everything it does is geared around increasing our alcohol consumption."
So what should we do?
Tony says the first thing is to start taking an interest in the number of units of alcohol we are getting through on a weekly basis.
The recommendation is around three or four units a day but the tricky thing is that there is a wide variation from one drink to the next.
A pint of one beer may contain two units. But swap it for a stronger variety and suddenly it leaps to three or more.
In the UK, a unit is defined as the equivalent to eight grammes or 10ml (1cl) of pure alcohol. The exact number of units in a particular drink can be calculated by multiplying the volume of the drink (in ml) by the alcoholic strength by volume (ABV)and dividing the answer by 1000.
For example, the number of units in a 440ml can of beer with an ABV of 5 per cent vol works out at 2.2.
But there's no need to dig out your calculator as drinks manufacturers now label their products with the number of units they contain.
People who regularly drink above the weekly guideline amounts – 14 units for women or 21 for men – are increasing the risk of suffering from long-term health harms like liver cirrhosis, stomach ulcers, heart disease, strokes and some cancers.
Yet Tony stresses that you don't have to give up completely to reduce the risk. Drinking a glass of water between glasses of alcohol not only staves off dehydration but also helps slow your drinking down.
Similarly, if you want to cut down when out with friends try to avoid becoming part of a round so that you can drink at your own pace rather than that of those around you.
And instead of guzzling down our pints, Tony suggests we throw caution to the wind and try sipping them for a change. Sounds crazy, but it might just work.
"The key thing is to try to get people to take control of what passes their lips," he says.
"It's not rocket science but with a little bit of thought it is possible to cut back to safe limits without a lot of pain.
"And you never know, you might even enjoy the drink a bit more too."
The Great Drink Debate runs across the Yorkshire and the Humber region until the end of January. Go to www.greatdrinkdebate.co.uk to fill in a survey and give your views on booze.
How to curb your drinking in 2009
Drink a glass of water between each drink, it will rehydrate you and make you drink less
Opt out of big rounds – they will only make you drink more, and faster
Investigate low- and no-alcohol versions of drinks
Keep tabs on the number of units you drink and try not to exceed 21 a week
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