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Times
4 days ago
- Health
- Times
More than one glass of wine a year is harmful, says former drugs tsar
For some, one large glass of wine may just be a well-earned reward for getting through another day at the office. However, according to a former government adviser, humans really should only be consuming up to one large glass of wine a year or risk causing themselves harm. Professor David Nutt, a neuropsychopharmacologist at Imperial College London, said that if alcohol was invented today, it would not pass safety checks and would be banned from shops. Speaking on the Instant Genius podcast, Nutt, who was the chief drugs adviser under Gordon Brown's Labour government, said: 'I can accept that 40,000 years of alcohol use is precedence but if we invented it today, we wouldn't have that precedence.' Nutt said on the Instant Genius podcast that alcohol was so damaging it was exempted from normal testing Nutt added: 'So what would we do? Well, what we would do is you would put your alcohol through food safety testing and it would fail. 'It would fail because the maximal recommended amount of alcohol any individual should consume in a year, based on the toxicology, is a large glass of wine per year. That's why they had to exempt it because you couldn't put it through normal testing so that tells you how relatively harmful alcohol is.' The earliest evidence of alcohol use comes from China in about 7,000BC when people would use clay pots to produce drinks made from fermented rice, millet, grapes and honey. The NHS now advises adults to consume no more than 14 units a week, equivalent to about five large glasses of lower-strength wine. • Last orders for post-work drinks as Gen Z shuns alcohol Nutt has long spoken about the harm done by alcohol. In 2009 he was sacked from his role as chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs by Alan Johnson, then home secretary, after claiming in a scientific paper that alcohol and tobacco were more harmful than LSD, ecstasy and cannabis. Johnson said at the time that Nutt had 'damaged efforts to give the public clear messages about the dangers of drugs'. In the role Nutt also clashed with Jacqui Smith, Johnson's predecessor as home secretary, after arguing that taking ecstasy was not more dangerous than horse riding. Last year Nutt also launched a non-alcoholic drink that can replicate some of the feelings of being tipsy. The drink, Sentia Gaba Gold, enhances a neurotransmitter in the brain that produces relaxation and makes people more sociable. However, a recent study from researchers at the University of Barcelona found that those who drank 3 to 12 small glasses of wine a month had a 38 per cent lower risk of heart disease compared with those who drank less than that. It also found that a glass of wine every night halved the risk of suffering heart attacks and strokes compared with people who did not drink.
Telegraph
5 days ago
- Health
- Telegraph
Only drink one glass of wine a year, says researcher
Prof Nutt is a neuropsychopharmacologist and the chairman of the discipline at Imperial College London, as well as a former government drugs adviser. He clashed with Jacqui Smith, the then home secretary, after comparing the 100 deaths a year from horse riding with the 30 deaths a year linked to ecstasy. His advisory committee had recommended that cannabis should not be reclassified from Class C back to Class B, leading to heavier penalties, but the recommendation was not taken on board by Ms Smith. Prof Nutt said there was a 'relatively small risk' of psychotic illness linked to cannabis use, but that to prevent one episode of schizophrenia, it would be necessary to 'stop 5,000 men aged 20 to 25 from ever using' cannabis. He also supported reclassifying ecstasy from a Class A to Class B. He has been outspoken about the harms of alcohol but has also helped his daughter open a wine bar and admitted that he enjoys a tipple on weekends and special occasions. Mixed advice on alcohol consumption Advice on alcohol consumption, and the health benefits and risks of drinking wine in particular, has often been mixed. One recent study, published in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology, suggested that champagne and white wine 'protect' the heart from cardiac arrest. It suggested long-term beliefs about the benefits of red wine may also apply to other varieties of the drink. Its thought that the polyphenols found in wine, typically associated with red wine, can play a role in lowering blood pressure and reducing the risk of heart disease. These antioxidants can be found in all types of wine but are lower in white varieties, and some experts think they can help to protect the heart and other body cells as well as the brain. However, this research does not take into account the other potential harms that alcohol can cause. Prof Nutt recommends following the guidelines set out by the NHS, which state that both men and women should not drink 'more than 14 units a week [equivalent to six pints of average-strength beer or 10 small glasses of lower-strength wine] on a regular basis'.
Daily Mail
5 days ago
- Health
- Daily Mail
Scientist claims you should only drink one glass of wine a YEAR
After a stressful day, sometimes all you want is to crack open a bottle of wine. But you'd better make it a generous pour – as a scientist claims it's only safe to drink one glass a year. The human body can only safely consume one 'large' glass of wine every 12 months because it is too 'toxic', according to Professor David Nutt, a leading drug researcher at Imperial College London. He says that if alcohol was invented today it would fail modern food safety standards because of how harmful it is to our bodies. Studies on the toxicology of alcohol - the adverse effects chemicals have on living organisms - reveal that the 'maximal recommended amount' per year is just one large glass of wine, according to the expert. Speaking on the BBC 's Instant Genius podcast, the 74-year-old said: 'I can accept that 40,000 years of alcohol use is precedence but if we invented it today we wouldn't have that precedence. 'So what would we do? Well, what we would do is you would put your alcohol through food safety testing and it would fail. 'It would fail because the maximal recommended amount of alcohol any individual should consume in a year, based on the toxicology, is a large glass of wine per year. 'So that tells you how relatively harmful alcohol is.' Professor Nutt, from Bristol, is an experienced neuropsychopharmacologist and former government chief drugs advisor. He argued that – apart from tobacco – alcohol is responsible for more deaths across the world than any other drug. However, he added: 'My approach to alcohol is not that it's all bad. If it was all bad, it would have disappeared. 'There are good aspects to it, and it would be nice if we could maximise the benefits and minimise the harms.' In recent decades some studies have found a link between the moderate consumption of red wine and improved heart health. But in 2018 a major global study, published in one of the world's leading medical journals, confirmed there is 'no safe level of alcohol consumption'. The research, published in The Lancet Public Health, said the risk of cancer and other diseases from drinking alcohol outweighs any potential protections. Commenting on the study at the time Professor David Spiegelhalter, Winton Professor for the Public Understanding of Risk at the University of Cambridge, sounded a note of caution about the findings. 'Given the pleasure presumably associated with moderate drinking, claiming there is no 'safe' level does not seem an argument for abstention,' he said. 'There is no safe level of driving, but the government does not recommend that people avoid driving. 'Come to think of it, there is no safe level of living, but nobody would recommend abstention.' In the UK, men and women are advised not to drink more than 14 units of alcohol per week on a regular basis. This is the equivalent of around four large glasses of wine.
BBC News
5 days ago
- General
- BBC News
Dinosaurs could help with future cancer treatments scientists say
Dinosaurs could be important in helping scientists find new cancer discoveries in the future, experts were able to find important structures in an ancient dino fossil, which hadn't been seen new study also suggests that the prehistoric creatures could also play a role in future treatments for because dinosaurs could help specialists better understand what the disease looked like tens of millions of years ago. What did scientists discover? The eight year study involved researchers from Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) and Imperial College, took a closer look at fossils of a Telmatosaurus transsylvanicus, a duck-billed, plant eating "marsh lizard". In 2016, scientists discovered this dinosaur had a benign tumour in its jaw called an ameloblastoma, which humans can also team put the fossil under a microscope and were surprised by what they Biancastella Cereser, from Imperial explained: "What we saw inside - there were some structures, some forms, that looked like blood cells."The team said that they also found that soft tissue and cells are more commonly preserved in ancient remains than previously could help scientists better understand the diseases that affected prehistoric creatures, including cancer, which could potentially influence how the disease is treated in humans in the Justin Stebbing from ARU, who was also involved with the study, added: "If we can understand cancer better, we can come up with better treatments."
South China Morning Post
5 days ago
- General
- South China Morning Post
How dinosaur fossils could help fill in cancer's ‘jigsaw' of molecular building blocks
Dinosaur fossils could hold the key to new cancer discoveries and influence future treatments for humans, scientists say. Advertisement In a new study published in the journal Biology that was almost a decade in the making, researchers from two UK universities – Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) and Imperial College London – identified preserved structures resembling red blood cells in the fossil of a dinosaur that had a tumour. The findings raised the possibility that prehistoric creatures could be used to study ancient tumours, helping to fill in the 'jigsaw' of cancer's molecular building blocks. This could potentially influence future treatments for humans. The idea for the study began in 2016 when Professor Justin Stebbing, an oncologist at ARU, came across a news article about the discovery of a new fossil in Romania with a tumour in its jaw. The remains were those of a juvenile Telmatosaurus transsylvanicus, a duck-billed, plant-eating 'marsh lizard' that had lived 66-70 million years ago in the Hateg Basin in present-day Romania. A sketch of Telmatosaurus transsylvanicus. Image: Debivort/CC-BY-SA-3.0 'Justin said, 'Guys, I want to go and get this tumour and see what we can get out of it,'' said Dr Biancastella Cereser, a cancer specialist at Imperial.
