The A-Files, Alcohol A-Z for Alcohol Awareness Month: Economic Impact

Twenty-six episodes of 'The A-Files' will run throughout Alcohol Awareness Month on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Alcohologist.com and AddictedMinds.com, among other web and social media sites. Episode E explores the economic impact of drinking moderately or alcoholically. Alcohol use costs the U.S. $250 billion, every single year. That's enough to buy a 48 inch HDTV for every man, woman and child in the U.S. The costs are in healthcare, lost productivity, legal and corrections costs. Alcoholism is part of the total, but $250 billion is driven by all drinking, even social or moderate use.

The monetary consequences are something everyone shares: Drinkers and non-drinkers alike. The numbers get complicated, because the drug Americans enjoy and defend so vigorously, also costs the most in health and hard dollars. Each drink consumed has a median cost of $1.91 in economic harm (lost productivity, health care costs, property damage and criminal justice system expenses). That's according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). So the drinker pays for that in alcohol tax, right? No. The median paid in tax per drink is less than a quarter.

Even if drinkers bore the full $1.91, everyone else still pays in lost productivity. Show up late, never, hungover or just without your A-game and someone has to step in or step up. It doesn't always happen that way. Which costs the company. So the company charges more for its goods or services. Lost productivity, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is more than 70 percent of the $250 billion annual cost of alcohol use in the United States. We all pay… no matter if we shop Walmart or Macy's.

Here's another way to look at the economic harm. There is an alcohol-related hospital admission every 30 seconds and, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) 20-40 percent of general use (non-specialty) hospital beds are used to tend to alcohol-related complications. Heroin addicts aren't breaking the healthcare system. Aging Baby Boomers aren't pushing it past capacity. Alcohol use is drowning it.

To drive down healthcare costs and improve access, reduce what is driving illness overall. We can’t hope for better access to healthcare, cheaper premiums and lower taxes if we do not help people from drinking themselves into the system. What causes problems, is one.
The entire 26 episode HD series is available on disc, along with fact sheets, for helping professions. See the special at tr.im/AFiles

Visit alcohologist.com for a replay of CBS Sports' Power Up Your Health featuring Scott Stevens.  Another interview is on Alcohol Awareness.  Syndicated radio program Savvy Central Radio did this interview, too. Lucy Pireel's "All That's Written" included a feature called "When alcohol doesn't work for you anymore."  Details on the third literary award for Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud and the first for Adding Fire to the Fuel also can be found on www.alcohologist.com. Download the FREE Alcohology app in the Google PlayStore today. Stevens also is the public relations officer with AddictedMinds.com 

The A-Files, Alcohol A-Z for Alcohol Awareness Month: Breast Cancer

(link to entire article)

Twenty-six episodes of 'The A-Files' will run throughout Alcohol Awareness Month on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Alcohologist.com and AddictedMinds.com, among other web and social media sites. Episode B covers the only dietary link to an increased risk of breast cancer.

A University of Houston researcher and his team have discovered an important link between alcohol and breast cancer by identifying a cancer-causing gene triggered by alcohol. The 2015 Houston research shows alcohol enhances the actions of estrogen in driving the growth of breast cancer cells and diminishes the effects of the cancer drug Tamoxifen on blocking estrogen by increasing the levels of a cancer-causing gene.

To date, the only dietary link to an increased risk of breast cancer is alcohol use. One in eight women will have an encounter with breast cancer in her lifetime. It takes relatively little alcohol to boost the cancer risk. As little as one drink a day can provide a double digit increase in the chance of getting the disease. Three or more servings of alcohol per day gives you the same risk as a daily pack of cigarettes.

Alcohol increases production of estrogen. Estrogen increases are behind 80 percent of breast cancers. Toxic alcohol also creates another toxin – acetaldehyde. That second toxin has been shown to alter DNA and breast tissue in younger drinkers, leading to increased cancer risk later in life. A Journal of the National Cancer Institute report showed a double-digit increase in breast cancer risk for women who drank as little as one drink daily between the first menstruation and the first pregnancy. The results were independent of drinking after first pregnancy. That study also discovered an increase in benign breast disease, a non-cancerous condition which accounts for 80 percent of breast lumps. These benign lumps do increase the risk of breast cancer by 500 percent. The more alcohol consumed between the onset of the first menstrual period and the first pregnancy, the greater the risk for both benign breast disease and breast cancer.

More than 100 studies 1920-2014 have conclusively linked alcohol consumption to increased breast cancer risk. A consensus panel formed by the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) in 2007 concluded: "The evidence on cancer justifies a recommendation not to drink alcoholic drinks" ... a recommendation still maintained by the organization.

The entire 26 episode HD series is available on disc, along with fact sheets, for helping professions. See the preorder special at tr.im/AFiles

Visit alcohologist.com for a replay of CBS Sports' Power Up Your Health featuring Scott Stevens.  Another interview is on Alcohol Awareness.  Syndicated radio program Savvy Central Radio did this interview, too. Lucy Pireel's "All That's Written" included a feature called "When alcohol doesn't work for you anymore."  Details on the third literary award for Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud and the first for Adding Fire to the Fuel also can be found on www.alcohologist.com. Download the FREE Alcohology app in the Google PlayStore today. Stevens also is the public relations officer with AddictedMinds.com 

Free Alcohology app v2.0 released for those questioning alcohol use

(News Release)

(Burlington, WI – Jan. 22, 2016) The updated Alcohology app version 2.0 is free, and ad-free, effective Jan. 21, 2016. The Android app includes 70 video vignettes supporting the fact that sobriety is a better thing to have than to lack. Alcohology looks at alcohol’s role in health issues from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome to cancer to dementia, plus has sobriety-saving hints in its mini-features. The app is geared toward those new to sobriety and those in pre-contemplation: Thinking about the choice not to drink, but need evidence that what causes problems is one.

The app update – available only for Android devices and not designed for Apple IOS at this time – is timed to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the platform as well as the Dry January initiative. Dry January began in the United Kingdom three years ago, with Alcohology Books author and app creator, Scott Stevens, being among the first to pick up the theme in 2013 in the United States.

Stevens describes the app as serving two roles. “First, for the alcoholic and non-alcoholic alike, it shows what the toxin and known carcinogen does to you instead of what it does for you, or what  you think it does for you. There’s a gulf of misinformation about alcohol’s short- and long-term health consequences.” He describes observational-studies as “widely reported wishful thinking discredited by evidence-based science.”

The main goal for the app, in Stevens’ view, is to help those considering abstinence, and those in early sobriety. “There is a constellation of motivators that will get a person to seriously consider his or her drinking choice. The health damage, especially the link to cancer, is one point in that constellation. It’s an eye-opener.”

The app can be found in the GooglePlay store or by typing in the shortened URLhttp://bit.ly/1K08gtR. Among the Alcohology app’s vignettes:

Six Sobriety-Saving Tips
Binge Drinking vs. Daily Drinking Hazards
Breaking the Alcohol-Is-Heart-Healthy Myth
Alcohol Recovery Medications and the Quest for the Holy Grail
Four Signs of Alcohol-Related Liver Damage
Three Ways Alcohol Can Trigger Asthma

Each one- to two-minute segment covers one topic culled from evidence-based research. Video files and transcripts, which include citations of the scientific studies used, are found on the parent website, www.alcohologist.com.
Visit alcohologist.com for a replay of CBS Sports' Power Up Your Health featuring Scott Stevens.  Host Ed Forteau led a discussion on risky myths of about "healthy" drinking.  Lucy Pireel's "All That's Written" included a feature on Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud called "When alcohol doesn't work for you anymore."  Details on the third literary award for Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud and the first for Adding Fire to the Fuel also can be found on www.alcohologist.com. Download the FREE Alcohology app in the Google PlayStore today. Stevens also is the public relations officer with AddictedMinds.com.

Why 2016 fat-loss goals will fail for alcohol users

The most popular New Year's resolution: Drop weight. The least successful New Year's Resolution: The same one. Drinking may have a role in the missed goals. (Watch the YouTube video or read the entire article. )

The body uses as fuel macronutrients stored from the things you eat. Macronutrients is the expensive way to say carbohydrates, fat and protein. Pure alcohol has none of those. The macronutrients in alcoholic beverages come from what carries the alcohol or the mixer used. For example, a shot of whiskey is 40 percent pure alcohol, the remaining 60 percent is water and colors/flavorings. Mix the shot with a glass of ginger ale, and you add more carbs with the sugars. These carbs do not get burned and no stored body fat is going to get burned until the body first gets rid of the toxin, alcohol.

Alcohol is the first fuel to get burned in other words. Fat burning is postponed for alcoholics and non-alcoholics alike because fat won't burn when there's alcohol in the body.

Pure alcohol also is calorie dense at seven calories per gram. Only fat is denser at 9 calories per gram. Alcohol's seven calories lack the macronutrients beneficial for a healthy metabolism, so even if a dieter swaps out food for alcohol, the alcohol calories aren't useful. In fact alcohol calories hasten fat storage since they don't benefit digestion.

Speaking of fat burning, men… listen up. Alcohol reduces testosterone. Sure, some of us alcoholics may act like caveman and all lumbersexual as if the alcohol tripled testosterone, but alcohol actually cuts it by a third. Testosterone is the body's anabolic hormone that contributes to lean muscle gain. Lower testosterone from alcohol use means less muscle, less muscle means a lower metabolic rate, and the metabolic rate dictates the body's potential to burn fat.

If you want to burn off fat pounds, your body is designed to do that, too, naturally. But it won't happen with alcohol. It's another reason why sobriety is a better thing to have than to lack.
Visit alcohologist.com for a replay of CBS Sports' Power Up Your Health featuring Scott Stevens.  Host Ed Forteau led a discussion on risky myths of about "healthy" drinking.  Lucy Pireel's "All That's Written" included a feature on Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud called "When alcohol doesn't work for you anymore."  Details on the third literary award for Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud and the first for Adding Fire to the Fuel also can be found on www.alcohologist.com. Download the FREE Alcohology app in the Google PlayStore today. Stevens also is the public relations officer with AddictedMinds.com and works with TheAddictionsAcademy as well.