The study was conducted by Dr Hye Jung Shin and colleagues from the National Medical Center, Seoul, South Korea. They presented their study at the European and International Congress on Obesity has found that alcohol use increases the risk of obesity. They used health data and alcohol consumption from the Korean National Health Insurance System for more than 14 million men and 12 million women age 20 and older from South Korea over a two-year period.
Even after accounting for potentially confounding factors including age, physical exercise, smoking, and income, the analysis showed a strong association between alcohol consumption and obesity, as well as between alcohol intake and metabolic syndrome (a cluster of conditions including overweight/obesity, abnormal blood sugar, high blood pressure and abnormal blood fats that put people at higher risk of heart disease, heart attacks and stroke if uncontrolled).
The study found, compared with Korean who do not consume any alcohol, men who consumed,
- an average of half to one standard unit of alcohol per day were roughly 10% more likely to have obesity and metabolic syndrome;
- those who consumed two standard units of alcohol per day raised the risk by up to 25%; and
- those who consumed over two standard units of alcohol per day had a 34% higher risk for obesity and 42% higher risk for metabolic syndrome.
For Korean women, compared alcohol abstainers, the study found,
- consuming on average a half to one standard unit of alcohol per day increased obesity risk by 9%; and
- consuming over two standard units of alcohol per day Korean women had 22% and 18% higher risk of obesity and of metabolic syndrome respectively.
In this study one standard unit of alcohol is defined as 14 grams of alcohol. This is equivalent to a small glass of wine, a bottle of beer or a shot of liquor.
Our results suggest that the risk of obesity and metabolic syndrome increases in proportion to alcohol consumption when male and female adults drink more than half a standard drink per day,” said the researchers, as per UPI.
Dr Hye Jung Shin and colleagues, National Medical Center, Seoul, South Korea
