{"id":1004,"date":"2014-01-30T23:16:30","date_gmt":"2014-01-31T07:16:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/66.147.244.209\/~canadiu3\/?p=1004"},"modified":"2014-02-06T07:08:48","modified_gmt":"2014-02-06T15:08:48","slug":"study-vodka-responsible-for-high-death-risk-in-russian-men-binge-drinking-a-major-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2014\/01\/30\/study-vodka-responsible-for-high-death-risk-in-russian-men-binge-drinking-a-major-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Study: Vodka responsible for high death risk in Russian men, binge drinking a major problem"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>
Photo from healthfoodxdrinks.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

LONDON\u2014Russian men who down large amounts of vodka\u2014and too many do\u2014have an \u201cextraordinarily\u201d high risk of an early death, a new study says.<\/p>\n

Researchers tracked about 151,000 adult men in the Russian cities of Barnaul, Byisk and Tomsk from 1999 to 2010. They interviewed them about their drinking habits and, when about 8,000 later died, followed up to monitor their causes of death.<\/p>\n

The risk of dying before age 55 for those who said they drank three or more half-litre bottles of vodka a week was a shocking 35 per cent.<\/p>\n

Overall, a quarter of Russian men die before reaching 55, compared with 7 per cent of men in the United Kingdom and less than 1 per cent in the United States. The life expectancy for men in Russia is 64 years\u2014placing it among the lowest 50 countries in the world in that category.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not clear how many Russian men drink three bottles or more a week. Lead researcher Sir Richard Peto of Oxford University said the average Russian adult drinks 20 litres of vodka per year while the average Briton drinks about three litres of spirits.<\/p>\n

\u201cRussians clearly drink a lot, but it\u2019s this pattern of getting really smashed on vodka and then continuing to drink that is dangerous,\u201d Peto said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe rate of men dying prematurely in Russia is totally out of line with the rest of Europe,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s also a heavy drinking culture in Finland and Poland but they still have nothing like Russia\u2019s risk of death.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alcohol has long been a top killer in Russia and vodka is often the drink of choice, available cheaply and often homemade in small villages. Previous studies have estimated that more than 40 per cent of working-age men in Russia die because they drink too much, including using alcohol that is not meant to be consumed like that in colognes and antiseptics.<\/p>\n

Drinking is so engrained in Russian culture there\u2019s a word that describes a drinking binge that lasts several days: \u201czapoi.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peto said there was some evidence of a similar effect in Russian women who also drank heavily but there was not enough data to draw a broad conclusion.<\/p>\n

The study was paid for by the U.K. Medical Research Council and others. It was published online Thursday in the journal Lancet.<\/p>\n

Other experts said the Russian preference for hard liquor was particularly dangerous.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re drinking vodka, you get a lot more ethanol in that than if you were drinking something like lager,\u201d said David Leon, a professor of epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who has also studied the impact of alcohol in Russia but was not part of the Lancet study.<\/p>\n

He said changing drinking patterns in Russia to combat the problem was possible but that it would take a significant cultural adjustments.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not considered out-of-order to drink until you can\u2019t function in Russia,\u201d Leon said. \u201cIt just seems to be part of being a guy in Russia that you are expected to drink heavily.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LONDON\u2014Russian men who down large amounts of vodka\u2014and too many do\u2014have an \u201cextraordinarily\u201d high risk of an early death, a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":1551,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-food","mauthors-maria-cheng","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}