Take a Drink?

I was on the NHS media monitoring site, when I came across this intensely depressing article about a child with Korsakoff's syndrome, (alcohol related dementia). Scotland has the highest rate of this disease and already has two nursing homes dedicated to younger sufferers of this, in Glasgow.

There's many reasons for our national drink problem, which I have discussed in other posts. But what worries me, is that guides to how much we drink are out-of-date. For example most of them base their calculations for wine on a 125ml glass at a strength of 12%. What most people are being served, is a 175ml glass at 13%. To give you an idea of the difference, look at the picture here. The glass on the left has 125ml, the glass in the middle, 175ml, and the glass at the end, 250ml.If you drink a 125ml glass at 12%, that is 1.5 units. If you drink a 175ml glass at 13%, that is 2.3 units.

I want people to enjoy themselves. But I also want people to be safe and healthy. So I'm putting this link, Drink Unit Calculator in the blog list, so that you can check how much you're really drinking. We really need to take responsibility for our health, and watch out for those in our company who have a drink problem and help them. Only when the culture changes and it's acceptable for people to take a soft drink without it being remarked on, will we really get to grips with this problem.