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00:00Cheers, thanks.
00:28Looks great.
00:30So, yeah, I drink.
00:36I enjoy beer.
00:37I love a good whiskey sour.
00:39My wife makes some of the best cocktails you have ever tasted.
00:43And I'm not alone.
00:45I mean, drinking is everywhere.
00:48Birthdays, weddings, game nights, funerals, wrap parties, old science videos on my YouTube
00:53channel.
00:54I feel buzzed, so I'm gonna say .07 maybe.
00:56I stand by those videos.
00:58So, I'm just as drunk as you guys.
01:01Anyway, drinking marks beginnings, endings, and everything in between.
01:05In fact, 40% of Canadians drink more than six standard drinks a week.
01:11Let me show you what I mean by a standard drink.
01:13If you don't mind.
01:15No problem.
01:16For beer, one standard drink is a 341-milliliter glass.
01:22For wine, it's 142 milliliters.
01:26For years, Canadians were told that 15 drinks a week for men and 10 for women was considered
01:31safe.
01:32In 2023.
01:33In 2023, this happened.
01:35A new report from the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction says the science
01:41has evolved and so must the guidance.
01:43The new proposed recommendations are a sobering shift from Canada.
01:47I was one of the people that was saying that science was flawed.
01:50There's new science.
01:51There's new data.
01:53So, Health Canada asked to develop a set of guidance based on the most up-to-date evidence
02:00and estimated at what level of alcohol use does our risk increase.
02:03It was the number one news story that week in the world.
02:08You might want to put down your drink to hear this.
02:12Low risk is now defined as two or fewer standard drinks a week.
02:16Any more than that and the risks start climbing fast.
02:19That shocked people.
02:20Outraged, shocked.
02:22There was a lot of pushback referring to us as puritanical killjoys.
02:27Even the scientific community was surprised.
02:30We all heard about that with shock in a way because it was so conservative.
02:34That hit a lot of people pretty hard.
02:36So, if you were drinking five drinks a week, you were suddenly in an at-risk category,
02:40whereas previously you thought of yourself as pretty virtuous.
02:47So, what does this mean for me and people like me who drink more than two drinks a week?
02:53Personally, I wanted answers.
02:55So, on behalf of moderate drinkers everywhere,
02:58I followed the trail across the country,
03:00down a few pretty surprising rabbit holes,
03:03and across the ocean to meet the scientists behind the new data.
03:07The new science of alcohol.
03:10Cheers.
03:11To start, I'm interested in the psychological and social implications of drinking in moderation.
03:28You know, the good vibes that come with a few drinks with friends.
03:31Check it out.
03:32University of Illinois.
03:33This is their psych building.
03:34Which is why I am here, at the Alcohol Research Lab,
03:39where Dr. Kathryn Fairbairn is pioneering a whole new type of study.
03:44I am trying to understand the social benefits of connection and bonding with other people,
03:50and alcohol's effects in that social context.
03:53This question of what makes people drink.
03:56You made it.
03:57I'm pretty excited, okay.
03:58Holly?
03:59Should we go on through?
04:00Yeah.
04:01We all assume alcohol helps us connect.
04:04That moderate drinking acts as a social lubricant.
04:07But what's actually happening in the brain at that moment?
04:11In here is our group drink room.
04:14We have our freezer where we keep the vodka.
04:16The 100 proofs.
04:17Try to get a little bit more concentrated than the typical 80 proof,
04:20because otherwise people's bladders would fill up very quickly.
04:23Sorry, you just said 100 proof?
04:25Yeah.
04:26Okay.
04:27Right through here is our EEG chamber.
04:32So this is where you're going to hook my brain up?
04:34Exactly.
04:35But while you're doing that, I'm going to be getting drunk, right?
04:38That's correct.
04:44I'll have you step on the scale facing the wall.
04:46And this is really important to make sure that you know exactly how much alcohol to give me, right?
04:50A lot of people, especially in social context,
04:53experience drinking as enhancing their pleasure and also relieving pain, relieving anxiety.
04:59Especially when you're interacting with somebody you don't know.
05:02Hey, how's it going?
05:03Hello.
05:04This is Johnny.
05:05Hello.
05:06How's it going? Nice to meet you, Johnny.
05:07Nice to meet you. Thanks for having me.
05:08There have been a number of studies that have looked at alcohol's acute effects on the brain.
05:13However, almost none of them have featured any sort of social context.
05:18I guess we're going to be drinking for this.
05:20All right.
05:21So, we are trying to understand causality.
05:25In my lab, we randomly assign people to an alcohol condition or a no alcohol condition.
05:31So, wait a minute.
05:33When we think of alcohol in moderation, we think of a social setting, right?
05:37A cocktail party.
05:38Having fun with people. Pleasure.
05:40But is it the alcohol that makes us feel more social?
05:43And how can science test this?
05:46That is Catherine Fairbairn's challenge.
05:50Because we're in the laboratory and because we use random assignment, we know that if the people in the experimental group are feeling a lot happier than the people in the control group, it's because our experimental manipulation caused that.
06:02It is actually the realm of human science that is closest to an animal model that you can get.
06:08And I am a control freak, so I really enjoy that.
06:12So, now we're going to begin applying face electrodes.
06:16Can you guys open the look up for me, please?
06:18What we are able to do with our studies is look at the acute effects of alcohol in the context in which people actually drink in the real world, which is with other people.
06:30So, I'm going to ask you to hold this front case down for me, please.
06:34Yeah, no problem.
06:35Okay.
06:36I want you to understand how crazy this was.
06:39They put a bunch of electrodes on my head and you feel like you're being abducted by aliens.
06:44Like, the whole thing was so weird.
06:46And they give you this concoction and they're like, hey, drink this.
06:49Cheers, buddy.
06:51Here they are just facing another person they've never met before.
06:55And they have 36 minutes to drink three cups of their beverage.
06:59We have looked at the effects of alcohol on things like emotional contagion.
07:08We've used a facial muscle movement coding system to code some of the observable muscle movements in the face that have been associated with emotions.
07:17And then now we are currently moving into the realm of hyperscanning.
07:21So, in this study we are hooking two people up to EEG, electroencephalography, simultaneously.
07:32Red means the signal is poor.
07:34Yellow means the signal is okay.
07:36Green means that the signal is strong.
07:37And we are recording their brain activity at the same time.
07:42Thank you very much.
07:43Yep.
07:44And you're asking me how to start.
07:45Cheers.
07:46They take you to this room that's part laboratory, part interrogation room.
07:49And the really serious surveillance style cameras, two, three, perhaps four.
07:59And I'm asking myself, what did I agree to do again?
08:03The names over here, that corresponds to each electrode on their caps.
08:09Can I have you blink?
08:11Okay.
08:12So those are blinks.
08:14We know that alcohol changes how we feel.
08:16It can change how quickly and how we respond to things.
08:20It seems to affect how we relate to other people.
08:23Catherine was interested in employing brain measures to begin to study alcohol and social interactions and alcohol.
08:31And then we began to work together to try to develop interesting tasks to measure brain activity.
08:37To see, are these people having brain activity that's aligned or not aligned?
08:42I'll give you guys your last drink.
08:46You guys can go ahead and start.
08:48Cheers, ma'am.
08:49Here's to science.
08:51We are the first hyperscanning alcohol study.
08:54It's yours?
08:55Hey, Johnny, think hard for a sec.
08:59It totally did.
09:02So what we expect might happen is that given the findings that alcohol in some cases makes people feel
09:11closer to a stranger when they have been drinking with them as opposed to not drinking with them.
09:16What's happening?
09:17Are you debriefing us right now?
09:18Not quite yet.
09:19We're just going to have you guys answer some more, like, general conversation prompts.
09:23Oh, this is fun.
09:25I know we look pretty okay in that video, but I promise you we were far from sober.
09:31But, you know, by this point of the exercise, I was definitely vibing with my new friend.
09:36We were on the same wavelength.
09:38We suspect that we may be able to pick up that cohesive, effective alcohol through the hyperscanning measures and learn a little bit more about maybe some of the mechanisms that makes their brain waves align.
09:49If you have different perspectives, are there topics on which it's hard to have a productive disagreement?
09:57So I'm really weird because I love talking about things you're not supposed to talk about.
10:03Alcohol has some kind of draw.
10:07If we can understand better, particularly the positive, rewarding things about drinking with another person, this provides an actual measure of that.
10:18So the hope would be that if someone wanted to try to get that same impact without alcohol for any number of reasons, what are the things we should be thinking about doing?
10:28Are there conditions we can set up?
10:30And if we think that there's something about a particular type of neural alignment that alcohol, say, is affording, what are other things that do or don't afford that similar neural alignment?
10:40As I sat there feeling like a guinea pig, I realized what they were trying to do.
10:45They want to understand what's happening in our brains at this precise moment.
10:50When I drink, I tend to tell everybody that I know that I love them.
10:53I was thinking I should tell this guy I love them.
10:55Well, maybe not that precise moment, but what Cara and Catherine are trying to understand is, what is it about alcohol that makes it so easy for us to connect with each other?
11:05So that in the near future, they could potentially recreate that same effect without the alcohol.
11:12So we're still really getting a handle on what this interbrain coupling means.
11:16It's really on the cutting edge in that way.
11:18If we can understand what alcohol does for people in social context, then that can help us understand what could lead to addiction.
11:27Sad faces.
11:28Though this research is still ongoing, Catherine and Cara have found strong evidence that alcohol does shape our social interactions.
11:36But in the long run, what's it doing to our bodies?
11:40Our body's homeostatic mood slowly adjusts over time to the substances that we put in our body.
11:49So if our body learns to adjust for the fact that we're constantly drinking something that releases dopamine, then it naturally needs to produce less dopamine itself.
12:01And you need drinking even to make you feel normal.
12:04That could lead to addiction down the road.
12:06Short term, there's some lovely things.
12:08Social lubricant.
12:09These are real effects.
12:11But in terms of direct health benefits, we have really strong scientific grounds for being skeptical that there are physical health benefits from drinking.
12:20Wait a minute.
12:21You mean my glass of Pinot Noir isn't protecting my heart?
12:24What about all those studies that said that red wine was good for you?
12:28Studies that claimed there were protective effects for your heart health when drinking red wine.
12:33Even Tim Stockwell, global authority on the dangers of alcohol, once believed that alcohol was good for you.
12:39I literally wrote, if you doubt that there's protective effects for alcohol, you may as well join the Flat Earth Society.
12:46Because I was so convinced that there were health benefits.
12:49But I realized after a while that I couldn't defend my approach.
12:53So when did the shift happen?
12:56To find out, I went to the UK to learn about why science did a 180 on moderate drinking.
13:02Anthony.
13:03Gautam.
13:04Hey, how you doing?
13:05Really nice to meet you.
13:06Great to meet you.
13:07Should we get a drink?
13:08Time is right?
13:09Yeah.
13:10All right, great.
13:11Let's watch everything you thought you knew about moderate drinking.
13:25Does it feel like pubs are the places where people go to be social?
13:28It's a tough time.
13:29There's not much we're good at in the UK these days.
13:31But pub culture I still think we are pretty good at.
13:33So where did the idea come from that a little alcohol might be good for us?
13:38To help me sort through what scientists have already uncovered, I turned to Dr. Gautam Mehta,
13:43one of the UK's top liver specialists at University College London.
13:47This is pretty busy for like a four o'clock on a Wednesday.
13:51Hi guys, what can I do for you?
13:52Hi, how are you doing?
13:53How are you doing?
13:54Um, could I please have a Guinness?
13:56I've heard a little bit about this thing called a J curve and I know it's important
14:07for understanding like how alcohol affects my body, but I don't understand how or what
14:11it is.
14:12Excellent question.
14:13So the J curve comes from observational data into alcohol and in the 80s and 90s,
14:19the French, as you know, have excellent wines and an excess of good living, lots of great
14:24cheese.
14:25And yet the amount of heart disease were slightly lower than other European countries.
14:28And so lots of studies were set up and what they found quite consistently was that people
14:34who drank moderate to high levels, so six drinks or more, they had higher levels of
14:39mortality.
14:40But the lowest levels were not in the complete abstainers, they were in the individuals who
14:45were drinking low levels of alcohol.
14:46So you start to see this J, the dip of the J being the individuals who were drinking very
14:51small amounts.
14:52Okay, okay, wait, let's stop for a second.
14:55I know this seems complicated and confusing.
14:57I mean, I was pretty confused myself.
14:59So let's break it down.
15:01The study found that heavy drinkers and non-drinkers were more likely to die than those who only
15:06had a couple of drinks a day.
15:08That is called the J curve.
15:12This little dip is why we thought that drinking in moderation is good for you.
15:17Because compared to either group, a little alcohol seems to protect you.
15:22But, of course, there was a catch.
15:24What these studies haven't taken into account is the history of those individuals and their
15:29drinking behavior in the past.
15:30And that was quite a big miss into how these studies were designed and how data was collected.
15:36So the non-drinkers included former drinkers who had to stop drinking because it was killing
15:42them.
15:43When you remove them, our curve becomes a line.
15:48So observational data has got limitations and it's only as good as the data you collect
15:52and the size of the data set you have.
15:54And this is the kind of thing that people like me have latched onto.
15:57Yeah.
15:58Like, yeah, I should have a drink every now and again.
16:00It's good for me.
16:01But you're saying that's not true.
16:03I think it's fair to say there's still controversy about whether there's any benefit at all.
16:08Maybe subtle benefits and diabetes risk and cholesterol.
16:11But I think we're coming to a conclusion that when you look at a very big observational study
16:18and essentially what we think the situation is now that any benefit you may have on heart disease
16:23in particular is completely outweighed by the risk of cancer.
16:27Well, that's very disappointing.
16:28I'm going to be honest with you.
16:29I came here today hoping that, like, I could find a study that said, like, I get to keep doing this.
16:34It's about magnitude of risk and awareness of risk, isn't it?
16:37I mean, the safest place to live your life is in your bedroom under your covers.
16:42And, you know, every time you cross the road or take a transatlantic flight, there's risk.
16:46But, you know, I like a beer or a glass of red wine as much as the next guy.
16:50Right.
16:51So it's just like all these things.
16:52It's about knowing the risks and managing them.
16:56And there it is, the big shift.
16:59There is risk in drinking alcohol even in moderation.
17:03Thanks, Gautam.
17:04But it's about knowing your risk and deciding what you can live with.
17:08I travel a lot.
17:10And like Gautam said, every flight, every car ride comes with risk.
17:15But I'm not about to stop traveling or driving.
17:18I'm willing to live with that risk.
17:20So what are the real tangible risks of drinking in moderation?
17:25I didn't have to travel far from London to find out.
17:28Check it out. Oxford.
17:31Anya Tapiwala studies moderate drinkers, a segment of the population that was overlooked by research, at least until recently.
17:48I'm excited-ish to meet you because I feel like you're going to tell me some things I don't want to know about alcohol.
17:53Possibly. Quite possibly.
17:54Yeah. Well, where are we off to?
17:56We're off this way.
17:57Okay.
18:00I have heard about all kinds of studies about alcohol.
18:03Some that say alcohol is, you know, bad for your brain, but it is good for your heart, but it's bad for your liver, but it's good for your social life.
18:10And you have a study that kind of put all that to bed. What was the big difference between the studies that people might have heard about and your study?
18:18We used brain imaging, which is obviously a very sensitive way of looking at brain structure and therefore potential harms that alcohol could do.
18:26The second is, I guess, the scale. We had many more participants than some of the older studies.
18:31How many more people are we talking?
18:33Our largest study, we looked at about 25,000 people's brain scans.
18:37Wow.
18:38Brain imaging studies used to be 20 people, and now we are here and Biobank is imaging 100,000 people. It's just a completely different scale.
18:47When we're talking about sort of moderate drinking, the effects are going to be more modest on the brain than if you're drinking very, very heavily.
18:54So to pick up those smaller, more modest effects, you need much larger samples to detect them.
19:00So we've done a number of studies looking at relationships between how much people drink and what their brains look like in later life.
19:07And the consistent finding is that the more people drink, the smaller their brain volume in specific parts of the brain as well.
19:14So the people that drank more alcohol had smaller brain volumes in these orange blob regions,
19:21centered over what we call the hippocampus, which is the part of the brain that's important for memory function
19:27and one of the earliest affected regions in Alzheimer's disease.
19:30So the more people drank, the smaller their brain volume was.
19:33When you take a drink of alcohol, a little bit is absorbed by the mouth, but the majority goes down your gullet into your stomach,
19:47and then into your small intestine, where the majority is absorbed into your bloodstream.
19:51And from there it can travel all around your body very easily, including to the liver, but also into the brain.
19:57And we have a barrier normally between the bloodstream and the brain to protect the brain from, you know, toxins and nasty substances.
20:04But because ethanol, the component of alcohol, is so small, it can easily cross this and be distributed all over the brain very quickly.
20:13Alcohol affects the entire microstructure of the white matter, and the white matter we describe as a bit like an electric cable with insulation around it.
20:25Okay.
20:26So we have a type of brain scan where we can measure the quality of that insulation, if you like.
20:30Oh, yeah.
20:31And we found that people that were drinking more had a lower quality of that insulation.
20:35So why should I care if the insulation on the wires in my brain is thinner or thicker?
20:41If it's lower quality, then the signal going through that wire is going to go more slowly or less efficiently.
20:48And we found that the people who drank more declined faster than the people who weren't drinking.
20:54In other words, even in moderate amounts, alcohol will shrink your hippocampus, which means that you lose memory faster.
21:02It damages the white matter that's the sort of internal wiring in your brain that reduces your mental sharpness.
21:08And if that's not enough, it actually shortens your telomeres.
21:12That's the bits of your DNA that are kind of like the plastic on the end of a shoelace.
21:16So their length is a marker of biological age, if you like.
21:20Wow!
21:21And we found that the more people drank, the shorter these telomeres were.
21:25So brain aging is a combination of all these different things indicating that, you know, alcohol could be accelerating biological aging.
21:33I mean, I almost don't want to keep asking questions.
21:35This is surprising me. Did this surprise you to find out?
21:38Uh, yes. I'd known for a long time, you know, the really heavy end of the drinking spectrum can develop brain shrinkage and ultimately dementia.
21:45But yeah, these moderate drinkers that we saw with these adverse brain effects did surprise me.
21:52Is there a safe amount?
21:54I think it's very difficult to prove there is a safe amount of alcohol.
21:57This myth that having a glass of red wine at night is good for you, I think we need to dispel that.
22:01But we do have some evidence to suggest in very heavy drinkers at least some reversibility in terms of their brain structure but also memory deficits.
22:11So there is positive hope, I think. We don't have similar studies in moderate drinkers because it's really hard to get a load of people to stop moderately drinking and then re-scan their brain.
22:21But I think there's hope to suggest that, you know, people that are drinking less, there's also potential for improvement or recovery.
22:27So I stop drinking, I can return to genius levels of intellect.
22:31That's the hope.
22:33Do you still drink then, I guess?
22:34So I never really drink more than one small glass, um, with a meal.
22:41So in the UK, we are a sort of nation of moderate drinkers and after work in the pubs.
22:51So you'll see British drinking culture.
22:58So I'm here in basically the heart of London and I figure this is as good a place as any to learn something about drinking culture.
23:03Let's see if we can find a pub.
23:05Hi, I've heard that, like, England has a big drinking culture. Would you say that's true?
23:15It is ocean big rather than, yeah.
23:17Right.
23:18From my perspective, like, more gets done in the pub setting sometimes, like the casual conversation you have in the pub with colleagues.
23:24To me, I think, like, the blending of that personal life and business life is kind of important because you make a lot of connections.
23:30Have you heard anything about the Canadian guy around drinking?
23:32No.
23:33It used to be two drinks a day was the safe limit and now they say it's two drinks a week.
23:38I feel like the guidelines are always saying drink much less.
23:41Would people here stick to two drinks a week, do you think?
23:45You're talking to British, you know.
23:46I try not to think about it, I think.
23:48I could go, like, two weeks not having a drink and then I'll have a real big blowout.
23:53Right, right.
23:58I think it's important to not drink every day but equally not to save up all of that weekly allowance and drink it all in one go.
24:04Some of the work that we've been doing is around binge drinking and it's around two or three times worse depending on how big your binge is and what your baseline level of risk is.
24:12If we say it's two large glasses of wine for a woman, three for a man, if you have that all in one go compared to spreading that out over the week, it's the exact same volume of alcohol.
24:22But your risk is around two to three times greater just from the binge pattern.
24:26There's so many questions I want to ask you.
24:28You know what dry January is?
24:29Yeah, yeah.
24:30It's been around for some years now.
24:31We studied it, actually.
24:32We've studied a few things about it.
24:33This is what I've understood, yeah.
24:35We recruited people at my hospital.
24:37They're all free, in and around.
24:39Largely healthy people, sort of aged between 40 and 60, but who were drinking at moderate to upper limits of moderate levels.
24:47And we got quite good numbers.
24:48So we did a whole set of measures including liver scans, set of blood tests, very detailed molecular characterization of the blood.
24:54Wow.
24:55And we saw quite robust changes.
24:57People lost weight.
24:58People slept better.
24:59Their concentration was better.
25:00But in terms of the sort of molecular markers, we know that blood pressure related problems are one of the major sorts of alcohol related harm.
25:06Things like stroke or heart disease can occur as a consequence.
25:09And in our dry January study, the blood pressure reduced by about what we'd expect if we gave you a blood pressure drug.
25:15Just by giving up alcohol for a month?
25:17Adjusting for everything else?
25:18Yeah.
25:19Yeah.
25:20That seemed to be the main reason.
25:21Okay.
25:22So for anyone out there who's challenged themselves to a dry January, fear not.
25:27It wasn't all for nothing.
25:28Dr. Meta studies have found a reduction in blood pressure, better sleep, improved concentration, and weight loss.
25:35All from 30 days of sobriety.
25:38Honestly, if this came in a pill form, we'd all be lining up for it.
25:41So I've been thinking about giving up drinking for like three months.
25:46Yeah.
25:47Um, do you have any advice for me?
25:49Crikey.
25:50Um, stay busy.
25:51Don't be at home bored.
25:52I think there are excellent alcohol replacement drinks that are zero percent.
25:56I mean, you know, we do use alcohol to socialize.
25:58And it's a tragedy that we can't do that in mixed venues where you can have alcohol-free options.
26:03Well, thank you so much for hanging out. I really appreciate it.
26:06Cheers.
26:07Pleasure. Cheers.
26:11On my last night in London, I decided I'm going to challenge myself to a semi-voluntary sobriety stance in the name of science.
26:20Let's go have a pint, shall we, fellas?
26:23But not before at least one last hurrah.
26:26You know, one last glass of wine.
26:29Good job.
26:30Good job.
26:31One last whiskey sour.
26:32I learned nothing.
26:35As I head home with a slight headache, but I'm mindful of good intentions, I'm about to learn something that might make my decision to quit alcohol much easier.
26:48There's lots of evidence that alcohol causes cancer.
26:49I'm going to try to last about three months, and that's because that's when a lot of researchers say that I should start to feel some of those benefits.
27:06You know, at the end of the first week, I noticed I was missing alcohol a lot.
27:14At the end of the second week, I was missing it less, so that's something.
27:19I didn't notice any changes in my sleep, so maybe it'll take more time.
27:35I'm not drinking for, like, three months.
27:37Oh, wow.
27:38Yeah, I'm not that excited about it, if I'm honest with you.
27:41I think I could give it up for three months.
27:43Like, I feel like I could, but I don't know if I would want to.
27:46St. Francis Xavier University has been known as one of Canada's top party schools.
27:51But it's also where Dr. Kara Thompson's lab is challenging the status quo in a really interesting way.
27:59So this morning what we're going to do is kind of three mini focus groups.
28:03By focusing on the next generation of moderate drinkers.
28:07We know that youth and young adults, they're going to consume more alcohol at that age than at any other time in the lifespan.
28:15Just to get us started, what kind of comes to mind when you think about alcohol?
28:19Social setting.
28:20Okay, social setting. What else?
28:22Also partying.
28:24Would it be accurate to say that you're trying to get people to drink less?
28:28Yes, I think so. I think abstinence has never really been on my agenda.
28:33I think it's not a great approach.
28:35Because people are going to have a drink one way or another.
28:37People are going to have a drink one way or another.
28:38But I think the university has a responsibility too, like we're an educational institution.
28:42We have a responsibility to educate and guide and nurture post-secondary students' knowledge around alcohol use too.
28:49And that is exactly what Kara specializes in.
28:53Not your liver or your heart, but the science of how alcohol risk is communicated.
28:59And what messages actually influence behavior?
29:03I feel like a lot of people, especially our age, I don't think that they would necessarily say that they know that alcohol definitively causes cancer.
29:11The majority of Canadians have no idea that their favorite recreational drug is a carcinogen that the World Health Organization brackets with asbestos.
29:20It is a toxic substance and it does relate to at least seven different types of cancer.
29:25But it also plays a significant role in breast cancer risk for women and colorectal cancer.
29:30And these are some of the leading cancers for the population.
29:35Was there any of those health risks that you're surprised to see on there?
29:38The link to breast cancer for women, it's not talked about how the harms are different for men and women.
29:43And so even if it might have a link to cancer, you don't know how that will impact you differently.
29:48From the 50s through to the 90s, most alcohol studies focused almost entirely on men.
29:55But the latest science shows that women are more vulnerable to alcohol's effects, from breast cancer to brain damage.
30:02In other words, we're still playing catch-up when it comes to women's health.
30:07People don't know about it because it's not something that's widely shared publicly, right?
30:14People know about the risk between cancer and cigarettes because there were policies put in place that told us that tobacco was dangerous.
30:22Alcohol is the most costly substance we have, the one that's consumed the most, and it does not have to have warning labels.
30:32How has it managed to circumvent such a straightforward regulation when not only the other substances, but every processed food in Canada has to have a warning label, but not alcohol?
30:45Do those kinds of warnings actually work? I mean, we've got those labels on cigarettes.
30:50I used to believe it wouldn't, but we've found a territorial government in Canada willing to do an experiment in which the Yukon Liquor Commission, for an experimental period, bright yellow and red warning labels specifying colon and breast cancer risk.
31:07I mean, this was the first study done in Canada on labels in a real world setting.
31:12Within 29 days, the alcohol producers in Canada threatened legal action against the Yukon government.
31:18It was a great example of industry efforts to thwart public health initiatives.
31:24It was picked up in the media all over the world.
31:27The cancer warnings were pulled after 29 days, but we went quickly back into the field and we found people remembered them.
31:35They talked about them.
31:36Perhaps the best evidence was we found that people in Whitehorse reduced their consumption of alcohol by 7%.
31:43The industry is saying there isn't enough evidence that alcohol causes cancer.
31:47That's not true.
31:49There's lots of evidence that alcohol causes cancer.
31:54These are all drinks that mock cocktails.
31:59This is from in Coke.
32:04That's really good.
32:06Yeah.
32:07Despite all of the evidence, communicating those risks is not easy.
32:12So when we think about alcohol use and chronic health risk,
32:16it's a cumulative risk.
32:17So when we're talking about disease risk, how you drink at 18 may impact whether you get cancer at 65,
32:23feels very far away for them.
32:25It's not a tangible concern.
32:27So this is a campaign that's meant to tell you all about the benefits of drinking less.
32:38The noalcohol.ca website was developed as a tool to mobilize the new guidance on alcohol and health.
32:46This is the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research.
32:49They came up with this app.
32:50The website makes the risks and dangers tangible.
32:53What I found satisfying was you could estimate the impact on life expectancy.
32:58You could calculate how many minutes of life lost.
33:01There's a little drop down tab.
33:02You can see all of your disease risks.
33:05So it'll show you cancer, injury risk.
33:07Oh, fun.
33:08Yeah.
33:09It's gotten a ton of traffic since it was released because students respond well to something that is personalized
33:16rather than just throwing information at them.
33:20Okay.
33:21Let's talk about risk.
33:23Kara and Tim were part of a team who developed a tool to calculate the risks we take when we drink.
33:28So here's my takeaway.
33:30I'm 39 years old and based on data from Stats Canada, my life expectancy is 82.
33:36That feels short.
33:37If I continue drinking 10 drinks per week, every drink will cost me 5.6 minutes of my life.
33:44Now, if you add all that up, I'll lose about three months of my expected lifespan.
33:49Now, depending on your perspective, that may or may not seem like a lot.
33:53So I wanted to get Tim Stockwell's input on it because it can't really be that simple.
33:58Can it?
34:02Hi, Anthony.
34:04Very good to see you again.
34:05So, Tim, I went to your website.
34:07I calculated my risk.
34:08And according to the website, I'm going to lose about 5.6 minutes per drink three months of my life.
34:14Now, to me, that sounds like a lot.
34:16But for a lot of people, it doesn't sound like that much.
34:18So what are they missing, if anything?
34:20You know, it doesn't seem bad when you put it like that.
34:23The important thing is this is an average.
34:26If there were 100 of you, Anthony, all drinking that amount every week of your life,
34:31that's the average amount of life lost across 100 Anthony's per Anthony.
34:36Okay.
34:37If that makes sense.
34:38But there will be some Anthony's that don't lose any life expectancy.
34:42And there may be one or two who lose some decades because they actually get a very serious cancer, for example.
34:50So it's a big fat average.
34:52That's great.
34:53I mean, so you're just basically making sure that I am informed enough to decide what risk I can tolerate.
34:57The objective of our tool is to help people assess their risk from alcohol alongside many other risks.
35:03You know, crossing the street, driving a car, eating fatty food.
35:09There's so many risks.
35:10And this is yet another, which I think people have often overlooked.
35:14So it's up to you.
35:15There's no cookbook.
35:16There's no recipe for what to do next.
35:19Oh, great.
35:20I was kind of hoping science would just tell me what to do, but you're saying it's up to me.
35:23Okay.
35:24That's good.
35:25Hang on.
35:26I'm not giving up just yet.
35:28When I was in the UK, I came across something called functional drinks.
35:34They apparently give you a buzz without the harmful effects of alcohol.
35:41So is it possible to enjoy the benefits of a little liquid lubrication without the health risks?
35:48I got to see the science behind this for myself.
35:51We've got lots of plants that are used in cooking.
35:55Things like the black cardamom.
35:57Different plants from around the world that maybe might not be part of people's diet normally.
36:02Ashwagandha.
36:03Been used in lots of traditional Indian medicine.
36:06We're pretty unique in that we have such a wide range and multi-talented team of scientists
36:14that are able to advise us about plants and about the sort of processes we can use for getting the best extractions.
36:20Making sure we keep the product safe.
36:23I mean, I was curious for sure.
36:26The prospect of cutting down or even quitting made way more sense with an option like this on the table.
36:31I understand this is where the magic happens, right?
36:33This is where we do the invention.
36:35That's right.
36:36Neuropsychopharmacologist.
36:38Oof, that is a mouthful.
36:40And Sentia co-founder Dr. David Nutt was thrilled to show me around his test lab.
36:46What do we have in front of us?
36:47I'm so excited to try this.
36:48This is our first functional alternative to alcohol.
36:52This is the future in your hands.
36:53This is the future.
36:54We have 11 different herbs which together create in your brain the effect of a small amount of alcohol.
37:02Okay.
37:09It's an interesting flavor.
37:11It tastes quite bitter.
37:12Yeah.
37:13And it's got like a little bit of a, almost like a burn at the back of your throat.
37:16Yes, that's right.
37:17But we can improve it even more by making cocktails.
37:20Oh, look at these.
37:22And the effect will wear off probably by the time we finish this conversation.
37:26Oh, wow.
37:29We get all these really fun effects when you drink alcohol.
37:32And your goal with this is to kind of replicate those effects.
37:35How is it that this would do that?
37:37When you drink alcohol, the first thing that happens when alcohol gets into your brain
37:42is that it begins to turn on chemical neurotransmitter called GABA.
37:47GABA is the relaxing switch in your brain.
37:50GABA calms the brain down.
37:51Okay.
37:52And for most of us, especially when we're in social situations,
37:55our GABA levels are a bit low.
37:57That's what anxiety is.
37:58Anxiety is a state when you've not got enough GABA.
38:00Alcohol boosts GABA, relaxes you.
38:03Sentia boosts GABA, relaxes you.
38:05How is it that this drink causes my brain to release more GABA?
38:08Like what's going on?
38:09We have herbs which make molecules which basically turn on the gain on the GABA system,
38:14a bit like the volume of an amplifier.
38:16So what you're saying is that I'm activating this GABA molecule and it tells my brain
38:20we don't have to worry as much and so I feel more relaxed, disinhibited.
38:25How do we know that it's safe?
38:27Well, we know alcohol isn't safe, so I suppose that's not...
38:30Right.
38:31Whatever else is in it, it's not going to be as harmful as the alcohol.
38:33That's the alcohol, okay.
38:35The herbs that are in this have all been approved as foods or food additives in Europe and in America and in Canada.
38:43I'm starting to feel some of the kind of the fun effects, some of the buzz.
38:50This is designed to mimic the effects of half a glass of beer to a small glass of wine.
38:56Because it has a sealing effect, you drank the whole bottle, you wouldn't get drunk.
39:00Okay.
39:01And that's the clever thing.
39:02All we're doing is mimicking a small amount of alcohol.
39:06Will this be what it takes for me to give up alcohol for good?
39:13I still go out to the bar to visit friends and see shows and things like that all the time.
39:23I noticed I was nervous.
39:24Especially if we're going somewhere where drinking was the expectation, like a bar or something like that.
39:29I'm at a party.
39:31Smile, baby.
39:33It's date night.
39:36I do still kind of miss having a drink and I like that feeling of being buzzed,
39:41but I'm definitely not anxious about it anymore.
39:48Which I didn't expect.
39:58I'm going to try to do this for three months.
39:59It's been really interesting to see the changes so far.
40:01Some of the big ones I've noticed are, I have to find something new to help me transition from my working day to my relaxed mode.
40:10Yeah, so that's actually a really good point.
40:12So you could be talking to your wife at the end of the day, but still be worrying about that thing that happened earlier at work.
40:17Yeah.
40:18But alcohol can help you leave that behind.
40:21Yeah.
40:22But I'm sure you know the way the brain works.
40:24The more you rely on those kind of exogenous substances, the more you need them.
40:29But I think also just like navigating social context in particular can be an extraordinarily isolating experience.
40:39The first month or two after you stop drinking is going to be really hard.
40:43And you've experienced that even as a moderate drinker.
40:46The best option is to bring people in on your decision and ideally some of the reasons surrounding it.
40:55So many people it's going to be for their health.
40:58It definitely gets better over time.
41:02It's a complicated substance and I think it's more complicated than a lot of substances in that it is both fully socially integrated and socially accepted.
41:12What the science tells us, and this kills me to say, is that alcohol has more severe health risks than we once thought.
41:20There is no safe level of alcohol.
41:24We can't reinvent the wheel.
41:25You know, if alcohol was introduced now, there's no way it would be approved as a...
41:28Yeah.
41:29It's a clear poison.
41:30It's very, very clearly.
41:31The FDA or others, there's no way it would be approved.
41:34But of course it's been around for thousands of years.
41:36You know, I started this journey by wanting to understand what the science says about the consequences of drinking.
41:43I realized that like any good field of study, the process is ongoing.
41:47And the scientists that I've met are working really hard every day to improve and evolve our understanding of this crazy substance.
41:55I think it's been a scientific process to question the evidence we have and improve it.
42:02But I think today's answers are better than the ones 25 years ago and in 20 years we'll have even better answers.
42:11Surprisingly, of all the experts that I spoke to, none of them were actually preaching abstinence. Far from it. Do you drink?
42:20I was wondering if you were going to ask this.
42:22It is beer for sure.
42:25I really like a smoky cocktail.
42:28Mainly it's a lager. A nice cold lager.
42:32Current me orders a glass of wine. Teenage me.
42:35Vodka and Red Bull. So unhealthy.
42:38And now I think of the red wine.
42:40So Anthony, I'm really curious, after all the conversations you've had with us scientific folk, do you think you've got a different relationship with alcohol now?
42:49I stopped drinking for three months.
42:51And what I suspect will happen is that, unless all my friends stop drinking, it's going to be really hard for me to stop too.
42:57So at this point, I don't really think I will give it up because, if I'm honest, I like it.
43:03It brings me a lot of joy, although I think I will cut down too.
43:11Here you go.
43:12It's not the role of science to tell us how we should live or what we should do.
43:17Science tells us what's possible and what's true, not what's right.
43:22It tells us the consequences of our choices, so that we can decide if we want to live with them.
43:29Cheers.
43:30Cheers.
43:31Beautiful.
43:32Jeff
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