A new study found that excessive alcohol consumption claims 88,000 lives per year.
Researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) led by senior scientist Dafna Kanny also found that big drinkers live 30 years less than those who don't imbibe booze regularly. The analysts looked at data gathered by the Alcohol-Related Disease Impact (ARDI) online application between 2006 and 2010. The app was used by the health institute to estimate the number of deaths linked to excessive alcohol drinking among adults aged 24 to 64 years old in the United States.
The CDC categorized alcohol consumers based on their drinking habits and the number of drinks consumed. Binge drinking is defined as knocking back at least five drinks for men and four for women, while heavy drinking means sipping at least 15 weekly drinks for men, eight for women. Pregnant women and those below 21 years old are also considered heavy drinkers. The most dangerous type of drinking is binge drinking, because it often leads to heavy intoxication and is linked to more than 50 percent of the deaths recorded in the report.
The analysis revealed that 87,798 adults die per year on average, due to excessive alcohol drinking. This figure constitutes 9.8 percent of the mortality rate in the United States.
About 44 percent of deaths were caused by chronic conditions brought on by excessive drinking; the majority of these victims were males. The most common chronic cause was liver disease, while the most common acute cause was vehicle accidents. About 36 percent or 13,000 per year, of those below age 21 died from motor accidents.
"Men are more likely than women to drink excessively, especially binge drinking, having five or more alcoholic drinks in one occasion," Kanny said to Livescience. "Among drivers in fatal motor vehicle crashes, men are almost twice as likely as women to have been intoxicated."
The CDC recommended healthcare providers to offer alcohol screening and counseling, to reduce excessive drinking and cut the number of fatalities.
The study was published in the June 26 issue of the CDC Preventing Chronic Disease.
