Health
Proposed alcohol guidelines highlight health risks with just a few drinks per week – DiscoverWeyburn.com
A proposed overhaul of Canada’s decade-old drinking guidelines warns of increased health risks from as few as three drinks per week and calls for mandatory labelling of all alcoholic beverages.
In its suggested update to Canada’s Low-Risk Alcohol Drinking Guidelines, the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction eschews offering a specific daily or weekly limit in favour of outlining a continuum of risk and urging “less is better.”
The Ottawa-based centre says risk is negligible-to-low for two drinks per week, moderate for three-to-six drinks per week and increasingly high beyond that.
It’s a stark shift from current guidelines that were released in 2011, which limit alcohol use to 10 drinks a week for women and 15 drinks a week for men.
But the CCSA says a review of more than 5,000 peer-reviewed studies shows that even very small amounts of alcohol can be harmful, with alcohol now recognized as a risk factor for an increasing number of diseases.
The CCSA says that includes at least seven types of cancer, with alcohol to blame for nearly 7,000 cases of cancer deaths each year. It says most cases are breast or colon cancer, followed by cancers of the rectum, mouth and throat, liver, esophagus and larynx.
The report, published Monday, also dispels the notion that drinking in moderation protects against heart disease, pointing to recent research that found drinking a little alcohol neither decreases nor increases the risk and that at higher levels, alcohol is a risk factor for most types of cardiovascular disease.
The CCSA notes that a significant proportion of alcohol-attributable deaths in Canada were among people following the 2011 guidelines.
The CCSA opened online public consultations this week on the report. The survey is open until Sept. 23 to members of the public as well as any experts with suggestions on additions or clarifications.
Dr. Peter Butt, co-chair on the project, says the finalized guidance is set for release Nov. 15.
The report stresses that all levels of alcohol consumption are associated with some risk.
“It is not lost on the experts that this new Guidance on Alcohol and Health, which puts forward a continuum of risk, will be surprising and unsettling to large segments of the population, including the alcohol industry, media and policymakers,” says the report.
“However, people living in Canada have a right to know. Alcohol is a carcinogen related to at least seven types of cancer, including common ones like colon and breast cancer. Furthermore, in contrast to common perceptions, current evidence shows that drinking a little alcohol does not decrease the risk of heart disease.”
The report also calls on Health Canada to require labels on alcoholic beverages that list the number of standard drinks each contains, pointing to research that suggests Canadians have a limited understanding of what constitutes a standard drink.
Currently, containers must display their alcohol percentage by volume but this doesn’t help people adhere to advice that is based on the number of drinks one might have, says the report.
“The inconsistency in messaging causes consumer confusion and creates barriers for consumers to adhere to alcohol guidance,” it says.
The report also notes that men’s drinking causes disproportionately more injuries, violence and deaths than women’s drinking.
However the risks to women’s health increase more sharply than for men above low levels of consumption.
The report goes well beyond examining alcohol’s health risks by also touching on questions around mental and social harms, including intimate partner violence and sexual violence.
The authors note that it likely requires broader societal and policy changes in order for Canadians to heed advice to drink less, calling for “a cultural shift.”
“Therefore, a corollary to the current project is the requirement for governments to design a healthier environment that will help people make difficult decision making about alcohol a little easier.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 30, 2022.
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Grande Prairie RCMP issued a warning Friday after it was revealed fentanyl linked to a deadly overdose was mixed with a chemical that doesn’t respond to naloxone treatment.
The drugs were initially seized on Feb. 28 after a fatal overdose, and this week, Health Canada reported back to Mounties that the fentanyl had been mixed with Bromazolam, which is a benzodiazepine.
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Mounties say this is the first recorded instance of Bromazolam in Alberta. The drug has previously been linked to nine fatal overdoses in New Brunswick in 2022.
The pills seized in Alberta were oval-shaped and stamped with “20” and “SS,” though Mounties say it can come in other forms.
Naloxone treatment, given in many cases of opioid toxicity, is not effective in reversing the effects of Bromazalam, Mounties said, and therefore, any fentanyl mixed with the benzodiazepine “would see a reduced effectiveness of naloxone, requiring the use of additional doses and may still result in a fatality.”
From January to November of last year, there were 1,706 opioid-related deaths in Alberta, and 57 linked to benzodiazepine, up from 1,375 and 43, respectively, in 2022.
Mounties say officers responded to about 1,100 opioid-related calls for service, last year with a third of those proving fatal. RCMP officers also used naloxone 67 times while in the field, a jump of nearly a third over the previous year.
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Health
CFIA continues surveillance for HPAI in cattle, while sticking with original name for disease – RealAgriculture
The Canada Food Inspection Agency will continue to refer to highly pathogenic avian influenza in cattle as HPAI in cattle, and not refer to it as bovine influenza A virus (BIAV), as suggested by the American Association of Bovine Practitioners earlier this month.
Dr. Martin Appelt, senior director for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, in the interview below, says at this time Canada will stick with “HPAI in cattle” when referencing the disease that’s been confirmed in dairy cattle in multiple states in the U.S.
The CFIA’s naming policy is consistent with the agency’s U.S. counterparts’, as the U.S. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has also said it will continue referring to it as HPAI or H5N1.
Appelt explains how the CFIA is learning from the U.S. experience to-date, and how it is working with veterinarians across Canada to stay vigilant for signs of the disease in dairy and beef cattle.
As of April 19, there has not been a confirmed case of HPAI in cattle in Canada. Appelt says it’s too soon to say if an eventual positive case will significantly restrict animal movement, as is the case with positive poultry cases.
This is a major concern for the cattle industry, as beef cattle especially move north and south across the U.S. border by the thousands. Appelt says that CFIA will address an infection in each species differently in conjunction with how the disease is spread and the threat to neighbouring farms or livestock.
Currently, provincial dairy organizations have advised producers to postpone any non-essential tours of dairy barns, as a precaution, in addition to other biosecurity measures to reduce the risk of cattle contracting HPAI.
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Health
Toronto reports 2 more measles cases. Use our tool to check the spread in Canada – Toronto Star
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Canada has seen a concerning rise in measles cases in the first months of 2024.
By the third week of March, the country had already recorded more than three times the number of cases as all of last year. Canada had just 12 cases of measles in 2023, up from three in 2022.
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