– We have to stop the devilish dance. Why is alcohol consumption falling in Lithuania? Why do s, who still drank 2006 liters in 18, are drinking 12 today? All countries went to their senses. Outside Poland. With prof. With Witold Zatoński, we talk about “monkeys” that shorten life.
- Prof. Witold Zatoński is an internist, epidemiologist, and public health expert. For many years he headed the Department of Epidemiology and Cancer Prevention at the Oncology Center in Warsaw. He is also a promoter of a healthy lifestyle and the author of many international studies on this topic. He shares his observations and research results with MedTvoiLokony readers
- – There is such a thing as health competences, which in the case of most Poles are dramatically low – says prof. Zatonski
- We have achieved a record peak in alcohol consumption in history – we have never drunk as much alcohol as in 2020. The incredible increase in consumption has led to incredible effects, i.e. an epidemic of alcohol-related diseases – he explains
- On June 1, we are leaving Alcohol Free Day. On this occasion, we recall the conversation with prof. Zatoński, which was originally released in January 2021.
- More current information can be found on the Onet homepage.
Zuzanna Opolska, MedTvoiLokony: Professor, our life expectancy has not only slowed down, but has started to decrease – we live shorter than Czechs, Estonians and Slovenes. Nevertheless, Poles declare that they are trying to live a healthy life, do you share the enthusiasm of your countrymen?
Not. There is such a thing as health competencies that are dramatically low for most Poles. I am a doctor, chronic disease epidemiologist, scientist, and for many years I have been dealing with one thing: measuring and comparing. If you check how many percent of men with higher education in Poland smoke, you will find out that it is 10 percent. More or less as many as Canadians, New Zealanders or Swedes, that is, inhabitants of countries with a high level of health literacy. If, on the other hand, you take a closer look at a group of people with primary education, it turns out that 50 percent. men smoke.
In this context, saying that we live a healthy life has no justification. Let’s take another more exciting indicator: vaccinations. Last year, about 80 percent of them vaccinated against influenza. Japanese, 68 percent. Britons and only 4,12 percent. Poles, which is progress anyway. In the previous season it was 3,9%!
Talking about this before noon today, we could list until morning… So I’m sorry, but I can’t find any evidence that we live a healthy life as a nation.
Let us return to the past for a moment – in the period of the People’s Republic of Poland, our life expectancy growth also slowed down – do you know the guilty parties?
There were many mistakes we made on the way to freedom. Immediately after World War II, the mortality rate in Poland was very high – a statistical Pole lived 56 years, a Pole – 62. However, two decades later, life expectancy increased by 10 years! Thanks to vaccines, the creation of a network of sanitary and epidemiological stations, improved sanitation, and the increase in the number of doctors, we managed to control infectious diseases, which were the number one killer at that time. Unfortunately, we have missed another threat posed by “modernity”.
On the charts: Health recession. After a period of rapid health growth in the 90s, since 2003 the increase in life expectancy has become slower and slower, and in recent years life expectancy in Poland has been decreasing. There is a health recession in Poland.
Chronic non-communicable diseases (NCD) …
Yes, exposure to all risk factors for these diseases has increased during this time. First, smoking has become extremely popular – around 1980, we achieved the world record for smoking with approximately 3 smoking. cigarettes per year per statistical Pole.
Secondly, during the entire period of the existence of the People’s Republic of Poland, the consumption of alcohol increased fourfold. While before the war, the statistical inhabitant of our country drank 1,5 liters of alcohol (in terms of pure spirit), by 1980 the consumption increased to about 9 liters. Against the background of the French who drank three times as much at the same time, we were still pale – only that alcohol consumption began to decline on the Loire, and on the Vistula River it continued to grow.
- This is how Poles drink. We are at the forefront of alcohol consumption
Our third mistake was a diet dominated by animal fats, and there was a lack of essential vegetable unsaturated fats (including omega3). All this led to the fact that we entered the period of freedom with very high premature adult mortality from cardiovascular diseases and lung cancer in men.
And right after the transformation, a “miracle” happened – the increase in life expectancy in Poland was one of the fastest in Europe – how did it happen?
At first, none of us knew. I asked myself: how is this possible? Is democracy really “healthier”? I even gave a lecture under this title at the World Health Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Tiananmen Square, China, for which I almost ended up in jail.
Overnight, as if by the magic of a magic wand, most of the unfavorable health trends turned around and we started to make up for our health losses in relation to Western European countries. The most fascinating phenomenon was the remarkable decline in cardiovascular mortality in all groups.
Czy was this the result of your cigarette crusade?
I admit that solving the mystery of the “health miracle on the Vistula” was the most interesting part of my scientific life and the most surprising. Just like you, I thought that the cardiovascular revolution was primarily driven by a reduction in the frequency of smoking, which my colleagues from abroad refer to as the “Zatonski effect”. It is estimated that smoking is associated with 30% of deaths from cardiovascular causes.
However, I realized that the condition for the occurrence of a causal relationship is the time sequence of the exposure and its result. So if you quit smoking today, only in five or seven years your risk of dying from a heart attack will be halved. What happened in Poland happened immediately.
It therefore seems that the reason why the cardiovascular revolution took such a rapid course in Poland was primarily a change in the diet, or rather the structure of fat consumption. Interestingly, the forces of the market economy were behind it – the increase in the price of butter, which is the worst fat for our heart, caused its consumption to drop from 10 kg to 4 kg in five years. At the same time, the consumption of healthier vegetable fats increased from 7 kg to 18 kg (the omega3 deficiency was corrected). In addition, fruit and vegetables began to appear on our plates much more often, i.e. the vitamin pool that we supplied to the body has increased significantly.
Over time, the effects of continuous smoking cessation and the progress made by cardiologists in secondary prevention, especially in the treatment of myocardial infarction, have joined to the effects of dietary change over time. All this made us become one of the countries in which, as the Anglo-Saxons say, “health gain” was the largest in Europe.
- Is your relationship with alcohol safe? There is an easy way to find out
So what happened that in the last decade we found ourselves in the European tail again?
Being an epidemiologist in Poland is a great challenge and… fortunately – there is no other country where the population conducts so many experiments on itself. It is not known why at the beginning of the 2001st century our politicians had an idea that was absolutely suicidal for the nation and abandoned the assumptions resulting from the anti-alcohol legislation adopted on the initiative of Solidarity. In 30, beer advertising returned to television, and a year later, the excise tax on spirits was reduced by XNUMX percent. The increase in alcohol consumption went by storm.
Finally, there are also “monkeys”.
A brilliant idea of the alcohol industry, how to make Poles addicted for 5 zlotys with a hook. In Poland, a note is sold annually: about 1 billion small bottles, 3 million every day, of which 600. between 6 and 12 am. It only shows that we behave like barbarians when it comes to alcohol. We treat vodka like rolls or sausage, like a normal food item!
We have achieved a record peak in alcohol consumption in history – we have never drunk as much alcohol as in 2020. The incredible increase in consumption has led to unprecedented effects, i.e. an epidemic of alcohol-related diseases, and, as a result, to the deterioration of the health of Poles and a reduction in life expectancy in recent years.
Are you sure it is alcohol? In the end, stress kills, poverty kills, loneliness kills …
You’re not the first to ask me this. There is no doubt that just as lung cancer is an indicator of cigarette smoking, alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver is the best indicator of alcohol exposure. Just look at the women who, for cultural reasons, had infrequent drinking. In 2002, about 100 women died from alcoholic cirrhosis, in 2017 – a thousand! In total, about 35 die every year due to all alcohol-related diseases. people. That’s more than the coronavirus. There is one more bad news …
I thought that now I would hear a good …
It may be a few years after this interview was published. Today I still do not have one … More than 80% of people who die from the coronavirus have turned 70, while among those dying from alcohol-related diseases 80%. is between the ages of 20 and 65. The “Dziaders” are wiser and do not want to die, while the working generations start their lives with two “monkeys”.
Anyway, I have documented all this and published it in the best medical journals in the world, which do not reach the Polish audience. Apparently, the problem of alcohol health is not sexy.
- We debunk the myths. Is one cigarette not addictive?
Some media reported that we drank more in the pandemic. During the second wave, many countries decided to limit the sale of alcohol. In Poland, similar ideas were abandoned – is it a mistake?
The scientific truth is that the coronavirus is not a factor that has influenced consumption. Studies that came out show that some started drinking, others stopped drinking, and still others drink like they drank. On the other hand, in fact, many countries such as France, Great Britain and Scotland have decided to limit them.
However, the reason was prosaic – alcohol reduces social discipline. When someone dodges, he throws himself at the other one, and the distance of 3 m is reduced to 3 cm.
After all, maybe it would be worth commissioning new tests and checking our sobriety?
And who do you think will give money for them? I learned about the “monkeys” from the Synergion report “Where does the little vodka go?”. Before that, I didn’t even know they existed. Besides, I am not surprised that they described it – it is a phenomenal marketing achievement! Imagine that someone increases the interest in buying tights by 100%! After they were published, I started writing about it, and they stopped publishing.
Let us consider the “recovery plan” – what actions, in your opinion, should be taken?
A team must immediately be appointed to prepare a program to reduce the effects of alcohol-related diseases, preferably a national one. It doesn’t require any invention, it has already been everywhere. As I said, in the 70s it was the French who held the world record for alcoholic cirrhosis. Today we are at the forefront and we have to stop the “devil’s dance”. After all, it is impossible to say overnight: we only deal with the coronavirus.
People die from alcohol-related diseases, oncological diseases, cardiovascular diseases, and we are interested in only one disease. Anyway, this is not just a pandemic, the problem of alcohol has been ignored by policymakers for many years. There is an immoral joke about an Indian who is riding a bicycle, who has to stand and move the bicycle in order to turn. We do not have time to maneuver, we must act.
But do the rulers have the will to change? After all, society needs entertainment, and in a country where the national lowest is 2,6 thousand. PLN – “monkey” is cheaper than Netflix or coffee in the city. In addition, the limitations in the availability and increase in taxes on alcohol will also affect highly functioning alcoholics, and there are many of these among politicians …
You mean to say that we are the country of idiots? Why is alcohol consumption falling in Lithuania? Why do s, who still drank 2006 liters in 18, are drinking 12 today? As you can see, all countries can go to their minds and organize themselves.
You have been fighting smoking for decades, will the crusade against “small bottles” be more difficult?
It is already more difficult. In the last twenty years, I have achieved very little when it comes to fighting alcohol. With my message, I did not manage to reach the rulers, the episcopate, journalists, the Ministry of Health, or even the scientific community. The drama is that prevention is invisible.
The history of health in Poland shows the power of prevention – vaccinations in the 50s and 60s helped us deal with infectious diseases, a change in diet in the 90s led to the cardiovascular revolution, and the continued decline in smoking led to a decrease in lung cancer incidence, visible currently mainly among people – men and women in young and middle age. But who will notice that 10 or 20 thousand? fewer people get lung cancer? You don’t see that, we’ve prevented their dramatic premature death that would have been inevitable if they had continued to smoke. Nevertheless, I do not give up and I try to make the “invisible effects” of my actions as much as possible.
Read also:
- How to successfully quit smoking? Here are the top eight ways
- Addicted in a pandemic. “They believe alcohol and cigarettes will protect them from coronavirus”
- Dirty air, cigarettes, sedentary work, obesity. WHO on what increases the risk of cancer
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