Expect a 'drinking checkup' during your next doctor's visit

You can expect a "drinking checkup" when you visit the doctor. All adults, including pregnant women, should be screened for unhealthy alcohol by their primary care physicians, the United States Preventive Services Task Force advises. For those patients who drink above the recommended limits, in the medical journal JAMA.

As far as teens, the independent panel of medical experts cam up empty. The task force said it was not enough to make a recommendation for or against alcohol screening. The panel is calling for more research.

Unhealthy alcohol use means drinking beyond the recommended limits. No more than four drinks in a single day and 14 drinks in a week for the age of 21 to 64, according to National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. For women and older men, the institute advises no more than three drinks in one week. There is no safe level of alcohol for pregnant women, according to the institute.

The disease, death, and death of the disease is one of the leading causes of death in the United States. When pregnant women drink, birth defects and developmental problems in their children may follow.

Too many doctors do not speak up about alcohol

The new recommendation is a simple update of the task force's long-standing position. Since 1996, in the United States, in the United States, in 1989, it was recommended to treat patients with alcohol.

"Yet implementation of screening and brief intervention still remains quite low," Angela Bazzi and Dr. Richard Saitz, both of Boston University School of Public Health, wrote in an editorial published with the new guidelines in JAMA. "For example, in the United States, 1 in 6 patients reported with their physician in the United States are similarly low."

Bazzi and Saitz notes that the World Health Organization supports screening and brief counseling for unhealthy drinking in adults, while the American Academy of Pediatrics does so for youth.

Even small steps are beneficial

The lack of discussion in doctors' offices continues despite the high prevalence of unhealthy drinking, "evidence for screening and brief intervention efficacy," "substantial government funding, practice guidelines, and quality measures and incentives," wrote the editorial authors.

Behavioral counseling interventions include in-person or web-based sessions that are usually short, for example, just one to four sessions, two hours or less of total contact time, depending on the task force.

In studies, patients who have been advised to have a history of alcohol abuse, or to report alcohol to alcohol illnesses and hospitalizations, according to Bazzi and Saitz. Still, "even small behavior changes" could improve health, they wrote.

"The societal context must change," wrote Bazzi and Staitz. They added that less use of alcohol, "is better for health."