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This article appeared originally on VICE Canada.
Canadians drink more than the global average. Well, it's not just your drunk friends in the garage of your friends who were huddled around the fire, they also have the interest of some scientists to find the correlation between cold and alcohol consumption.
"It's something everyone has been assuming for decades, but no one has demonstrated it scientifically. Why do people in Russia drink so much? Why in Wisconsin? Everyone assumes it's because it's cold, "said Dr. Ramon Bataller, Chief of UPMC's Department of Hepatology, Professor of Medicine at Pitt, Deputy Director of the Pittsburgh Liver Research Center and Lead Author of the study in a press release.
Bataller said he and his team were not surprised that an article was written on the subject and decided to remedy the situation. Then, along with 13 other researchers, he set out to explore weather information and a ton of public health data to see if they could find a connection between alcohol consumption or alcoholic cirrhosis and the climate in which one lives and would not you know it? they did it. In an article for the scientific journal hepatology, the crew presented their conclusions.
Maps showing temperature, alcoholic beverages and sunshine hours. Photo via Ventura-Cots et al./Hepatology/John Wiley and Sons.
"This is the first study that systematically shows that everywhere in the world and in America, in colder and less sunny regions, we drink more and have more alcoholic cirrhosis," said Bataller. The group said it tried to control religion, regulations or other factors that could affect the rate of boozin use in the study and said more research was needed on the phenomenon.
The crew found that the colder the climate, the more likely it is that alcohol, frenzied alcohol, like a teenager, is suffering from an illness that results from the consumption of alcohol. The reasons are not exactly known, but some theories are mentioned in the newspaper. The first is that "alcohol is a vasodilator, which means that it increases the flow of warm blood to the skin, which is full of temperature sensors. Booze literally makes you hotter. So this pinch of whiskey that your uncle takes by literally shoveling the catwalk literally warms him up. In a darker explanation, alcohol consumption is linked to depression – a common phenomenon in cold places where sunlight is limited.
As a man north of Edmonton, one of the coldest places in North America, I'm very familiar with this phenomenon – notice that I said "one of the coldest", people of Winnipeg or territories. I do not know what the cold really is. Whether it's a drop of whiskey to warm you up, drink to pass the time because you can not go out, or face the cold with your combination of snow and a holster of luck While you wait patiently for your turn to try your luck luck with the Yamaha Enticer of 1987, you and your friends call the Terminator, I understand the reasons for drunkenness when the temperature drops.
There is something to be said about living in a place where Mother Nature is actively killing you for several months a year. There seems to be a stronger sense of community in places where cold can, literally, kill you, unlike places where winters are milder, like Toronto. With the sense community, I found that colder cities would drink much louder. I understand that this is completely anecdotal, but, hey, now the data backs me up.
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