Twitter scared the bejesus out of me today with a link to The Lancet, a somewhat more highly regarded publication than this blog, which has published a massive meta-analysis of almost 600,000 alcohol drinkers in 83 studies.

I don’t have the attention span or the mental capacity to read a study like this, so I just scrolled through my Twitter feed, and this is what I learned:

• Nineteen countries disagree about the ideal limit for alcohol (assuming you want optimal health, and who knows, you might not)
• Men who drink less than 100g of alcohol per week can expect to live one to two years longer than men who drink twice that amount
• Women who drink less than 100g of alcohol per week can expect to live 1.3 years longer than women who drink more than 100g of alcohol per week
• Beer drinkers, spirits drinkers, and binge drinkers have the highest mortality risk
• The ideal weekly drink limit is twice as much for men as it is for women (11 vs. 5!)
• Exceeding the ideal weekly drink limit could shorten your lifespan by 30 minutes!!!!

So OMG, people, there’s so much to unpack here.

• First of all, isn’t a lancet a kind of stabby thing for taking blood samples? This prestigious journal didn’t have to be named The Lancet. It could have been named The Scalpel or The Retractor or The Bonesaw. Just saying.
• Second, we need to move to Spain, Italy, or Portugal, where recommended drinks/week are 50 per cent higher. Whee!
• Third, how are we to compare the findings for women and men as compacted into understandable bullet points by the Twitterverse? I mean, I only have two brain cells.
• Fourth, wait till my mum finds out she’s not supposed to match my dad drink for drink. She’s gonna freak.
• Fifth, we can’t binge?
• Sixth, ummm, 30 minutes? That’s like three episodes of Mike Tyson Mysteries. Does it matter? I guess it depends whether we’re caught up on Netflix or not.