It is safe to say that many of us like an occasional drink to unwind, but did you know that the alcohol consumption guidelines have recently been updated? The UK Chief Medical Officers’ (CMO) alcohol guidelines for both men and women state that it is safest not to drink more than 14 units a week on a regular basis.

Here at Covance Leeds, we need our clinical trial participants to be within the recommended consumption guidelines when applying for our clinical trials, so we wanted to share the guidelines with you. Our clinical trial participants need to consume no more than the weekly recommended alcohol units in order to be able to take part in our studies – so that is 14 units per week or less.

Cutting down on drinking does not have to be boring now that there are so many great tasting soft drinks and low alcohol drinks on the market! Plus, there are numerous health benefits to reducing your alcohol intake and you can easily track the units of alcohol you consume each week using this handy tool from Drink Aware: www.drinkaware.co.uk/sevendaycalculator

Some of the benefits attributed to reduced alcohol intake include:

• Overall improved physical health
• Saving money
• Improved mental health
• Reduced calorie intake
• Improved appearance
• Increased energy levels

There has never been a better time to reduce your alcohol consumption, with the availability of tracking tools to monitor what you drink and so many health reasons to cut down on what you consume!

We would love to see as many new recruits as possible to our paid clinical trials and we look forward to welcoming new volunteers soon!