Alcohol Awareness Week: what do you think about this?
19 November 2014
Around 200,000 people come to work with a hangover every day and around 17 million working days are lost to alcohol-related sickness every year. Alcohol can have a seriously negative impact on your attendance and performance at work. Alcohol can disturb your sleeping patterns, leaving you tired and less productive if you do make it into work.
In the longer term, if you are regularly drinking over the recommended guidelines of 3-4 units a day for men and 2-3 units a day for women, you are increasing your risk of suffering from health problems including liver disease, a number of cancers and stroke.
One of the most common reasons that people give for having a regular drink is to de-stress after a hard day at work.
How can you de-stress without alcohol?
Here are some tips to help:
- Exercise is an excellent way to de-stress. Even a brisk walk can clear your head.
- Try replacing an evening at the pub with another activity; maybe the cinema or theatre?
- Having a nice warm soak in the bath will relieve tension from your body.
- Get an early night to leave you fresh and alert the next day.
Jennifer Prosser
Staff Occupational Health and Wellbeing Advisor
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Is it worth suggesting that people keep a note of how much they drink? It may help people to realise that there’s a problem if it’s written down. If it does seem to be a problem, perhaps keeping a note of why we drink might be worthwhile.
If the reason for drinking is stress at work we should look at the cause as well as what people do to relax. If people are getting stressed at work then there’s a problem at work that needs to be addressed. Perhaps we could do something about that. Are people able to leave work on time and not take work home? Or is there an expectation of long hours and working evenings and weekends?
If work is leading people to be stressed and therefore drink we have the chance to deal directly with the cause.
I would also recommend cycling to and from work – especially down by the Taff – as a great way of making the journey to and from work more of a relaxing experience.