How much drinking 14 units of alcohol per week shortens your life expectancy by

While some sober folks might be taking a brief hiatus during the World Cup, more and more people are moving away from alcohol.

It's a significant part of British culture in particular, and we'll all probably cherish our memories of our first pint, but these days it's just not as prevalent as it used to be.

There's a number of factors for that, whether it's the amount of money it costs to buy a pint these days, or people simply preferring to spend their weekends without a hangover.

But perhaps the biggest reason for banishing the booze is the health benefits you can enjoy, with those who have gone sober waxing lyriclal about the way its turned their life around, with improved sleep and mood one of the biggest factors people are noticing.

If you don't want to give up entirely but do want to reduce your intake, without taking part in Dry January, then it's long been thought that you should be aiming for fewer than 14 units per week. Any more than that, and you could quickly find yourself in trouble.

A few too many drinks could shave months off your life (Getty Stock)

That's certainly the opinion of the experts, with John Holmes, professor of ­alcohol policy at the University of Sheffield, helping to quantify that guideline back in 2016.

He told the Daily Mail: "There is no magic number here – no cliff edge where, if you drink below that level you're safe to drink, and over that and you're going to die.

"Broadly speaking, the risk increases with each additional drink you consume, and it increases particularly sharply for higher levels of consumption. Ultimately, it's just a guideline not a limit, as it's often described."

Naturally, the more you drink, the more your body is likely to suffer, with studies previously identifying just how bad for us even one drink can be.

Professor Holmes explains: "There's a lot of uncertainty in the '14 units' figure, and probably a range which is acceptable, which might be up to 21 units.

"But it's set at 14 because we also had to consider what we wanted the new guideline to do in terms of changing behaviour. We needed it to be easily understandable, something we could defend scientifically, and it had to communicate this message that the evidence of risk from alcohol had increased since the previous guidelines.

"If you want to keep your risk low, the idea is you keep this number in mind. If you have 15 to 16 units a week, you've slightly increased your risk, but it's not huge. If you're having 20 to 30 units a week, you've substantially increased your risk."

It's no surprise that so many are going sober (Getty Stock)

Sir David Spiegelhalter, echoed these thoughts while speaking with the Maill on Sunday: 'The UK recommended limits are described as 'low-risk', but this does not mean that anything above this is 'high-risk'.

"It would be wrong if people thought that drinking anything above the recommended limits is necessarily harming them — they could perhaps be considered as aspirational targets."

The professor pointed to a mahjor study which was published back in 2018 which was based on 600,000 drinkers and 40,000 deaths at the hands of alcohol.

"The study estimated that, compared with people drinking within current UK guidelines, those that drank up to twice the current guidelines had, on average, around six months lower life expectancy.

"Of course, any effect of additional alcohol will vary hugely between people, but this gives an idea of the ­magnitude of the trade-off."

So, unless you fancy shaving off a few months with those few extra pints, it might be best to give zebra striping a try for a while.