WOMEN are ignoring health guidelines and are confused about how much alcohol they can consume during pregnancy, a new study has found.
Jennifer Powers, a statistician with the University of Newcastle, said national health guidelines on the consumption of alcohol for pregnant women had changed three times in the past two decades, leaving women confused.
According to Ms Powers, whose research appears in the Medical Journal of Australia, alcohol consumption guidelines are “not having any impact at all” on the drinking habits of pregnant women.
When the guidelines were first introduced in 1992, Australian women were advised not to drink at all during pregnancy. That policy was amended in 2001, when women were advised that low levels of alcohol during pregnancy was tolerable. Last year, the National Health and Medical Research Council once again shifted its policy and pregnant women were advised not to drink at all.
“You can tell from this that health researchers are uncertain as to the effects of low alcohol consumption on the baby,” Ms Powers said. “And it is partly because health researchers are not certain that women are not getting a clear message.”
Drawing on data collected by the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health, Ms Powers found that a woman’s drinking habits prior to pregnancy was the strongest determinant of how much alcohol she would consume while pregnant.
“Relative to women who did not drink before pregnancy, women who drank any amount of alcohol before pregnancy were about five times less likely to drink no alcohol during pregnancy,” Ms Powers said.
Her research found that women were not following the guidelines, with 20 per cent of pregnant women still drinking more than just low levels of alcohol. And despite guidelines advising women not to drink at all during pregnancy, Ms Powers found 80 per cent of women still consumed low levels of alcohol.
“Alcohol is actually difficult to avoid, and I think it is very hard for young women who are pregnant because they are told so many things to do, or not to do, they’re under an awful lot of pressure.”
She said researchers needed to invest more time in determining what the risks of drinking low amounts of alcohol really were.
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