Russia's Love for Vodka Behind Rising Death Rates

Russian men are drinking themselves to death, according to a new study.

The study team, which included researchers from Oxford University, found that high death rate among men in Russia is linked with increased vodka consumption.

Currently, about 25 percent men under age 55 die in Russia compared to just seven percent in the U.K.

A research published in the journal Lancet five years ago had found high death rates among men who drank large volumes of vodka. That study was based on data from 49,000 people in three Russian cities of Barnaul, Byisk, and Tomsk.

The current study was based on data from 151,000 Russians. Researchers asked them about their vodka consumption and followed them for about a decade on average. During the study period, nearly 8,000 people died.

Researchers found that vodka consumption was linked with early death in men. Drinking three bottles of vodka a week nearly doubled the risk of dying in the next two decades, nbcnews reported.

Life expectancy in Russia has fluctuated over the past two decades; from 63 years in 1990 to around  58 in 2000, and increasing to 62 years in 2009 (for men). Female life expectancy is about was  74 years in 1990, then 72 in 2000, and again 74 years in 2009, rferl.org reports.

The rise and fall of death rates is linked with government policies on alcohol consumption. Alcohol restrictions introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 saw alcohol consumption and death rates fall by 25 percent. But, the collapse of communism increased liquor intake.

"Russian death rates have fluctuated wildly over the past 30 years as alcohol restrictions and social stability varied under Presidents Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Putin, and the main thing driving these wild fluctuations in death was vodka," said Professor Sir Richard Peto of the Clinical Trial Service Unit at the University of Oxford, according to a news release.

The study involved researchers at Russian Cancer Research Centre in Moscow and the WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in France and is published in the journal The Lancet.

The link between vodka consumption and low life expectancy, especially of men, in Russia isn't new. Several reports have highlighted the sad picture of healthcare in the country.

A Russian, on an average, drinks about four gallons of pure alcohol every year. Also, 50 percent of the population is now overweight. The country has adopted several measures in the past few years to increase life expectancy such as banning smoking in public areas and designating beer as an alcoholic drink.

However, according to health advocates, Russia needs to overhaul public healthcare systems to reduce the number of deaths in the country.