Gaby
Experts have taken a hard look at the widespread idea that a daily glass of wine is good for you. The findings may disappoint.
Proponents of the so-called French paradox, which became popular in the 1990s, argued that a daily glass of red wine protects against heart disease and explained France’s relatively low rates of those illnesses.
Now researchers have revisited earlier studies that suggested small amounts of alcohol might be beneficial. They found many of those studies were low quality, mostly because the authors often compared moderate drinkers with people who had stopped drinking for health reasons.
At the same time, moderate alcohol consumption carries potential health risks, including a higher chance of developing certain types of cancer.
What Scientists Have Discovered
That’s the conclusion of Tim Stockwell and his team. Stockwell is a leading researcher at the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria. The authors of the new study strongly disagreed with earlier work that compared moderate drinkers with non-drinkers and with people who drank only occasionally.
Stockwell said those comparisons made drinkers look healthier than the people who had quit drinking for health reasons. “Compared to them, people who continue to drink appear much healthier,” he said.
The team analyzed the results of 107 published studies and found that people who consumed small or moderate amounts of alcohol (from one serving per week to two per day) had a 14 percent lower risk of dying during the study periods compared with non-drinkers.
Stockwell said the weakest studies were the ones that purported to show benefits from small amounts of alcohol. Those studies mainly focused on older adults and did not separate people who drank earlier in life from lifelong abstainers.
Several higher-quality studies, however, did not find a link between moderate alcohol consumption and longer life.
“There is absolutely no safe level of alcohol consumption,” Stockwell said.
More national health services around the world are rethinking the long-held idea that some alcohol is good for the heart.
To date, many of these services (including the UK’s National Health Service, NHS) have said that consuming less than 14 units of alcohol per week is associated with a low risk of disease. The Canadian team noted that “low risk” is not the same as “no risk,” and concluded there is no safe level of alcohol consumption.
What constitutes a serving of alcohol? According to the World Health Organization (WHO), one serving of alcohol is equivalent to 30 milliliters of a strong alcoholic beverage. That dose equals about 150 ml of wine or 350 ml of beer.
The study’s results were published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.
