People have always toasted with wine on more than a few occasion bearing in mind that drinking in moderation does offer some potential health benefits. Even the recent USDA 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines approve of moderate drinking as part of an overall healthy living.
However, a recent study says that moderate drinking may not offer health benefits at all, according to a Yahoo News article. According to Canadian researchers who reviewed 87 long term studies on alcohol and death rates, the previous conclusions that moderate alcohol intake is beneficial might be flawed. According to the article, most studies included in their statistics as "abstainers" those who quit drinking alcohol due to health reasons. The researchers argue that this subgroup of abstainers who had to quit drinking for health reasons should be struck out from the abstainers category because it would make it appear that abstainers are sicker than drinkers to begin with. If these people were not included in the "abstainer" group, the new data would appear that no apparent health benefit is gained even by drinking moderately.
Moderate Drinking
How does one define moderate drinking? According to the latest USDA Dietary Guidelines, moderate drinking is measured to be up to one drink per day for women and up to two drinks per day in men. In addition, drinkers should be of legal age.
What Are the Supposed Benefits of Moderate Drinking?
There are a lot of perceived health benefits of moderate alcohol intake depending on the literature. For example, a MayoClinic article cites the following benefits that one may gain from a moderate alcohol consumption, such as:
1. Reduced risk of developing or dying from heart disease
2. Possibly reduce the risk of an ischemic stroke (caused by restricted blood flow to the brain due to blockages or narrowing of the arteries)
3. Possibly reduced diabetes risk
A Medical Daily article by Sabrina Bachai, offers additional possible health benefits of moderate drinking, which include:
1. Lengthen life
2. Improve Libido
3. Prevents Common Cold
4. Decrease Dementia Risk
5. Decrease Gallstone risk
Furthermore, moderate intake of alcohol has some psychological benefit as well, as highlighted in this study in PubMed, which include:
1. Reduces stress
2. Increase overall affective expression, happiness, euphoria, conviviality and carefree feelings
3. Improve cognitive performance such as problem-solving skills and short-term memory
So does the new review mean that people have to stop moderate alcohol drinking due to the lack of health benefits? Not necessarily, according to Jurgen Rhem, of Toronto-based Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. Rhem suggests that for people who can stick to moderate drinking, it shouldn't be a problem according to CBC News article.
Tim Stockwell, who was part of the study, concluded that "We should drink alcohol for pleasure. But if you think it's for your health, you're deluding yourself."
Some Still Unconvinced of The New Analysis
But as usual, not everyone is impressed with the study. According to an NY Times article by Aaron Carroll titled "In Defense of Moderate Drinking (Again)", Carroll argues that while the conclusions are making headlines, the findings upon which they were based were pretty weak.
Carroll added that the meta-analysis left too many studies, including those that did show actual benefits which open the possibility that the researchers were "cherry-picking", probably a term he used to mean that the researchers were selective in which study to include, and most likely only those that supported their conclusion.
For Carroll, the study can be best interpreted that there is no higher or lower risk of death among those who drink moderately. In addition, he wrote that "There's nothing in this new analysis that would make me change my mind."
For now, it seems that moderate drinkers will have to wait for further research to clarify or conclusively put to rest the benefits, or lack thereof, offered by a moderate intake of alcohol. They could all follow Stockwell's advice to drink for pleasure instead. Cheers!
