Moderate drinking is less healthy than abstinence, analysis suggests | Health

For regular drinkers, that's great comfort: A growing body of research shows that having one drink a day is better for your longevity than avoiding alcohol altogether.

But new analysis challenges this thinking, blaming the optimistic message on flawed studies that compare drinkers to sick, non-drinkers.

Canadian scientists pored over 107 published studies on people's drinking habits and life expectancy, finding that most compared drinkers with abstainers or very light drinkers and did not take into account people who had reduced or stopped drinking for health reasons.

The findings mean that there are significant numbers of sick people among abstainers and occasional drinkers, lowering the average health of the group as a whole, while light-to-moderate drinkers appear to be in better health in comparison.

“It's a huge propaganda coup for the alcoholic beverage industry to suggest that moderate consumption of their products will extend your life,” said Dr. Tim Stockwell, lead author of the study and a scientist at the Canadian Institute for Substance Use at the University of Victoria.

“This thinking influences national drinking guidelines and estimates of the global burden of alcohol-related disease, and undermines effective alcohol and public health policymaking,” he added. Journal of Alcohol and Drug Research.

Many studies on the health effects of alcohol have J-Curve EffectWhen a Canadian research team combined data from these studies into an analysis, it suggested that light-to-moderate drinkers (one drink per week to two drinks per day) had a 14% lower risk of death over the study period compared with abstainers.

But on closer inspection, this apparent advantage disappeared: the best studies, which included younger people and were careful not to count former or occasional drinkers as abstainers, found no evidence that light-to-moderate drinkers live longer; the only evidence was in lower-quality studies that failed to distinguish between former drinkers and lifetime abstainers.

“Most studies to date have exaggerated estimates of alcohol's health benefits while underestimating its harms,” ​​Stockwell said.

“Most studies to date have compared drinkers to groups of unhealthy people who now abstain or drink very little alcohol. We know that as people age and become sicker and weaker, they stop or cut down on their drinking. In the most biased studies, the comparison groups include many people who had stopped or cut down on drinking for health reasons, making people who were healthy enough to continue drinking seem even healthier,” he added.

England's former Chief Medical Officer Sally Davies said there was no safe level of alcohol consumption. Main Research A study published in 2018 supports this view, finding that alcohol was responsible for 2.8 million deaths in 2016 and is the leading risk factor for premature death and disability among people aged 15 to 49. Alcohol consumption was linked to approximately 27% of global cancer deaths in women aged 50 and over, and 19% of cancer deaths in men.

Adults in the UK are being advised to limit their risks by drinking less alcohol, despite growing evidence that even low levels can be harmful. 14 or more units per weekHalf a pint of medium strength lager contains one unit, and a 125ml glass of wine contains about 1.5 units.

last year, Main Research A study of more than 500,000 Chinese men linked alcohol to more than 60 diseases, including cirrhosis of the liver, stroke, some digestive cancers, gout, cataracts and stomach ulcers.

“Research on alcohol and health, even when well conducted, can be subject to bias,” said Dr Iona Millwood of the University of Oxford, co-author of the Chinese men study. “This is because drinking patterns tend to be correlated with other factors such as smoking and socioeconomic status, and people often change their drinking patterns when their health deteriorates. There is growing evidence that the perceived health benefits of moderate drinking are likely not causal.”