Alcohol is bad for you, even in moderate drinking or drinking small amounts - The Guardian

[Muji.Iqbal]

Here's why moderate drinking is probably not good for you​

This article is more than 5 years old
Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz


People who drink one to two standard drinks a day are the healthiest overall. But moderate drinking isn’t an isolated behaviour
Mon 6 May 2019 04.09 BST
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As a society, we love drinking. There are people who abstain, but by and large we love to drink alcohol – it’s part of our social culture, part of our collective identity, and so pervasive that it can be hard to escape from even if you try. As anyone who’s attempted a Dry July can attest, booze is something that we are all connected to in myriads of ways.

So stories about drinking make us stop and take notice. In particular, moderate drinking. We all know that boozing too much is bad for us – it’s no surprise that 20 beers a week is probably not great for your health – but it is much more confusing that we are constantly being told that moderate drinking is either good or bad for us depending on the week or even the day that different studies are announced. A recent study just last month concluded that moderate drinking might be preventing depression, which seems incredibly unlikely for a number of reasons.



Former CSIRO researcher accuses science agency of pro-alcohol research
Read more

Science is complicated​

We’ve known about the association between moderate drinking and good health for quite some time. Researchers have identified that people who drink a moderate amount – usually between 1-2 standard drinks (16-20g of alcohol) a day – are at a lower risk of things like heart disease, diabetes, and obesity than both people who drink a lot and people who never drink. It’s fairly well-established that, if you look at society at large, people who drink a moderate amount are the healthiest in a number of ways.


The problem is that moderate drinking isn’t an isolated behaviour. You can’t easily separate moderate drinking from the people who drink moderately, which means that you can’t easily identify whether it’s actually the alcohol that’s improving people’s health or something more complex.

The issue is pretty obvious when you look at the people who drink moderately in all of these studies. They tend to be wealthier, more educated, smoke less, live in nicer areas, are less likely to have been in prison, less likely to be overweight, and in general are better off than both people who drink a lot and those who say that they never drink. Never drinkers are also different in a lot of ways, mostly bad, which makes sense if you think about the why people might choose to abstain from drinking – for example, illness, poverty, and previous alcoholism.

As someone who drinks moderately, it would be wonderful if I could quaff a beer each night without any negatives

Basically, it’s impossible to know from much of this research if moderate drinking causes people to be healthy, or if it’s just that the people who drink moderately in our society are rich and well-off, and that’s what is making us think that moderate drinking is good.

Moderately more scientific​

So is moderate drinking good for us? There are two ways we could answer this question. Firstly, we could run a randomised controlled trial, giving people a bit of booze every day for a long time, and see if they get healthier. Alternately, we can try and control for all of the external factors that are influencing the relationship between health and alcohol, and see whether moderate drinkers are still healthier.


Luckily for us, clever scientists have done both of those things.

A study in Israel looked at what happened when people start drinking one standard drink per day, over two years. They split people into three groups, gave one water, and the other two either red or white wine. At the end of the study, there weren’t any consistent health effects – positive or negative – from drinking wine. The problem is that one of the biggest health impacts of drinking is cancer, and this can take years to develop, so we can say from this study that there probably aren’t any significant health benefits to moderate drinking, but there may still be risks involved.

Another study in New Zealand took the second route. They looked at the standard model of research for moderate drinking studies – dividing people into never drinkers, moderate drinkers, and heavy drinkers – and found that moderate drinkers were the healthiest of the bunch. But then they did something really clever. They added in a much more rigorous control for socio-economic status, which meant that they eliminated many of the issues that most of these studies face, and the beneficial effects of moderate drinking disappeared completely.

Once you get rid of the effects of society, even a small amount of booze is associated with worse health.

Even low alcohol consumption is bad news for strokes – study
Read more

The reason to drink​

It seems that moderate drinking probably isn’t good for our health after all. While there may be some minor heart health benefits, alcohol is addictive and causes damage to many other organs, so the trade-off is not in our favour.

We all want to hear that moderate drinking is good for us. As someone who drinks moderately, it would be absolutely wonderful if I could quaff a beer each night without any negatives. Unfortunately, it’s just not likely that booze is ever healthy. Alcohol is almost certainly bad for you, no matter how much you drink.

I’m going to keep drinking, but not for my health. Wine is delicious, beer is great, and gin is just wonderful. Drink for the taste, drink to socialise, but don’t drink because you think it’s going to cure your depression or heal your heart.

And if possible, try to drink less. We’d probably all be a lot better off if we cut out the booze.

Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz is an epidemiologist working in chronic disease

Here's why moderate drinking is probably not good for you​

This article is more than 5 years old
Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz


People who drink one to two standard drinks a day are the healthiest overall. But moderate drinking isn’t an isolated behaviour
Mon 6 May 2019 04.09 BST
Share

240
As a society, we love drinking. There are people who abstain, but by and large we love to drink alcohol – it’s part of our social culture, part of our collective identity, and so pervasive that it can be hard to escape from even if you try. As anyone who’s attempted a Dry July can attest, booze is something that we are all connected to in myriads of ways.

So stories about drinking make us stop and take notice. In particular, moderate drinking. We all know that boozing too much is bad for us – it’s no surprise that 20 beers a week is probably not great for your health – but it is much more confusing that we are constantly being told that moderate drinking is either good or bad for us depending on the week or even the day that different studies are announced. A recent study just last month concluded that moderate drinking might be preventing depression, which seems incredibly unlikely for a number of reasons.



Former CSIRO researcher accuses science agency of pro-alcohol research
Read more

Science is complicated​

We’ve known about the association between moderate drinking and good health for quite some time. Researchers have identified that people who drink a moderate amount – usually between 1-2 standard drinks (16-20g of alcohol) a day – are at a lower risk of things like heart disease, diabetes, and obesity than both people who drink a lot and people who never drink. It’s fairly well-established that, if you look at society at large, people who drink a moderate amount are the healthiest in a number of ways.


The problem is that moderate drinking isn’t an isolated behaviour. You can’t easily separate moderate drinking from the people who drink moderately, which means that you can’t easily identify whether it’s actually the alcohol that’s improving people’s health or something more complex.

The issue is pretty obvious when you look at the people who drink moderately in all of these studies. They tend to be wealthier, more educated, smoke less, live in nicer areas, are less likely to have been in prison, less likely to be overweight, and in general are better off than both people who drink a lot and those who say that they never drink. Never drinkers are also different in a lot of ways, mostly bad, which makes sense if you think about the why people might choose to abstain from drinking – for example, illness, poverty, and previous alcoholism.

As someone who drinks moderately, it would be wonderful if I could quaff a beer each night without any negatives

Basically, it’s impossible to know from much of this research if moderate drinking causes people to be healthy, or if it’s just that the people who drink moderately in our society are rich and well-off, and that’s what is making us think that moderate drinking is good.

Moderately more scientific​

So is moderate drinking good for us? There are two ways we could answer this question. Firstly, we could run a randomised controlled trial, giving people a bit of booze every day for a long time, and see if they get healthier. Alternately, we can try and control for all of the external factors that are influencing the relationship between health and alcohol, and see whether moderate drinkers are still healthier.


Luckily for us, clever scientists have done both of those things.

A study in Israel looked at what happened when people start drinking one standard drink per day, over two years. They split people into three groups, gave one water, and the other two either red or white wine. At the end of the study, there weren’t any consistent health effects – positive or negative – from drinking wine. The problem is that one of the biggest health impacts of drinking is cancer, and this can take years to develop, so we can say from this study that there probably aren’t any significant health benefits to moderate drinking, but there may still be risks involved.

Another study in New Zealand took the second route. They looked at the standard model of research for moderate drinking studies – dividing people into never drinkers, moderate drinkers, and heavy drinkers – and found that moderate drinkers were the healthiest of the bunch. But then they did something really clever. They added in a much more rigorous control for socio-economic status, which meant that they eliminated many of the issues that most of these studies face, and the beneficial effects of moderate drinking disappeared completely.

Once you get rid of the effects of society, even a small amount of booze is associated with worse health.


Even low alcohol consumption is bad news for strokes – study
Read more

The reason to drink​

It seems that moderate drinking probably isn’t good for our health after all. While there may be some minor heart health benefits, alcohol is addictive and causes damage to many other organs, so the trade-off is not in our favour.

We all want to hear that moderate drinking is good for us. As someone who drinks moderately, it would be absolutely wonderful if I could quaff a beer each night without any negatives. Unfortunately, it’s just not likely that booze is ever healthy. Alcohol is almost certainly bad for you, no matter how much you drink.

I’m going to keep drinking, but not for my health. Wine is delicious, beer is great, and gin is just wonderful. Drink for the taste, drink to socialise, but don’t drink because you think it’s going to cure your depression or heal your heart.

And if possible, try to drink less. We’d probably all be a lot better off if we cut out the booze.

Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz is an epidemiologist working in chronic disease

Moderate drinking not better for health than abstaining, analysis suggests​

This article is more than 1 month old
Scientists say flaws in previous research mean health benefits from alcohol were exaggerated

Ian Sample Science editor
Thu 25 Jul 2024 06.00 BST
Share


For the regular boozer it is a source of great comfort: the fat pile of studies that say a daily tipple is better for a longer life than avoiding alcohol completely.

But a new analysis challenges the thinking and blames the rosy message on flawed research that compares drinkers with people who are sick and sober.


Scientists in Canada delved into 107 published studies on people’s drinking habits and how long they lived. In most cases, they found that drinkers were compared with people who abstained or consumed very little alcohol, without taking into account that some had cut down or quit through ill health.

The finding means that amid the abstainers and occasional drinkers are a significant number of sick people, bringing the group’s average health down, and making light to moderate drinkers look better off in comparison.

Tobacco, alcohol, processed foods and fossil fuels ‘kill 2.7m a year in Europe’
Read more
“It’s been a propaganda coup for the alcohol industry to propose that moderate use of their product lengthens people’s lives,” said Dr Tim Stockwell, first author on the study and a scientist at the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria.

“The idea has impacted national drinking guidelines, estimates of alcohol’s burden of disease worldwide and has been an impediment to effective policymaking on alcohol and public health,” he added. Details are published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.


Many studies on the health impact of alcohol show a J-curve effect, where death rates are lowest among those who drink a little. When the Canadian team combined the data from the studies in their analysis, it suggested that light to moderate drinkers – those having between one drink a week and two a day – had a 14% lower risk of dying over the study period compared with abstainers.

But the apparent benefit evaporated on closer inspection. In the highest-quality studies, which included younger people and made sure that former drinkers and occasional drinkers were not considered abstainers, there was no evidence that light to moderate drinkers lived longer. That was only seen in the weaker research that failed to separate former drinkers and lifelong teetotallers.

“Estimates of the health benefits from alcohol have been exaggerated while its harms have been underestimated in most previous studies,” Stockwell said.

“The great majority of previous studies compare drinkers with an increasingly unhealthy group of people who currently abstain or drink very little. We know people give up or cut down on drinking when they become unwell and frailer with age. The most biased studies included many people who had stopped or cut down their drinking for health reasons in the comparison group so making people well enough to continue drinking appear even healthier,” he added.


Beer advertisements shown to kids during streamed TV programs like Lego Masters
Read more

England’s former chief medical officer, Dame Sally Davies, has said there is no safe level of alcohol intake. A major study published in 2018 supported the view. It found that alcohol led to 2.8 million deaths in 2016 and was the leading risk factor for premature death and disability in 15- to 49-year-olds. Among the over 50s, about 27% of global cancer deaths in women and 19% in men were linked to their drinking habits.

Despite the growing evidence for harm at even low levels, adults in the UK are advised to keep the risk down by not drinking more than 14 units a week. Half a pint of average-strength lager contains one unit and a 125ml glass of wine contains about 1.5 units.

Last year, a major study of more than half a million Chinese men linked alcohol to more than 60 diseases, including liver cirrhosis, stroke, several gastrointestinal cancers, gout, cataracts and gastric ulcers.

“Studies of alcohol and health can be subject to biases, even when they are well-conducted,” said Dr Iona Millwood at the University of Oxford, a co-author on the study of Chinese men. “This is because drinking patterns tend to correlate with other factors such as smoking and socioeconomic status, and people often change their drinking patterns in response to poor health. We are seeing increasing evidence that the apparent beneficial health effects of moderate drinking are unlikely to be causal.”

Moderate drinking not better for health than abstaining, analysis suggests

Scientists say flaws in previous research mean health benefits from alcohol were exaggerated

www.theguardian.com

No healthy level of alcohol consumption, says major study​

This article is more than 6 years old
Governments should consider advising people to abstain entirely, say authors

Sarah Boseley Health editor
Thu 23 Aug 2018 23.30 BST
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Even the occasional drink is harmful to health, according to the largest and most detailed research carried out on the effects of alcohol, which suggests governments should think of advising people to abstain completely.

The uncompromising message comes from the authors of the Global Burden of Diseases study, a rolling project based at the University of Washington, in Seattle, which produces the most comprehensive data on the causes of illness and death in the world.



Alcohol firms would lose £13bn if drinkers in England stuck to limits
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Alcohol, says their report published in the Lancet medical journal, led to 2.8 million deaths in 2016. It was the leading risk factor for premature mortality and disability in the 15 to 49 age group, accounting for 20% of deaths.

Current alcohol drinking habits pose “dire ramifications for future population health in the absence of policy action today”, says the paper. “Alcohol use contributes to health loss from many causes and exacts its toll across the lifespan, particularly among men.”

Most national guidelines suggest there are health benefits to one or two glasses of wine or beer a day, they say. “Our results show that the safest level of drinking is none.”


The study was carried out by researchers at the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), who investigated levels of alcohol consumption and health effects in 195 countries between 1990 to 2016. They used data from 694 studies to work out how common drinking was and from 592 studies including 28 million people worldwide to work out the health risks.

Moderate drinking has been condoned for years on the assumption that there are some health benefits. A glass of red wine a day has long been said to be good for the heart. But although the researchers did find low levels of drinking offered some protection from heart disease, and possibly from diabetes and stroke, the benefits were far outweighed by alcohol’s harmful effects, they said.

Drinking alcohol was a big cause of cancer in the over-50s, particularly in women. Previous research has shown that one in 13 breast cancers in the UK were alcohol-related. The study found that globally, 27.1% of cancer deaths in women and 18.9% in men over 50 were linked to their drinking habits.

Want the truth about alcohol? You won’t hear it from the government
Julian Baggini
Read more
In younger people globally the biggest causes of death linked to alcohol were tuberculosis (1.4% of deaths), road injuries (1.2%), and self-harm (1.1%).

In the UK, the chief medical officer Sally Davies has said there is no safe level of drinking, but the guidance suggests that drinkers consume no more than 14 units a week to keep the risks low. Half a pint of average-strength lager contains one unit and a 125ml glass of wine contains around 1.5 units.


While the study shows that the increased risk of alcohol-related harm in younger people who have one drink a day is small (0.5%), it goes up incrementally with heavier drinking: to 7% among those who have two drinks a day (in line with UK guidance) and 37% for those who have five.

One in three, or 2.4 billion people around the world, drink alcohol, the study shows. A quarter of women and 39% of men drink. Denmark has the most drinkers (95.3% of women, and 97.1% of men). Pakistan has the fewest male drinkers (0.8%) and Bangladesh the fewest women (0.3%). Men in Romania and women in Ukraine drink the most (8.2 and 4.2 drinks a day respectively), while women in the UK take the eighth highest place in the female drinking league, with an average of three drinks a day.

“Alcohol poses dire ramifications for future population health in the absence of policy action today. Our results indicate that alcohol use and its harmful effects on health could become a growing challenge as countries become more developed, and enacting or maintaining strong alcohol control policies will be vital,” said the report’s senior author, Prof Emmanuela Gakidou.

As a recovering alcoholic, I welcome minimum booze pricing in Scotland
Darren McGarvey
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“Worldwide we need to revisit alcohol control policies and health programmes, and to consider recommendations for abstaining from alcohol. These include excise taxes on alcohol, controlling the physical availability of alcohol and the hours of sale, and controlling alcohol advertising. Any of these policy actions would contribute to reductions in population-level consumption, a vital step toward decreasing the health loss associated with alcohol use.”


Dr Robyn Burton, of King’s College London, said in a commentary in the Lancet that the conclusions of the study were clear and unambiguous. “Alcohol is a colossal global health issue and small reductions in health-related harms at low levels of alcohol intake are outweighed by the increased risk of other health-related harms, including cancer,” she wrote.

“There is strong support here for the guideline published by the Chief Medical Officer of the UK who found that there is ‘no safe level of alcohol consumption’.”


Wealthy professionals most likely to drink regularly, figures show
Read more
Public health policy should be to prioritise measures to reduce the numbers who drink through price increases, taxation, or setting the price according to the strength of the drink (minimum unit pricing), followed by curbs on marketing and restricting the places where people can buy alcohol.

“These approaches should come as no surprise because these are also the most effective measures for curbing tobacco-related harms, another commercially mediated disease, with an increasing body of evidence showing that controlling obesity will require the same measures,” she wrote.

Ben Butler, a Drinkaware spokesperson, said: “This new study supports existing evidence about the harms associated with alcohol. Our research shows that over a quarter of UK adults typically exceed the low risk drinking guidelines and are running the risk of serious long term illnesses.”

But David Spiegelhalter, Winton professor for the public understanding of risk at the University of Cambridge, said the data showed only a very low level of harm in moderate drinkers and suggested UK guidelines were very low risk.

“Given the pleasure presumably associated with moderate drinking, claiming there is no ‘safe’ level does not seem an argument for abstention,” he said. “There is no safe level of driving, but government do not recommend that people avoid driving. Come to think of it, there is no safe level of living, but nobody would recommend abstention.”

No healthy level of alcohol consumption, says major study

Governments should consider advising people to abstain entirely, say authors

www.theguardian.com

Conclusion: Alcohol is bad for you, no matter what. Whether it is large, moderate drinking, or small quantities, alcohol is bad for you.

 

[Muji.Iqbal]

Moderate drinking not better for health than abstaining, analysis suggests​

This article is more than 1 month old
Scientists say flaws in previous research mean health benefits from alcohol were exaggerated

Ian Sample Science editor
Thu 25 Jul 2024 06.00 BST
Share


For the regular boozer it is a source of great comfort: the fat pile of studies that say a daily tipple is better for a longer life than avoiding alcohol completely.

But a new analysis challenges the thinking and blames the rosy message on flawed research that compares drinkers with people who are sick and sober.


Scientists in Canada delved into 107 published studies on people’s drinking habits and how long they lived. In most cases, they found that drinkers were compared with people who abstained or consumed very little alcohol, without taking into account that some had cut down or quit through ill health.

The finding means that amid the abstainers and occasional drinkers are a significant number of sick people, bringing the group’s average health down, and making light to moderate drinkers look better off in comparison.



Tobacco, alcohol, processed foods and fossil fuels ‘kill 2.7m a year in Europe’
Read more
“It’s been a propaganda coup for the alcohol industry to propose that moderate use of their product lengthens people’s lives,” said Dr Tim Stockwell, first author on the study and a scientist at the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria.

“The idea has impacted national drinking guidelines, estimates of alcohol’s burden of disease worldwide and has been an impediment to effective policymaking on alcohol and public health,” he added. Details are published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.


Many studies on the health impact of alcohol show a J-curve effect, where death rates are lowest among those who drink a little. When the Canadian team combined the data from the studies in their analysis, it suggested that light to moderate drinkers – those having between one drink a week and two a day – had a 14% lower risk of dying over the study period compared with abstainers.

But the apparent benefit evaporated on closer inspection. In the highest-quality studies, which included younger people and made sure that former drinkers and occasional drinkers were not considered abstainers, there was no evidence that light to moderate drinkers lived longer. That was only seen in the weaker research that failed to separate former drinkers and lifelong teetotallers.

“Estimates of the health benefits from alcohol have been exaggerated while its harms have been underestimated in most previous studies,” Stockwell said.

“The great majority of previous studies compare drinkers with an increasingly unhealthy group of people who currently abstain or drink very little. We know people give up or cut down on drinking when they become unwell and frailer with age. The most biased studies included many people who had stopped or cut down their drinking for health reasons in the comparison group so making people well enough to continue drinking appear even healthier,” he added.



Beer advertisements shown to kids during streamed TV programs like Lego Masters
Read more

England’s former chief medical officer, Dame Sally Davies, has said there is no safe level of alcohol intake. A major study published in 2018 supported the view. It found that alcohol led to 2.8 million deaths in 2016 and was the leading risk factor for premature death and disability in 15- to 49-year-olds. Among the over 50s, about 27% of global cancer deaths in women and 19% in men were linked to their drinking habits.

Despite the growing evidence for harm at even low levels, adults in the UK are advised to keep the risk down by not drinking more than 14 units a week. Half a pint of average-strength lager contains one unit and a 125ml glass of wine contains about 1.5 units.

Last year, a major study of more than half a million Chinese men linked alcohol to more than 60 diseases, including liver cirrhosis, stroke, several gastrointestinal cancers, gout, cataracts and gastric ulcers.

“Studies of alcohol and health can be subject to biases, even when they are well-conducted,” said Dr Iona Millwood at the University of Oxford, a co-author on the study of Chinese men. “This is because drinking patterns tend to correlate with other factors such as smoking and socioeconomic status, and people often change their drinking patterns in response to poor health. We are seeing increasing evidence that the apparent beneficial health effects of moderate drinking are unlikely to be causal.”

Moderate drinking not better for health than abstaining, analysis suggests

Scientists say flaws in previous research mean health benefits from alcohol were exaggerated

www.theguardian.com

 

[AjayGhatak]

Alcohol is a neuro poison. It kills brain cells. Any amount is bad for you.

 

[Sam6536]

Everything is a slow poison and in large amounts it just exacerbate the effect.
Sugar, sodium are the staple of everything in modern world and it might not be wrong to classify these "everyday items" as a drug which humanity is hooked up upon.