# Alcohol: Good for You or Bad for You? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 29, 2007, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alcohol-good-for-you-or-bad-for-you/402060 "2007-04-29T17:30:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Jim\_B](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jim_b/32/4338_2.png) [@Jim\_B](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jim_B)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2007, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alcohol-good-for-you-or-bad-for-you/402060/1 "2007-04-29T17:30:20Z")
I am a little confused as to alcohol’s status. Drink too much, it’s bad for your heart, etc. Drink in moderation, and it’s good for you! How can alcohol be good _and_ bad for you? What is the cut off point for good/bad intake? And what happens if you drink right up to this cut off point, but not beyond? Thank you in advance to all who reply 🙂🙂🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2007, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alcohol-good-for-you-or-bad-for-you/402060/2 "2007-04-29T17:46:44Z")
Most claims that alcohol has significant beneficial effect are vastly overblown. Here’s a quote from an article from the Lancet in 2005: The Lancet, Volume 366, Issue 9501, Pages 1911-1912 R. Jackson, J. Broad, J. Connor, S. Wells > [@](#): > > Any coronary protection from light to moderate drinking will be very small and unlikely to outweigh the harms. While moderate to heavy drinking is probably coronary-protective, any benefit will be overwhelmed by the known harms. If so, the public health message is clear. Do not assume there is a window in which the health benefits of alcohol are greater than the harms—there is probably no free lunch. … Previous threads on this topic: > **[What Are The Long-Term Effects Of Consuming Three Alcoholic Beverages Per Day?](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=401392)** > > I recently calculated my rate of alcohol intake and confirmed that I average three drinks per day, mostly beer, and it has been quite consistent at this level both in the short term (day to day) and over the long term (year after year). I rarely... > **[The effects of alcohol](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=353855)** > > What are the long-term effects of drinking alcohol? The consensus here in Denmark is that it is unhealthy stuff. While I agree that alcoholism is definitely unhealthy, I cannot find anything about the effects of alcohol with more normal use. (Except... > **[Alcohol and damage to the body--the Qadgop vs. KarlGauss smackdown](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=345249)** > > Over here, KarlGauss states that “more than 50 units per week\* can lead to cirrhosis and other nasty complications” (less for women). \*A unit defined as 10gm alcohol In a different thread, that I can’t find right now, Qadgop says two drinks a day... The gist of it: Consumption of small amounts of alcohol is likely to be health-neutral _at best_ and quickly becomes a signficant detriment to health as intake increases. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2007, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alcohol-good-for-you-or-bad-for-you/402060/3 "2007-04-29T20:00:34Z")
> [@](#): > > How can alcohol be good and bad for you? I wouldn’t dream of arguing a medical point with the illustrious **Qadgop** , but it’s not at all unusual for something to be good or bad depending on amounts. In fact, I don’t think there’s _any_ substance that isn’t bad for you, in sufficient extremes. Even too much water can kill you. Now, of course, there are plenty of things which are bad for you in any quantities, and plenty of others for which the optimum amount is very, very small. Even here, though, alcohol is a lot better than, say, cyanide, or arsenic. ---
**Author:** ![ForumBot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ee59a6/32.png) [@ForumBot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ForumBot)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2007, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alcohol-good-for-you-or-bad-for-you/402060/4 "2007-04-29T22:31:28Z")
I don’t know. I think if you were to give someone a fifth of Jack and a carton of peanut butter crackers, and told them to eat until they felt sick, you would have to eat a much more “extreme” amount of crackers than drink an extreme amount of liquor. Basically, the threshold for unhealthy cracker intake and unhealthy alcohol consumption are pretty different. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2007, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alcohol-good-for-you-or-bad-for-you/402060/5 "2007-04-29T23:21:42Z")
I took a quick glance at the earlier threads and didn’t see this point covered, so apologies if it’s there deep inside. The problems with pronouncements about a single food or nutrient is that it is almost impossible to realistically separate the effects of that single item from the larger effects of a person’s life. It’s like saying, we know that computer programming is a good occupation to get into, so what is the effect of computer programming on Kansas City? Food studies are extremely difficult to set up, extremely difficult to get people to participate in, and extremely difficult to evaluate. The best ones are long-term studies of a very large group of people, who try to keep detailed diaries of their food consumption and other factors of their lives over literally decades. Obviously there are very few of these, and these face diminishing returns over time. People die, they stop responding, they grow bored and sloppy. And newer research may prove that the right questions were never asked so those effects can’t be properly traced. Failing that, researchers have to try to match up large groups of people into otherwise similar cohorts except for the one item. This is almost impossible on the face of it, and made worse by the simple fact that without knowing the answer in advance nobody knows what otherwise similar really means. Are people who drink in moderation so different as a type from people who don’t drink, people who binge drink, or people who regularly overdrink that the mere consumption of alcohol is a minor point in a constellation of differences? Does a particular style of alcohol consumption, say, the regular drinking of alcohol with dinner, mean more than the amount of alcohol? Is there really a particular chemical in alcohol that accounts for the effect that could be abstracted from the other more deleterious effects? (Probably yes, yes, and no, but those answers could change tomorrow.) The bottom line is that you shouldn’t pay attention to any reports about any particular food being good for you. The process of eating healthily means doing a little bit of everything right and not much of anything wrong. You can never say that two glasses of wine will help you, if that’s all you’re doing. It is unfortunately much easier to do things wrong than to do things right. Doing one right thing won’t help that at all. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2007, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alcohol-good-for-you-or-bad-for-you/402060/6 "2007-04-29T23:38:23Z")
[QUOTE=ForumBot] Basically, the threshold for unhealthy cracker intake and unhealthy alcohol consumption are pretty different. [/QUOTE] Well yeah, but so what? [Too much Vitamin A can cause acute toxicity](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervitaminosis_A), and at much lower quantities than it takes to cause acute toxicity with Jack. The relative amounts are meaningless. “Moderation” is vastly different from on substance to another, and one is not necessarily safer because it takes more to produce ill effects. ---
**Author:** ![antechinus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/fbc32d/32.png) [@antechinus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/antechinus)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2007, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alcohol-good-for-you-or-bad-for-you/402060/7 "2007-04-30T03:59:59Z")
[QUOTE=Chronos] I wouldn’t dream of arguing a medical point with the illustrious **Qadgop** , but it’s not at all unusual for something to be good or bad depending on amounts. In fact, I don’t think there’s _any_ substance that isn’t bad for you, in sufficient extremes. Even too much water can kill you. Now, of course, there are plenty of things which are bad for you in any quantities, and plenty of others for which the optimum amount is very, very small. Even here, though, alcohol is a lot better than, say, cyanide, or arsenic. [/QUOTE] Are you thinking of [hormesis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis), where at low doses of toxin or radiation exposure there is a favourable biological effect, which drops off to become harmful at higher doses. - “All things are poison and nothing is without poison, only the dose permits something not to be poisonous.”\* - Paracelsus ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2007, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alcohol-good-for-you-or-bad-for-you/402060/8 "2007-04-30T04:36:02Z")
> [@](#): > > Are you thinking of hormesis, where at low doses of toxin or radiation exposure there is a favourable biological effect, which drops off to become harmful at higher doses. Actually, I was thinking more in terms of things which are traditionally considered good, but which can be overdosed. Some vitamins, for example: From **Fear Itself** ’s link, three milligrams of Vitamin A is enough to be bad. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2007, 10:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alcohol-good-for-you-or-bad-for-you/402060/9 "2007-04-30T10:40:24Z")
The benefits of alcohol aren’t “benefits of alcohol”. They’re most commonly linked to red wine; for some reason 😉 Spain seems to breed that kind of studies and they always find that white, rosé, bubbly or needle wines have no beneficial effect, it’s the red. So, not the alcohol but the tannins (which are absent in the light-colored wines). Also, it’s not beneficial for everybody: I have low blood pressure, red wine gives me an instant headache and tannin-free wines don’t. The correlation between color of alcohol consumed and need for Bayer products was found before the low blood pressure was detected and before the wine studies started coming out. ---
**Author:** ![eshen\_perch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/94ad74/32.png) [@eshen\_perch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eshen_perch)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2007, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alcohol-good-for-you-or-bad-for-you/402060/10 "2007-04-30T11:50:50Z")
The alcohol loves you while turning you blue. ---
**Author:** ![Kalhoun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3bc359/32.png) [@Kalhoun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kalhoun)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2007, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alcohol-good-for-you-or-bad-for-you/402060/11 "2007-04-30T11:55:30Z")
[QUOTE=Nava] The benefits of alcohol aren’t “benefits of alcohol”. They’re most commonly linked to red wine; for some reason 😉 Spain seems to breed that kind of studies and they always find that white, rosé, bubbly or needle wines have no beneficial effect, it’s the red. So, not the alcohol but the tannins (which are absent in the light-colored wines). Also, it’s not beneficial for everybody: I have low blood pressure, red wine gives me an instant headache and tannin-free wines don’t. The correlation between color of alcohol consumed and need for Bayer products was found before the low blood pressure was detected and before the wine studies started coming out. [/QUOTE] So THAT’S why I can’t drink reds. I also throw up. But the headache is deadly. My BP is like 85/60-ish. ---
**Author:** ![zagloba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/977dab/32.png) [@zagloba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zagloba)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2007, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alcohol-good-for-you-or-bad-for-you/402060/12 "2007-04-30T21:38:25Z")
[QUOTE=Nava] The benefits of alcohol aren’t “benefits of alcohol”. They’re most commonly linked to red wine; for some reason 😉 Spain seems to breed that kind of studies and they always find that white, rosé, bubbly or needle wines have no beneficial effect, it’s the red. So, not the alcohol but the tannins (which are absent in the light-colored wines). [/QUOTE] Don’t know about tannins, but [resveratrol](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resveratrol) seems to have positive health effects. ---
**Author:** ![gatorman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/96bed5/32.png) [@gatorman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gatorman)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2007, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alcohol-good-for-you-or-bad-for-you/402060/13 "2007-04-30T21:40:53Z")
All poisons are good for you in low, controlled doses 😃 ---
**Author:** ![KarlGauss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karlgauss/32/3713_2.png) [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2007, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alcohol-good-for-you-or-bad-for-you/402060/14 "2007-05-01T02:58:37Z")
[QUOTE=Nava] The benefits of alcohol aren’t “benefits of alcohol”. They’re most commonly linked to red wine; for some reason ;). [/QUOTE] While it’s true that red wine “works”, I also think it gets a disproportioate amount of media coverage and hype. That being said, I think it’s possible that red wine is the “best” form of alcohol in terms of health benefits, but it’s misleading at best, and wrong at worst, to imply that of all sources of alcohol, _only_ red wine consumption leads to health benefits. Phrased differently, countless studies have shown a “cardioprotective” effect of alcohol in general (primarily against heart attacks) and not just alcohol in the form of red wine. [Here is a representative abstract](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/utils/fref.fcgi?itool=AbstractPlus-def&PrId=3984&uid=12439349&db=pubmed&url=http://www.medreviews.com/pubmed.cfm?j=2&v=3&i=1&p=7) of a review article on the subject. And [here’s another](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=10918777&query_hl=1&itool=pubmed_DocSum). Both indicate that _alcohol in general (at moderate “doses”) is protective_ and both suggest that the idea that red wine is a particularly beneficial form of alcohol may be wrong.