The statement that a small amount of drinking is better for overall health than total abstention keeps popping up, but without much supporting detail. However, I’ve seen a few reports that go into more detail, including separating out people who never drank from people who currently abstain because they had a drinking problem in the past. These reports say that current nondrinkers who had been problem drinkers have moderate health problems, and people who never drank are healthier than people who currently drink a little.
In other words, the fact that alcohol has damaged people’s health winds up getting counted as a health advantage for drinking a little, in studies that lump together all those who do not drink now.
But I’ve only seen maybe 2 or 3 such reports, and I have seen dozens of statements saying a little drinking is best.
I do not know the answer, but it might depend on what, specifically, you’re drinking. I know that some studies have found benefits from red wine specifically, that aren’t gained from other alcoholic beverages (even white wine).
The straight dope seems to me to be that this is an issue where controlling for confounding factors is very difficult and where accepting causation where only correlation has been shown is very desirable to the public.
A longitudinal study published in Norwegian early this year on alcohol use among teens and young adults showed a correlation between abstinence and depression and lower social integration. Since depression and poor social integration is correlated with a shorter life, this could be a confounding factor not controlled for in studies showing lower mortality for moderate drinkers than teetotalers.
The media of course couldn’t not run this with headlines that often implied young people should take this as advice to drink, even if the articles more often than not included the statement of the researcher that this was a finding of correlation, not one of causation.
What I’ve never seen is a study separating people who do not drink because of a health problem or because having dealt with alcoholic relatives made them swear off “the Devil’s juices”. It seems absurd to lump my friend who had hepatitis in childhood, that other one who’d get drunk from smelling a cup of moscatel, my brother who drank once and realized he didn’t know when to stop (hasn’t drunk again), and someone who doesn’t drink because of a religious prohibition that he takes seriously.
Right, exactly. Correlation is not causation. In a culture in which regular or even heavy alcohol consumption is an integral part of social interaction, those who abstain may be left out of social activities, thus becoming isolated and depressed. The actual chemical alcohol (or absence thereof) may have nothing to do with their depression and poor social integration.
Most of the data is observed correlations and as noted above documents a decreased risk of death from all causes (with the large benefits coming from decreases in heart disease, strokes, and type2 DM) associated with light to moderate alcohol use. Those may be subject to confounding factors - light to moderate drinking may be correlated with better social systems and supports or with other markers or behaviors. There are also a few randomized controlled trials that are consistent:
The conclusion of that section in the linked article is most on target to the op. It does seem to be more the occasional to moderate alcohol intake itself, not other things only in red wine. Beer and spirits do it too. (And dark bitter beers are also high in antioxidants btw.) And while a little is a bit better than none, excess is so bad that the overall net of alcohol use is negative and promoting it is not considered a good idea.
My doctor believes the scientific evidence for it is about as iron-clad as it gets. But he says he is rather circumspect about telling that to patients, for fear that they will consider it a license to drink. Alcohol consumption that exceeds the drink or two a day that is recommended very quickly offsets the value, and become a negative on balance.
I tried it for a few years, about one beer every other day, but beer is a pretty expensive drink and my Medicare Part D doesn’t pay for it, so I have gotten out of the habit. One beer a day would cost over $20 a month, which exceeds my copay on all my other medications combined.
What I’ve heard is that people who drink a small amount tend to have better* mental health* than either problem drinkers or teetotalers. Teetotalers supposedly have a tendency to be uptight, neurotic, etc. to the extent that they end up more stressed out than they could have been, and that affects their life expectancy, while people who take it easier and have a more balanced view on life tend to be the ones who will occasionally have a beer or glass of wine with dinner. I have heard a theory that a little alcohol helps to “clean out” the body of certain pollutants, but I don’t know how much research has really been done. But in any case, I think it’s a statistical thing and forcing a single beer down the throat of a teetotaler isn’t really going to do anything meaningful to them other than make them mad at you. There’s no way to say that their “health went up (or down) X points”.
Haloperidol, I have heard, has benefits for some people, but when they gave it to me, it did nothing worthwhile. Perhaps ethanol has a similar quality: one-size-fits-all may not be the best approach.
I agree. Another problem is that many people surely lie when questioned about their alcohol consumption. If you did a national survey on alcohol consumption and then compared it to a more objective source like sales figures or empty bottles in peoples’ garbage, I’m pretty confident there would be a huge discrepancy.