Study reveals flawed research on moderate alcohol health benefits

New findings challenge the long-held belief that moderate drinking is good for health

• Pramod Thomas
• 27 July, 2024

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By: Pramod Thomas

STUDIES suggesting that moderate alcohol consumption enhances longevity and lowers the risk of heart problems and chronic diseases compared to abstaining are based on “flawed scientific research,” a new study has found.

Published over the years, these studies have led to a widespread belief that alcohol can be healthy if taken in moderation, ranging from a drink a week to two per day.

Researchers found that these studies have largely focused on moderate drinking among older adults, comparing them with ‘abstainers’ and ‘occasional drinkers’ — both groups were found to include older adults who had quit or reduced drinking due to health conditions.

“That makes people who continue to drink look much healthier by comparison,” said lead researcher Tim Stockwell, a scientist with the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research, University of Victoria.

By failing to account for people’s lifetime drinking habits, these studies “suffer from fundamental design flaws,” according to the authors. The findings are published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

“There is simply no completely ‘safe’ level of drinking,” Stockwell said.

The team identified 107 published studies examining the relationship between drinking habits and longevity.

Combining all the data, it appeared that light to moderate drinkers had a 14 percent lower risk of dying during the study period compared with those abstaining from alcohol, the researchers said.

However, upon closer examination, they found that in “higher quality” studies — which analyzed drinking habits of people on average younger than 55 and ensured that former and occasional drinkers were not counted as ‘abstainers’ — alcohol in moderation was not linked to a longer life.

“As predicted, studies with younger cohorts and separating former and occasional drinkers from abstainers estimated similar mortality risk between low-volume drinkers and abstainers,” the authors wrote.

In contrast, “lower quality” studies, involving older adults and not differentiating between former drinkers and lifelong abstainers, were the ones that linked moderate drinking with greater longevity, the authors said.

“If you look at the weakest studies, that’s where you see health benefits,” Stockwell said.

Due to these biases in sample selection, the studies could create misleading links between drinking and health benefits, and “can confuse communications about health risks,” the authors said.

The links between moderate alcohol consumption and health benefits were first published in 1926 in a book by American biologist Raymond Pearl, called ‘Alcohol and Longevity.’

In recent years, multiple studies have found that there is no such thing as a ‘safe level of alcohol consumption.’

In January 2023, the World Health Organization (WHO) published a statement in The Lancet Public Health journal: “When it comes to alcohol consumption, there is no safe amount that does not affect health.”

(PTI)