Research dispels notion that moderate drinking is good for you

(TND) — New research dispels the notion that moderate drinking of alcohol can help heart health.

A glass of red wine a day won't help you, they found.

The researchers reviewed over 100 studies published over the last 40 or so years, finding many were flawed in their outcomes largely because they didn’t properly control for certain demographic, health and lifestyle differences among participants.

Tim Stockwell, one of the researchers and a scientist with the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research, said there's a famous J-shaped curve that’s been used to show that moderate alcohol consumption is better than no drinking at all or heavy drinking.

Stockwell said one of the biggest problems with past studies that found benefits in moderate drinking was that they tainted the pool of abstainers with people who were really “sick quitters” or former drinkers, many of whom cut down or stop for health reasons.

Stockwell also said moderate drinkers might have appeared better off in some of the past studies due to lifestyle factors that have nothing to do with their drinking habits. They might also moderate the intake of unhealthy foods, for example.

The past studies didn’t always control for the differences between otherwise healthy teetotalers and otherwise unhealthy former drinkers, Stockwell said.

And Stockwell said the “appearance of health benefit almost vanished” once his group filtered out what they saw as biases or classification errors.

The purported benefits of moderate drinking “stopped being statistically significant,” he said.

Stockwell and his colleagues aren’t the first to challenge the popular belief that moderate drinking can reduce cardiovascular disease.

The World Heart Federation last year issued a policy brief to stomp out such “myths.” The WHF said there’s no reliable correlation between moderate alcohol consumption and a lower risk of heart disease.

“These claims are at best misinformed and at worst an attempt by the alcohol industry to mislead the public about the danger of their product,” Monika Arora, a member of the WHF Advocacy Committee, said in a news release.

Stockwell said a nightly glass of red wine isn’t doing anyone any good.

“If there's any extra magic ingredient in red wine, it's not the ethanol,” he said. “Eat red grapes.”

He also said it’s not doing much harm. But it’s not without risk.

Alcohol is a carcinogen, he said.

Strip away the facade of cardiovascular benefits and you're left with just “the nasty things” about drinking, Stockwell said.

Alcohol can contribute to cancer, liver disease, auto accidents and more.

Stockwell said there’s a 1-in-1,000 increased risk of premature death with two drinks a week.

“It's tiny, but it's there,” he said.

Go to six drinks a week, and the risk of premature death increases to 1-in-100, he said.

When you’re drinking above six, seven and eight drinks a week, the risk accelerates, he said.