Is "Moderate Drinking" Safe?

Below are excerpts from different articles linking to scientific studies on this issue. I encourage interested readers to check out the articles themselves, as there is more interesting information therein that I have not posted here in order to keep this article short. I particularly found it interesting how it was revealed that the bulk of studies stating that moderate drinking is healthy was funded by the alcohol industry in a very biased manner.

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“The World Health Organization has now published a statement in The Lancet Public Health: when it comes to alcohol consumption, there is no safe amount that does not affect health.”

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“The risk of developing cancer increases substantially the more alcohol is consumed. However, latest available data indicate that half of all alcohol-attributable cancers in the WHO European Region are caused by “light” and “moderate” alcohol consumption – less than 1.5 litres of wine or less than 3.5 litres of beer or less than 450 millilitres of spirits per week. This drinking pattern is responsible for the majority of alcohol-attributable breast cancers in women, with the highest burden observed in countries of the European Union (EU). In the EU, cancer is the leading cause of death – with a steadily increasing incidence rate – and the majority of all alcohol-attributable deaths are due to different types of cancers.”

Source: No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health (who.int)

“The review, which examined existing research on the health and drinking habits of nearly 5 million people, is one of the largest studies to debunk the widely held belief that moderate drinking of wine or other alcoholic beverages is good for you. Last year, researchers in Britain examined genetic and medical data of nearly 400,000 people and concluded that even low alcohol intake was associated with increased risk of disease.

The new study, which appears Friday in Jama Network Open, also found that drinking relatively low levels of alcohol — 25 grams a day for women (less than 1 ounce) and 45 grams (about 1.5 ounces) or more per day for men — actually increased the risk of death.”

Source: No, moderate drinking isn’t good for your health - The Washington Post

“According to a recent study by a group of scientists at Oxford University in England, there’s no safe dose for alcohol consumption.

The observational study looked at data from more than 25,000 middle-aged adults. The study found that moderate consumption is more closely associated with adverse effects on the brain than was previously known.”

Source: Should You Avoid All Alcohol? Here's What the Experts Think (healthline.com)

“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.”

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“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.”

Source: Here's why moderate drinking is probably not good for you | Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz | The Guardian

“Scientists said that the older studies failed to recognize that light and moderate drinkers had myriad other healthy habits and advantages, and that the abstainers used as a comparison group often included former drinkers who had given up alcohol after developing health problems.”

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“Once Dr. Stockwell and his colleagues corrected for these errors and others, he said, “Lo and behold, the supposed health benefits of drinking shrink dramatically, and become non-statistically significant.””

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“Moderate drinkers tend to be moderate in all ways. They tend to be wealthier, are more likely to exercise and to eat a healthy diet, and are less likely to be overweight. They even have better teeth, scientists say.

“They have a lot of things going for them that protect their health, that have nothing to do with their alcohol use,” Dr. Stockwell said.”

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“But the moderate alcohol hypothesis has come under increasing criticism over the years as the alcohol industry’s role in funding research has come to light, and newer studies have found that even moderate consumption of alcohol — including red wine — may contribute to cancers of the breast, esophagus and head and neck, high blood pressure and a serious heart arrhythmia called atrial fibrillation.”

Source: Moderate Drinking Has No Health Benefits, Analysis of Decades of Research Finds - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

“"The new study, published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine, used survey data collected as part of the Midlife Development in the United States study, which has been following a national sample of Americans between the ages of 25 and 74 since 1995.

The study analyzed nearly 1,300 drinkers over nine years and found most cases of binge drinking — and of multiple alcohol problems — occurred among individuals who were average moderate drinkers.

“An average moderate drinker of, for example, one drink a day might achieve that average by a daily drink with dinner or seven drinks on Saturday night,” Holahan said.

While that behavior would not necessarily lead to alcoholism, Holahan said, the study found drinking an average of more than one drink a day for women and two drinks a day for men – or five or more drinks on the same occasion – was linked to alcohol problems nine years later.

“These findings point to a need for alcohol interventions targeting moderate average level drinkers in addition to conventional strategies focusing on the higher risk, but smaller, population of habitually high-level drinkers,” Holahan said.

Source: Moderate drinkers at risk for alcohol problems if they binge, study finds | CNN

“The results? Alcohol consumption, even in moderation, was associated with harmful effects on the brain, particularly hippocampal atrophy and diminishing verbal fluency. The results led the authors to support the recent reduction in recommended limits for alcohol consumption in the United Kingdom and encourage the United States to follow suit.”

Source: What if alcohol were harmful, even in moderation? - PMC (nih.gov)

“The evidence is adding up that no amount of drinking is safe,” says study co-author Emmanuela Gakidou, a professor of global health and health metrics sciences at the University of Washington.

Source: A New Study Says There's No Amount of Healthy Drinking | Time