A growing number of public health experts say if you choose to drink alcohol, you should drink as little as possible. Guidelines vary from country to country.
It’s wine time. Beer Thirty. Happy hour. Five o’clock somewhere. Maybe it's also time to rethink drinking? Moderate drinking was once thought to have benefits for the heart, but better research methods have thrown cold water on that.
Drinking less is a great way to be healthier,' said Dr. Timothy Naimi, who directs the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. ARE DRINKING GUIDELINES CHANGING? Guidelines vary a lot from country to country but the overall trend is toward drinking less. The United Kingdom, France, Denmark, Holland and Australia recently reviewed new evidence and lowered their alcohol consumption recommendations.
That idea came from imperfect studies comparing groups of people by how much they drink. Usually, consumption was measured at one point in time. And none of the studies randomly assigned people to drink or not drink, so they couldn’t prove cause and effect. People who report drinking moderately tend to have higher levels of education, higher incomes and better access to health care, Naimi said. 'It turns out that when you adjust for those things, the benefits tend to disappear,' he said.
Another problem: Most studies didn’t include younger people. Almost half of the people who die from alcohol-related causes die before the age of 50. 'If you’re studying people who survived into middle age, didn’t quit drinking because of a problem and didn’t become a heavy drinker, that’s a very select group,' Naimi said. 'It creates an appearance of a benefit for moderate drinkers that is actually a statistical illusion.
One drink is the equivalent of about one 12-ounce can of beer, a 5-ounce glass of wine or a shot of liquor. Naimi served on an advisory committee that wanted to lower the recommendation for men to one drink per day. That advice was considered and rejected when the federal recommendations came out in 2020. 'The simple message that’s best supported by the evidence is that, if you drink, less is better when it comes to health,' Naimi said.
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