Is drinking in moderation good for your heart? Harvard Gazette
The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse & Alcoholism (NIAAA) defines moderate drinking as up to two alcoholic drinks for men and one for women in any single day. But, as the experts outline in the Scientific Report of the 2020 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, most studies have found a lower risk of death among moderate drinkers when compared to folks who drank more. And, as you might expect, when you drink more heavily your all-cause mortality risk goes up, or you’re more likely to die. Here, we dig into the research and talk with an expert to cull a list (albeit a short one) of the most promising health benefits of moderate drinking. (For people with alcohol use disorder, the option is abstinence.) People have long derived pleasure from alcohol.
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The low-quality studies were labeled as such for a couple different reasons. In some cases, the authors of these studies categorized “abstainers” as people who didn’t drink at the time the research was conducted, even if they had been moderate or heavy drinkers for years before that point. In other cases, the authors of these low-quality studies only included elderly study participants. Comparing moderate drinkers to elderly people or people who drank heavily in the past isn’t exactly fair—and likely skewed the findings. Dr. Stockwell and his team reviewed 107 published studies that compared moderate drinkers to abstainers. On the surface, many of them presented alcohol in a good light; moderate drinkers were often less likely than abstainers to die during the study period.
Possible Health Benefits of Alcohol
In the scientific literature, the wide range of assumptions about what a standard drink is can produce highly divergent estimates of total alcohol consumption among respondents who report consuming the same number of drinks. Turner based the comparison on fictional respondents who reported drinking one standard drink (as defined in each study) each of beer, wine, and spirits for a total alcohol consumption of three drinks per day. Using the different methodologies and assumptions regarding alcohol contents employed in four highly respected studies, Turner found that the total alcohol amounts corresponding to three drinks per day ranged from 24 g to 48 g.
Survey Methodology
Diary methods produce higher estimates than do either QF or short-term recall methods. For example, in the previously mentioned study using an automated interactive telephone reporting system (Searles et al. 1995), 50 volunteers reported their daily alcohol intake for 112 consecutive days. Other data collected by traditional means immediately after study completion demonstrated that drinkers—particularly heavier drinkers—retrospectively underreported their alcohol consumption. Questionnaires using the graduated frequency approach consistently produce higher estimates of volume of alcohol consumption than do QF measures, particularly among heavier drinkers. One of the reasons underlying higher estimates with graduated frequency measures is that such measures generally involve more questions than do simple QF measures, particularly for heavier drinkers.
I am one of them, although my definition of “moderation” has shifted with the guidelines. I recognize that wine is not benign, and I have cut my consumption in half. A decade ago scientists and public health experts agreed with me. A drink or two a day was safely within most public health guidelines, and research even suggested that a little alcohol could protect against cardiovascular disease. The paper also found a significant interaction between the age of study subjects and their mortality risk.
When to avoid alcohol
The ranges of alcohol content for beer, wine, and distilled spirits vary somewhat from State to State. Significant variation also exists in the alcohol content of beverages within each of these categories. The typical alcohol content of beer is roughly 4.5 percent (by volume), but the alcohol content of light beers may be less than 3 percent, and certain craft-brewed beers or malt liquors may have an alcohol content of up to 9 percent or higher. In the United States, both the Federal tax code and the tax codes of individual States specify which beverages are classified as “ beer,” “ wine,” or “distilled spirits” and their alcohol content. According to those definitions, “ beer” includes strong beer (i.e., beer with an alcohol content greater than 3.2 percent), beer with an alcohol content of up to 3.2 percent, ale, malt liquor, and similar types of beverages. Similarly, “ wine” encompasses wine, vermouth, champagne, sparkling wine, cider, and related beverages.
- A recent successful effort in the U.S. to launch an international study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
- And according to the WHO, half of cancers in Europe linked to alcohol are caused by “light” or “moderate” consumption.
- If you’re looking to cut back on the alcohol, are sober curious, or just want to see your options out there in the world of moderate drinking, we have answers.
Secondly, despite the ongoing message to drink in moderation (and again, that’s up to one drink a day for women and up to two for men), binge drinking the U.S. is fairly prevalent. Up to a quarter of all adults is baclofen addicting 21 years and older report binge drinking in the past month, per the Scientific Report of the 2020 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. And binge drinking doesn’t have any health perks, plus it’s quite risky.
Psychosocial epidemiology and psychiatric epidemiology share common roots. Before World War II, both disciplines relied on key community informants, medical data experts, and agency records for information that defined group activities for substance abuse recovery alcohol-related trends in the population. Following World War II, a second generation of studies evolved that used written measurement instruments, psychiatrists’ evaluations of client profiles, and interviews.
There are also programs like Ria Health which can provide direct support when you’re ready for it. Ria uses medication, coaching, and digital tools to customize treatment, and delivers it all through a smartphone app. Technically, the only truly safe level of drinking is not drinking at all. However, for many people this is not realistic, nor is this what most people want.
Drinking more than a moderate amount of alcohol can put you at risk for personal and health problems, including alcohol use disorder. Keep in mind that the size of the drink and the percent of music therapy for addiction alcohol makes a difference. For example, many beers are about 5% alcohol, but some have higher percentages of alcohol. And some beers are sold in bigger sizes than the standard 12 ounces.
Grain alcohol, which is virtually pure ethanol, is often bottled at a concentration of 94 percent alcohol by volume. Knowing what counts as a heavy drinking day—4 or more drinks for women and 5 or more for men—can be clinically useful in two ways. In this article, we’ll discuss the difference between moderate drinking and binge drinking, the potential benefits of moderate drinking, and how you can achieve moderation.
The current study is the first to indicate that light to moderate alcohol consumption has longer-term neurobiological effects in dampening activity in the amygdala, which may have a significant downstream impact on the cardiovascular system. Like a “standard drink,” “moderate drinking” can have several definitions. In common parlance, a moderate drinker is someone who does not drink to the point of drunkenness unless on special occasions. It is a nebulous concept that people often use to distinguish between a heavy drinker—someone who may frequently drink to the point of drunkenness—and the occasional drinker or non-drinker. These are not scientific terms by any means; they are merely the phrases that have come to be adopted by individuals in their day-to-day use of language, and their definitions are highly subjective.