Regular drinkers may no longer be able to hide behind the thick pile of studies claiming that a glass of wine a day is good for your health. According to this researchthe famous daily glass would even be better for you than avoiding alcohol completely. For example, it would have a protective effect against cardiovascular diseases.
A new analysis, notably relayed by The Guardianreveals that the health benefits of alcohol have been greatly exaggerated. The optimistic message encouraging moderate consumption is said to come from flawed surveys.
Canadian scientists reviewed 107 published studies on people’s drinking habits and lifespan. In most cases, these surveys did not take into account whether people reduced their drinking or stopped drinking because of health problems.
Thus, among abstainers and occasional drinkers there are many sick people. This lowers the average health status of the abstainer group, and puts moderate drinkers in a better position, as explained by the study published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.
From the first drop
In surveys that do not make this mistake and include younger people, there is absolutely no evidence that moderate drinkers live longer. “This idea has impacted national guidelines on alcohol consumption and prevented the development of effective public health policies.”says Tim Stockwell, lead author of the study and a researcher at the Canadian Institute for Addiction Research at the University of Victoria.
Interviewed by the Spanish daily El PaísRodríguez Artalejo, professor of public health at the Autonomous University of Madrid, believes that light alcohol consumption can provide cardiovascular benefit, but too minimal: “What we know is that for cancer, the risk increases from the first drop. Alcohol should never be promoted for health reasons. If it has a cardiovascular effect, we can achieve the same result with other healthy lifestyles or more appropriate treatments.”
England’s former chief medical officer, Dame Sally Davies, says:“There is no safe level of alcohol consumption”. An important study from 2018 supports this view, indicating that alcohol caused 2.8 million deaths in 2016 and is the leading risk factor for premature death and disability among people aged 15 to 49.
«There is increasing evidence that the apparent health benefits of moderate alcohol consumption are unlikely to be due to a causal relationship.”summarizes Iona Millwood, from the University of Oxford (United Kingdom). This researcher is the main author ofa big study involving more than half a million Chinese. The survey linked alcohol to more than sixty diseases, including liver cirrhosis, stroke, several gastrointestinal cancers and gastric ulcers.
Source: www.slate.fr
