Is the occasional beer or glass of wine really that healthy for you?
You must have heard that occasional beer or glass of wine with dinner is healthy for you. There have been numerous studies advertizing the health benefits of moderate drinking. However, a new research has questioned the positive impact of moderate consumption of wine or beer.
Scientists collected and studied 87 earlier studies related to alcohol and death from all causes. They discovered that the findings of earlier studies associating moderate drinking to a long life could be untrue, and might have underlined benefits when there actually may be no advantage at all.
Lead researcher Tim Stockwell, the director of the University of Victoria's Centre for Addictions Research in British Columbia, Canada, said that they managed to detect every study ever published that linked the amount of drinking with lifespan.
In most of the analyzed studies, the scientists found an ‘abstainer bias’, which means when the studies’ researchers brought out a comparison between moderate drinkers and non-drinkers, group of non-drinkers generally included the ones who don’t drink alcohol because of other health problems like ex-drinkers who halted the practice because of bad health. Stockwell explained that the bias could have made moderate drinkers look healthier in comparison.
Scientists noted that just 13 out the 87 studies didn’t include ‘abstainer bias’, and just six of the analyzed studies were of high quality.
He added that when the ‘abstainer bias’ was corrected moderate alcohol drinkers didn’t show a longevity benefit anymore.
According to research paper that appeared in Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, use of occasional drinkers as the reference point could present a more accurate picture of if moderate consumption has health benefits or not.
While speaking to CBS News, Stockwell said, “We saw a change from this famous J-shape curve suggesting moderate drinking is good for health to the J-shape curve vanishing. So abstainers and low-volume, occasional drinkers were all pretty similar in terms of risk from dying of any causes”.
