Experts point out flaws in alcohol research and warn of dangers in encouraging consumption

05 Jul 2023 --- According to a study published in June, drinking light to moderate amounts of alcohol might be better than drinking no alcohol at all. However, researchers are debating the methodological issues in those original findings, warning that the promotion of alcohol through this advice may indirectly encourage overconsumption.

The original study, which involved the National Health Interview Survey’s data of 918,529 US-based adults, claims that those who abstain entirely from alcohol have a higher mortality risk for several diseases than those who drink light or moderate amounts, although mortality risk increases for heavy consumers – making it a J-shaped association.

In reviewing the original study, the new meta-analysis – including 107 cohort studies including half a million participants – flags that several confounding variables, such as the lifestyle-influencing socioeconomic status of the participants, needs to be taken into account.

Both studies are published in the BMC Medical Journal.

The authors stress that the health profiles for those who do not drink alcohol, and their reasons for not doing so, need to be better defined.The new study
The authors behind the new study stress that the health profiles for those who do not drink alcohol, and their reasons for not doing so, need to be better defined. Reality may not be as black and white as the original study claims, they suggest. 

The new study points to the fact that in western societies, moderate drinking is usually associated with a more active family and social life and higher socioeconomic status, which allows people to make healthier life choices and increased access to healthcare.

Based on these differences in lifestyle, the researchers stress that promoting even a moderate consumption of alcohol, based on the original study’s results, might be dangerous as alcohol is highly addictive and threatens public health on the societal level. 

There is also a challenge in defining a “standard alcohol consumption,” which has been studied previously.

“The findings revealed that the benefits of moderate drinking were negated by a two to fourfold increase in oral and esophageal cancer risk, and excessive drinking resulted in a significant reduction in life expectancy. Therefore, the threshold for safe alcohol consumption is often ambiguous,” reads the study.

Inconsistent findingsThe WHO says that Europeans consume the most alcohol, and 200 million people in the region are at risk for alcohol-attributed cancer.
The inconsistency in the findings and overall direct effects related to drinking alcohol is therefore challenging to conclude.

Last year, a UK study including 371,461 participants found that drinking alcohol in a light amount increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, to which the senior author Dr. Krishna Aragam, a cardiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, commented:

“The findings affirm that alcohol intake should not be recommended to improve cardiovascular health; rather, that reducing alcohol intake will likely reduce cardiovascular risk in all individuals, albeit to different extents based on one’s current level of consumption.”

Meanwhile, another study claimed that alcohol consumption might “ward off dementia,” arguing that light-to-moderate and occasional drinkers had the “lowest risk” of developing dementia. In contrast, moderate-to-heavy drinkers had the highest decrease compared to people who abstain from all alcohol.

A recent Portuguese study also found benefits for the gut microbiome for men if drinking one beer a day. However, these findings originated from the complexity of ingredients in beer and were independent of whether the beverage contained alcohol.

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced earlier this year that no amount of alcohol consumption is safe for people’s health, and alcohol is the leading cause of several types of cancers. People in Europea consume the most alcohol, and 200 million people in the region risk developing alcohol-attributed cancer. 

“No studies would demonstrate that the potential beneficial effects of light and moderate drinking on cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes outweigh the cancer risk associated with these same levels of alcohol consumption for individual consumers,” the WHO stated.

By Beatrice Wihlander