You may want to rethink that second glass of wine with dinner. A new study has found that low or moderate drinking is not any better for your health than not drinking at all, which goes against long-held beliefs about alcohol and lifespan.
The report, which was published in JAMA Network Open last month, included analysis of 107 studies from 1980 to 2021 involving more than 4.8 million participants with a median age of about 56 years old. Whereas previous studies concluded that moderate drinkers (those who drank 25 grams of alcohol or less) were less likely to die of all causes, new research suggests that isn’t true.
The so-called benefits of moderate drinking were first published in a 1924 study that included a J-shaped curve, which demonstrated protective associations at low doses of alcohol with increasing risk at higher doses. However, new evidence suggests that those associations may have been due to systematic biases.
For example, light and moderate drinkers have been determined to be healthier than nondrinkers according to a range of health indicators, including dental hygiene, exercise routines, diet, weight and income. People who are lifetime abstainers, excluding those with religious restrictions, may be “systematically biased toward poorer health,” according to the JAMA study. Furthermore, many of the previous studies did not have diverse samples, which led to an overrepresentation of older white men and an underrepresentation of women and younger people.
“When you compare this unhealthy group to those who go on drinking, it makes the current drinkers look more healthy and like they have lower mortality,” Tim Stockwell, one of the authors of the new report and a scientist with the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research, told The New York Times.
But once adjustments were made to make the samples more representative, the benefits of moderate drinking were essentially eliminated. Instead, the JAMA study found that female drinkers who consumed more than 25 grams of alcohol per day, which is about two 5-ounce glasses of wine, had a greater risk of dying prematurely while risk in male drinkers increased at 45 grams of alcohol per day.
A previous study funded by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation suggested that for young adults between the ages of 15 and 39, there were zero health benefits—only risks—associated with drinking alcohol.
In the business world, founders are adopting a sober lifestyle and reaping the rewards as well. David Sinclair, a 53-year-old Harvard biologist and founder of Tally Health, attributes abstaining from alcohol to having a younger biological age of 43 years old.
Earlier this year, billionaire Marc Andreessen wrote about how he quit alcohol and he’s more focused, but he’s unhappy about it. Whereas he was once quoted as saying “the perfect day is 10 hours of caffeine followed by 4 hours of alcohol,” the venture capitalist had a change of heart after learning about the health risks associated with alcohol.
Indeed, excessive alcohol use has been linked to increased risk of injury, poor sleep, depression and other long-term health issues, such as high blood pressure, heart disease and certain types of cancer.
