We’ve likely all heard that the occasional glass of wine can lead to a longer lifespan. Although we may have enthusiastically embraced this conventional wisdom, a new systematic review and meta-analysis suggests it may be based on flawed science.
The findings appeared in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.
For years, numerous studies have indicated that moderate drinkers tend to live longer and have lower risks of heart disease and other chronic illnesses compared to non-drinkers, a statement says. This led to a common belief that moderate alcohol consumption is beneficial for health. However, not all research supports this optimistic view, and the new analysis explains why.
The study’s lead researcher, Tim Stockwell, is a scientist with the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria. He earned his doctorate at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London.
Stockwell spoke to The Epoch Times, explaining that past studies that found moderate drinking could benefit health had flaws in their fundamental design.
“There’s a very basic thing with these studies that involves comparing drinkers with abstainers,” he said.
The Problem
Stockwell explained that one problem with past studies is that they typically focused on older adults without considering their drinking habits over their entire lives. As a result, moderate drinkers were compared to groups labeled as “abstainers” and “occasional drinkers.”
However, these comparison groups included older adults who had stopped or reduced their drinking because of various health issues. This means that the “abstainers” and “occasional drinkers” were not necessarily people who never drank or rarely drank but rather people who might have had to stop drinking because they were already experiencing health problems. This flawed comparison made moderate drinkers appear healthier by contrast.
“The more plausible interpretation is that the people who continue to drink—they’re drinking because they’re healthy. They’re not healthy because they’re drinking,” Stockwell said.
He takes it a step further, explaining why studying drinking is so complex.
“For most of my working life, I’ve done alcohol research; it has been my area of interest, and psychology is my background. I have been very interested in how to measure drinking, and I know how complicated it is to have changes over the life course. These great big studies look at a hundred risk factors for ill health, and they only have like one or two questions on alcohol. So it’s very hard to sort out these nuances,” he said.
“We go to great lengths to tease out some of these problems in design and measurement.”
The Analysis
Stockwell and his team examined 107 longitudinal studies that tracked individuals over time to explore the link between drinking habits and lifespan. The researchers analyzed 4,838,825 people, found 724 estimates of the link between alcohol consumption and overall mortality, and 425,564 recorded deaths.
When they aggregated the data, it initially appeared that light to moderate drinkers (those consuming between one drink per week and two drinks per day) had a 14 percent lower risk of death during the study period compared to non-drinkers.
However, when the researchers dug a little deeper, they found a few “higher quality” studies with different inclusion criteria that seemed to make all the difference. These studies included people who were younger (less than 55 years of age, on average) and made sure that those who were former or occasional drinkers were not included as “abstainers.” These studies concluded that moderate drinking did not lead to a longer life.
The “weaker studies”—those that included older participants and did not differentiate between former drinkers and lifelong abstainers—are the ones that linked moderate drinking to health benefits.
The ‘French Paradox’
The idea that moderate drinking is good for us has been around for decades. An example is the “French Paradox,” which became popular in the 1990s, asserting that the French are healthier and have lower instances of heart disease despite eating a high-fat diet because of their regular consumption of wine.
Stockwell says this goes back to an episode of “60 Minutes” that aired in the early 1990s that explored why French people had such low instances of heart disease and almost no obesity, despite their diet comprised rich, fatty foods and daily consumption of wine. Since then, the idea has taken hold and become part of mainstream consciousness.
“I’ve traveled quite a lot in my life, and often, the topic comes up. Almost everywhere on the planet, this idea has taken hold that moderate alcohol usage is healthy, especially red wine ... There wasn’t internet at the time, but the idea became viral,” he said.
The Health Consequences of Drinking Alcohol
When asked about some of the most significant harms of alcohol consumption, Stockwell told The Epoch Times that there is a lack of awareness about the risks. He says that one of the biggest risks is cancer and that the risk can increase even with very low consumption levels—like one drink a day.
“If our theory is right—that the health benefits are exaggerated because drinkers are compared with unhealthy abstainers—that criticism also applies to the rest of alcohol epidemiology. If you’re looking at liver cirrhosis, cancer, and any of these other things that aren’t supposed to have beneficial effects, it still means you’re comparing risks for drinkers against a very unhealthy group of people. So, it’s highly likely we’re greatly underestimating the impact of alcohol on health.”
