Posted on 01/31/2022 10:27:20 AM PST by Red Badger
We all know that drinking too much is bad for us. But what about just a few glasses a week?
Red wine has antioxidants, we've been told, so a few glasses are apparently 'good for you'. Other studies have suggested that low-to-moderate drinkers are less likely to have a heart attack than those who avoid drinking altogether. Wine is even included (in moderation) in the Mediterranean diet, one of the healthiest food plans on the planet!
But a new study based on a huge data set from the United Kingdom now suggests that the J- or U- shaped curve of drinking is based on bad science; even having less than the currently recommended number of drinks per week in the UK is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular issues.
"The so-called J-shaped curve of the cardiovascular disease-alcohol consumption relationship suggesting health benefits from low to moderate alcohol consumption is the biggest myth since we were told smoking was good for us," says cardiovascular physiologist Rudolph Schutte from Anglia Ruskin University (ARU).
The problem, the team of researchers from ARU and University College London suggest, is that many non-drinkers are not drinking because of current ill health, and so when they have heart attacks or other coronary issues, this is unrelated to them not drinking – and not suggestive that drinking a low or moderate amount of alcohol is protective.
The researchers looked at data from the UK Biobank covering a staggering 333,259 alcohol consumers and 21,710 people who had never drunk alcohol. They analyzed almost seven years of data, noting whenever one of the participants had a cardiovascular event, heart disease, or cerebrovascular disease.
The team specifically excluded former drinkers to try and limit data from people who may have stopped drinking due to their current health. Despite this, the never-drinkers were still older, had a higher BMI, higher blood pressure, and were less physically active than the cohort that drank.
"Using never drinkers as reference consistently drove the inverse protective relationship with all outcome measures and overrode more subtle associations with different drink types. Using this overriding analytical strategy enables authors to report overall cardiovascular protection from alcohol," the team writes in their study.
"In our cohort, never drinkers were older, less physically active, had a higher body mass index and socioeconomically less affluent. Even after adjusting for these cardiovascular risk factors, never drinkers had a 31, 51 and 46 percent higher risk of suffering an overall cardiovascular-, ischemic heart disease- or cerebrovascular disease event, respectively."
So, to remove these confounding factors, the team then compared the lightest drinkers to those that drank more, and found that wine was minimally protective from ischemic heart disease, but was not associated with other cardiovascular issues.
For other alcoholic drinks like beer and spirits, even for people consuming fewer than 14 units per week, which is the current recommended number of weekly drinks in UK's health guidelines (and the equivalent of 8 standard US drinks), the outcome looks much worse.
"Among drinkers of beer, cider, and spirits in particular, even those consuming under 14 units a week had an increased risk of ending up in hospital through a cardiovascular event involving the heart or the blood vessels," says Schutte.
"While we hear much about wine drinkers having lower risk of coronary artery disease, our data shows their risk of other cardiovascular events is not reduced."
With other studies finding that alcohol is one of the leading contributors of death and disease worldwide, now might be a good time to renew those new year's resolutions and cut back on drinking.
In the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend that adults can choose not to consume alcohol, or stick to two standard drinks per day for males, or one drink for women if it's a day when you choose to drink.
"Biases embedded in epidemiological evidence mask or underestimate the hazards associated with alcohol consumption. When these biases are accounted for, the adverse effects of even low-level alcohol consumption are revealed," says Schutte.
"Avoiding these biases in future research would mitigate current confusion and hopefully lead to a strengthening of the guidelines, seeing the current alcohol guidance reduced."
The research was published in the paper Clinical Nutrition.
Next up, “science” determines that smoking is actually good for you.
My dad drank some red wine most every day from the age of 5. (Born in Italy). He only lived to be 92, probably due to all that drinking.
To the Science Preachers,
Slainte! Now feck off, eejits.
Did he smoke?.....................
Are their real world applications of this study ?
Pretty sure anyone drinking these days will not be doing it in moderation..
Yeah, I study retrospective treatment patterns for a living, and I can tell you that self-reported alcohol use is highly unreliable. If you tell your doctor you drink several times a week they will code you as alcohol dependent, so many people just deny drinking at all.
My favorite response was from a patient, when asked how much he drank, he simply said “not as much as I’d like to.”
are There, not are their.
just proof of no moderation for me today
8 drinks a WEEK? I don’t drink that much in a month. I’ve just never really been a drinker. But I don’t abstain, either. An occasional glass or two of wine, especially with a holday dinner. A celebratory single-malt scotch once in a great while. I’ve even been known to drink a beer every couple of years.
I drink hardly at all. I have lots of wine and hard liquor at home but never drink any, it’s mostly a decoration. Some of the liquor I have had for 20 years.....................
Did he smoke?..........
A little in WWII at the age of 19. Never after that. He died of Alzheimer’s. His caregivers said they were shocked at his physical strength at 92, and he weighed about 125 pounds.
They found nothing of the kind. Not even close. They found a CORRELATION that MIGHT mean what they claim, but they most certainly did NOT find that 'wine was minimally protective from ischemic heart disease'. That is a lie.
Idiotic garbage like this is why we have so many morons to deal with these days.
I have bottles and bottles of cachacas from my Brasilian party days direct from Brasil. Who knew that foul bile would mellow out so smooth? Even Velho Barreiro, which can also be used to remove enamel paint.
There is more to living a full life besides being ‘safe’.
Or, as Oscar Wilde said: “Everything in moderation, including
moderation!”
In small town north central Florida, three black Baptist women( they said they were black ) sold dollar pies in front of the local grocery. They wore wonderful colored hats, so you knew that the purple hat lady, little ole thing, had the best pies. Her two daughters (red hat green hat) both slight nod of the head acknowledging her stature as Pie Queen. Absolute teetotalers.
Fred, a good old Georgia boy, the local pharmacist across the street sold grosses of little bottles of “vitamin tonic” to these ladies , because that’s want they wanted, for years, taking their nighttime dose after supper.
Tonic bottles were four ounces, labeled Red Wine, and Fred’s comment was “they’ll get right angry if i run out”
I’ll drink to that.
I suppose I’ll just have to pour that new 1.5 liter bottle of Bushmills Irish down the drain. Same for 1.5 liter bottles of Beefeaters Gin Lambs Navy Rum.
Not.
My great-Grandpa home brewed wine in his basement. There was a bottle on the dinner table every day. He lived to be 98.
I don’t even drink coffee, much less alcoholic beverages. Couldn’t if I wanted to. Always driving. It’s a long way to anywhere in this state.
And a long life. Lucky for them the oldest of the old have the genes to handle anything, including a total lack of moderation. We need to develop that in pill form.
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