Empty Glasses: Some Now Say “Cheers” May Not be So Cheerful
‘One glass of wine for women and two for men could be good for you’ was always the conventional and usually the scientific wisdom. Now a new study out of Canada says, not so fast. All booze is bad. So who’s right in the age old battle?
| 14 Apr 2023 | 04:16
Oft-repeated conventional wisdom has held that a glass of wine a day is good for one’s health--but now some experts are not so sure. Photo: Flickr Commons
The Ancient Greeks called grapes and wine gifts from the gods, specifically Dionysus, the son Zeus reportedly sent down to teach humans how to party. Centuries later, when some smart cookie learned how to distill beverage alcohol from grains, the Irish Gaelic called the rich liquid “uisge beatha”–“whisky”– literally “water of life.”
Millenia after that, modern man and woman decided that moderate drinking, commonly put at one a day for an average woman and two for an average male, was not only fun but healthy as well. They had serious backup. Both the American Cancer Society and Harvard’s long running Nurses Health study said a drink or two protected the heart. Swiss counterparts said it slowed the progress of arthritis. Netherlanders at Wageningen University tossed in a lower risk of Type 2 diabetes.
True, Alcohol Change United Kingdom’s four-year old “dry January” has become popular worldwide. “Being alcohol-free for 31 days shows us that we don’t need alcohol to have fun, to relax, to socialize,” says CEO Dr. Richard Piper. But except for the National Cancer Institute’s labeling alcohol a risk factor for oral cancer and the American Cancer Society’s adding breast cancer, the moderate drinking mantra looked rosy indeed. Rosy, that is, right up until March 31 when a team of Brits and Canadians from the Universities of Portsmouth, Victoria and Saskatchewan, plus the Canadian Institute for Substance Use and Research, published data pretty much saying, “Not on your life.”
The researchers had begun with one simple question: Does a drink or two a day reduce the risk of morbidity (illness) and mortality (death)? Their step-by-step review and analysis of more than 100 cohort studies published between January 1980 and July 2021 involving nearly five million men and women contradicts the healthy alcohol story. In fact, compared to lifetime teetotalers, the folks in the study who drank even less than about an ounce of alcohol a day showed no RR (relative risk) reduction for either illness or death. Worse yet, women who drank more than an ounce a day and men who drink more than two ounces appeared significantly to increase their risk of dying from all causes. Translation: Moderate drinking does not lower the risk of death.
So why the earlier optimism? Life choices, said the scientists. Moderate drinkers are simply more likely to do healthy things like check in with the doctor once a year, watch their weight, exercise, and visit the dentist regularly, thus lowering their risk of oral cancers.
But this study isn’t likely the end of the story. Groundbreaking works such as this one invite both support and challenges. Expect both praise and contradictions, the latter perhaps suggesting that the Brits and Canadians misread the numbers or compared apples (current drinkers or young people) with oranges (older people or ex-imbibers).
Wine glass in hand, Dionysus is waiting with baited breath.