You are going to need a better justification for your evening sharpener.
A single glass of wine a night probably does not have the health benefits we have been led to believe, a new study has claimed. Instead there is a more disappointing explanation for the apparent health-giving properties of booze.
The research suggests that the real reason why moderate drinkers live longer than those who abstain is because those who are teetotal often have a reason for giving up drink — such as already being ill or an alcoholic.
Once you correct for that anomaly, the research found that the apparent health benefits of alcohol essentially disappear. The study, published in the journal PLOS Medicine, fits into a long debate about what is known as the “J-shaped curve”.
One of the best validated results in alcohol research is that if you ask people about their drinking and then monitor their health, there appears to be an optimum level of alcohol intake. The graph of health versus alcohol intake looks like a “J” leaning to its side. Drink too much and your health appears to suffer. Drink too little, though, and it is also impacted.
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German scientists looked at more than 4,000 people who had taken part in an interview about their drinking habits in the late 1990s. Over the next 20 years the abstainers appeared to suffer for their abstemiousness. A quarter of the 450 who said they had not had a drop in the preceding year had died within 20 years, compared with one in ten of those with low-to-moderate alcohol consumption.
However, just one in ten of the abstainers had never drunk, while about one in four had a history of risky alcohol consumption and half of them smoked.
When the scientists excluded these teetotallers there was no significant difference in risk of death compared with low to moderate drinkers.
“Abstainers are a very different group from moderate drinkers — they tend to be poorer, sicker and engage in more other unhealthy behaviours, such as smoking,” Colin Angus, from the University of Sheffield alcohol research group, said.
“Of particular concern is the fact that abstainers include former heavy drinkers, many of whom may have given up because of the impact that their drinking was having on their health, as well as people with long-term health conditions whose poor health meant that they never started drinking in the first place,” added Angus, who was not involved in the study.
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It is not completely implausible that alcoholic drinks could have health benefits. Red wine, for instance, contains resveratrol, a compound that some believe might improve lifespan. However, the study was not big enough to spot small improvements.
“It is very hard to be sure whether moderate drinking is beneficial or harmful,” he said. “It is certainly true that any health benefits from low levels of drinking are highly uncertain and very small even if they do exist . . . Overall, if people stay within the UK drinking guidelines, they are unlikely to be doing themselves much harm, or much good, from their drinking.”