Moderate drinking is not so healthful after all. This is according to the researchers from the University of Victoria in British Columbia who disputed previous studies that suggested moderate drinkers live longer due to reduced risks for some diseases.
Fox News reports that a new research, published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, claims that previous studies have shown bias in their reports when suggesting that moderate alcohol drinkers have longer lives than people who abstain. They said that the health benefits of moderate drinking are potentially overstated as previous studies failed to consider medical reasons as a factor that drives abstainers to get rid of alcohol.
The researchers reviewed 87 previous studies that linked moderate drinking to a longer life. They found that these studies, which involved four million people and 370,000 deaths, have what they call an abstainer bias. This means that past researchers had compared moderate drinkers with the non-drinking group that includes former drinkers who stopped due to poor health.
The researchers said that out of 87 studies, only 13 have avoided abstainer bias and only six of these are of high quality. They also found that if abstainer bias is taken into account, the health benefits of moderate drinking may be none at all.
"Giving up drinking is a sign of ill health, not a cause of it," lead researcher Tim Stockwell told Huffington Post. "So if those people are put in the abstainer comparison group, they make that group look unhealthy and make the moderate drinkers look healthier by comparison."
Stockwell said that the more precise way of comparing the effect of alcohol to longer life is to compare moderate drinkers to non-drinkers who abstained in their whole lives, instead of including former drinkers who needed to stop taking alcohol due to health condition. He also added that smoking status, age and ethnicity should be taken into consideration when making a comparison.
"We can't rule out that alcohol isn't still preventing heart disease, but it's balanced by the extent to which it's causing cancers and other problems," Stockwell added. "There's no safe level of drinking."
