The belief that moderate drinking is better for a person’s health than not drinking at all may simply be a myth. At least, that is what a March 2023 study suggests. According to the systemic review “Association Between Daily Alcohol Intake and Risk of All-Cause Mortality,” a meta-analysis of 107 cohort studies on the subject through the last 40 years, low-volume alcohol consumption is not associated with a decreased risk in mortality.
“The proposition that low-dose alcohol use protects against all-cause mortality in general populations continues to be controversial,” the study reported. “Observational studies tend to show that people classified as ‘moderate drinkers’ have longer life expectancy and are less likely to die from heart disease than those classified as abstainers. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses of this literature confirm J-shaped risk curves (protective associations at low doses with increasing risk at higher doses). However, mounting evidence suggests these associations might be due to systematic biases that affect many studies.”
According to Tim Stockwell, one of the study’s authors, many of the major studies on low-volume alcohol consumption ignored valid data — including the commonality of abstainers already developing health problems being used as comparison groups. Many groups that drank only low-volumes of alcohol in older studies also had a tendency to have healthier habits than their counterparts, another often ignored factor in the studies.
“When you compare this unhealthy group to those who go on drinking, it makes the current drinkers look more healthy and like they have lower mortality,” Stockwell told The New York Times.
Once those factors were put into consideration, the systematic review’s findings became more clear.
“Lo and behold, the supposed health benefits of drinking shrink dramatically, and become non-statistically significant,” he said.
After assessing the study of more than 4.8 million participants across 40 years of research, the systematic review doubled down on its initial observations.
“In fully adjusted, prespecified models that accounted for effects of sampling, between-study variation, and potential confounding from former drinker bias and other study-level covariates, our meta-analysis of 107 studies found (1) no significant protective associations of occasional or low-volume drinking (moderate drinking) with all-cause mortality; and (2) an increased risk of all-cause mortality for drinkers who drank 25 g or more and a significantly increased risk when drinking 45 g or more per day,” the review reported.
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