An article in yesterday’s Washington Post reports that, no, “moderate drinking” is not, in fact, good for your heart, or otherwise beneficial to health.
Not long ago, it was believed that moderate drinking benefited heart health, but that belief now appears to be a fallacy. The idea that moderate drinking benefited cardio health came from imperfect studies comparing groups of people by how much they drink.
None of these studies were properly randomized, however, and they included confounding factors. For example, people who reported drinking moderately tended to have higher levels of education, higher incomes, and better access to health care.
“It turns out that when you adjust for those things, the benefits [of moderate drinking] tend to disappear,” said Dr. Timothy Naimi, who directs the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria in British Columbia.
Another defect of these studies was that most of them did not include younger people. Almost half of the people who die from alcohol-related causes die before the age of 50. “If you’re studying people who survived into middle age, didn’t quit drinking because of a problem and didn’t become a heavy drinker, that’s a very select group,” Naimi said. “It creates an appearance of a benefit for moderate drinkers that is actually a statistical illusion.”
Other studies challenge the idea that alcohol has benefits. These studies compare people with a gene variant that makes it unpleasant to drink to people without the gene variant. People with the variant tend to drink very little or not at all. One of these studies found people with the gene variant have a lower risk of heart disease — another blow to the idea that alcohol protects people from heart problems.
Eight years ago, we published Dr. Iskander’s article making these same points about these same studies. It is nice to see the secular press finally catching up!
We note that a spate of similar articles appeared about year ago (see here, here, here, here, and here), so perhaps the Washington Post was just waiting for a slow news day to catch up with the rest of the secular press.
“Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.” Prov. 20:1