Alcohol and your health: Is none better than a little?

It’s complicated. That’s the best way to describe the relationship between alcohol and health. As I’ve written about before, a number of studies have demonstrated health benefits with lower amounts of drinking. But if you drink too much alcohol (especially at inopportune times), there may be significant harms as well. Just how these balance out remains a matter of some debate and controversy. While it’s easy to say “too much alcohol is bad for you” (and then point out the litany of harms caused by alcohol, such as liver disease and motor vehicle accidents), it’s harder to answer these simple but important questions: Just how much is too much? Is there a health benefit to some drinking compared with none? These are more than just interesting questions for researchers to study. The answers could guide recommendations of doctors, public health officials, and policy makers throughout the world — and they could save millions of lives. But so far, the answers vary depending on the study. And perhaps that should not be too surprising since study methods differ widely. For example, the definition of “one drink” in the US is 14 grams of alcohol, as found in a 12-ounce bottle of beer, 5-ounce glass of wine, or 1.5-ounce shot glass of distilled spirits. In other countries, and in many research studies, a different definition is used. Recent studies on alcohol and health In June of 2018, a study published in the journal PLOS Medicine found that among older adults, l...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Alcohol Health Source Type: blogs