Alcohol use: Weighing risks and benefits

Excessive alcohol use can harm people who drink and those around them. You and your community can take steps to improve everyone’s health and quality of life. Past studies may have masked the health benefits of not drinking at all.

Effects of short-term alcohol use

One reason this may have biased the results is because former drinkers are more likely to develop health problems over time. It’s possible they cut down or stopped their alcohol consumption when they became sick. One main issue that kept coming up in the studies was how difficult it was to measure the course of drinking over a person’s lifetime.

• Alcohol consumption is an often-celebrated part of our culture.
• For example, it can cause liver damage — including cirrhosis — brain damage, heart failure, diabetes, cancer and susceptibility to infections (9, 54, 58, 72, 73, 74).
• When it comes to alcohol, if you don’t drink, don’t start for health reasons.
• Moderate drinkers who have two copies of the gene for the slow-acting enzyme are at much lower risk for cardiovascular disease than moderate drinkers who have two genes for the fast-acting enzyme.

What is alcohol?

Whether or not to drink alcohol, especially for “medicinal purposes,” requires careful balancing of these benefits and risks. The social and psychological benefits of alcohol can’t be ignored. A drink before a meal can improve digestion or offer a soothing respite at the end of a stressful day; the occasional drink with friends can be a social tonic.

Other chronic diseases

In the U.S., alcohol is implicated in about half of fatal traffic accidents. 1 Heavy drinking can damage the liver and heart, harm an unborn child, increase the chances of developing breast and some other cancers, contribute to depression and violence, and interfere with relationships. Moderate alcohol consumption may increase life expectancy, while alcohol abuse is a strong risk factor for premature death. In fact, because heavy drinking is a major cause of depression in some individuals, treating the underlying alcohol abuse may lead to big improvements (25, 26, 27). In heavy drinkers, binge drinking may cause your liver to become inflamed. In worst-case scenarios, liver cells die and get replaced with scar tissue, leading to a serious condition called cirrhosis (3, 6, 7).

• There are several possible reasons for the beneficial effects of drinking moderately.
• During pregnancy, drinking may cause the unborn baby to have brain damage and other problems.
• Moderate drinking is defined as no more than one standard drink per day for women and no more than two for men.
• In fact, a new systematic review published last month in JAMA Network Open finds that moderate drinking provides no health benefits and that drinking more than one or two drinks a day increases your risk of dying earlier.
• A monthly update filled with nutrition news and tips from Harvard experts—all designed to help you eat healthier.

• Eighty-six of the 107 studies misclassified former drinkers and occasional drinkers as being abstinent.
• Taking these factors into account, the new analysis found that moderate drinking increases the risk of premature death.
• These physical and social effects may also contribute to health and well-being.
• One main issue that kept coming up in the studies was how difficult it was to measure the course of drinking over a person’s lifetime.
• Your liver is a remarkable organ with hundreds of essential functions.

But a growing body of evidence is calling those health benefits into question. In fact, a new systematic review published last month in JAMA Network Open finds that moderate drinking provides no health benefits and that drinking more than one or two drinks a day increases your risk of dying earlier. A new analysis, published by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), has found that drinking low amounts of alcohol does not have health benefits. Their work, which included data from 107 studies and over 4.8 million participants, looked at all-cause mortality, a general metric, rather than deaths caused by a particular type of condition. In fact, a new systematic review published last month in JAMA Network Open finds that moderate drinking provides no health benefits and that drinking more than one or two drinks a day increases your risk of dying earlier.

Nutrition & Physical Activity

Moderate drinking sits at the point at which the health benefits of alcohol clearly outweigh the risks. These past research includes a study that found people who were moderate drinkers had slower cognitive decline. Another study found that moderate drinkers had lower risk of cardiac events such as a heart attack or stroke compared to people who never drank or drank heavily. The latest study in JAMA Network Open took a closer look at the scientific data that often guides alcohol-related policies. The team expanded their review to 107 alcohol studies published between 1980 and 2021. Their analysis included the drinking habits of 4.8 million people, making it one of the largest pieces of evidence criticizing alcohol’s lack of health benefits.

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While alcohol intoxication is only temporary, chronic alcohol abuse can impair brain function permanently. However, moderate drinking may have benefits for brain health — especially among older adults. Current CDC guidelines of no more than one drink per day for women and two drinks for men are likely to disappoint those who think any drinking is terrible and those who think moderate drinking improves longevity. In the Nurses’ Health Study, the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, and other studies, gallstones 40, 41 and type 2 diabetes 32, 42, 43 were less likely to occur in moderate drinkers than in non-drinkers. The definition of moderate drinking is something of a balancing act.

If you are a heavy drinker, following a healthy diet and exercise routine will still be beneficial for your health, but not as much as getting your alcohol consumption under control, or abstaining completely. Numerous factors can predispose people to problematic drinking, such as family history, social environment, mental health and genetics. Alcohol is metabolized by the liver, and frequent intake can lead to increased fat inside liver cells. On the one hand, moderate amounts have been linked to health benefits. The active ingredient in alcoholic beverages, a simple molecule how to drink moderately called ethanol, affects the body in many different ways. It directly influences the stomach, brain, heart, gallbladder, and liver.

Type 2 diabetes

3 Each delivers about 12 to 14 grams of alcohol on average, but there is a wider range now that microbrews and wine are being produced with higher alcohol content. As a result of this research, occasional alcohol consumption was often considered to be compatible with a healthy lifestyle. Moderate drinking is often defined as up to one drink a day for women or two or fewer drinks for a man. In the past, many studies have made headlines after they found people who drank a moderate amount of alcohol often had healthier outcomes than people who completely abstained from alcohol.