2024-07-30 17:00:25
“People need to be skeptical of the claims that have been pushed by the alcohol industry for years,” says Tim Stockwell of the University of Victoria in Canada. “It’s clear that they have a vested interest in promoting their product as something that will help you live longer, not as something that will give you cancer.”
Although the risks of moderate alcohol consumption are small, people should be told that it is not beneficial, the researcher says. “Maybe it’s not as risky as a lot of other things you do, but it’s important that consumers are informed,” he says. “I think it’s also important that manufacturers are forced to use warning labels to inform consumers about the risks.”
The best way to measure the effects of alcohol would be to randomly assign people to drink or not drink alcohol during childhood and follow their health and alcohol use throughout their lives. Because such studies are impossible, researchers have to ask people about their drinking habits and observe them for a much shorter period of time.
By the 2000s, a number of such studies showed that the relationship between alcohol consumption and the risk of death at a given age forms a J-shaped curve. This means that if people drank little, their risk of dying from any cause was slightly reduced – compared to non-drinkers – but if they drank more, the risk increased dramatically.
T. Stockwell says that at the time he was convinced that the scientific side of the whole thing had already been solved. But he and others have since proven that such studies have significant drawbacks.
The main problem is that they often do not compare people who have never consumed alcohol – and those who have. Instead, most studies compare people who stop drinking alcohol with those who still do. People who give up alcohol, especially in later life, often do so because they have health problems, the researcher says, making moderate drinkers appear healthier by comparison.
Some studies say they compare current drinkers with never drinkers, but definitions of the latter group often include occasional drinkers, says Stockwell. For example, in one study, people were considered lifelong non-drinkers, even if they drank up to 11 times a year.
“In our opinion, the vast majority of studies do not address this potential source of bias,” says the researcher. – To be clear, people tried to fight it. We don’t think they handled it properly.”
In fact, his team found that only six of the 107 studies they reviewed properly examined these sources of bias—and none of those six studies found that moderate alcohol consumption reduced risk.
“From [aukštos kokybės] studies show that the relationship is linear, says T. Stockwell. “The more you drink, the higher your risk of heart disease, which is of course the main issue, even though our studies look at all-cause mortality.”
The review shows very clearly that lower quality studies are more likely to show a positive effect, says Duane Mellor, a spokesman for the British Dietetic Association.
However, he points out that it does not take into account the social aspects of moderate drinking. “It’s healthier to socialize without alcohol, but the benefits of spending time with others can still outweigh the risks of having one or two drinks,” he says. “The challenge is perhaps to limit alcohol consumption in this way.”
Research skelbiamas „Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs“.
2024-07-30 17:00:25