Mar 14

Beginning moderate alcohol consumption in middle age may have health benefits

Posted in News

The American Journal of Medicine has published a study entitled Adopting Moderate Alcohol Consumption in Middle Age: Subsequent Cardiovascular Events which seems to show a benefit to heart health from starting to drink alcohol – moderately – in middle age.

wine
Image by Photogen

According to the Reuters story, the leader of the study, Dr Dana King, described this as a “natural experiment” – the participants, who were part of a 10-year Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study, began drinking not as part of the study but for their own reasons. Strictly speaking, then, this isn’t an experiment at all (since there was no manipulation of the condition, drinking versus non-drinking), and it therefore doesn’t prove causation. There may be some unobserved third factor which is reducing these participants’ cardiac risk and also causing them to take up drinking, though it seems unlikely. The probabilities are that moderate drinking does actually improve your heart health, but it’s certainly not proven.

I couldn’t access the whole study, unfortunately – Massey University doesn’t subscribe to the American Journal of Medicine – but the abstract does mention that “there was no difference in all-cause mortality between the new drinkers and persistent nondrinkers”. I take that to mean that drinking wasn’t preventing fatal heart attacks, but it was reducing the incidence of non-fatal ones.

Since I find I don’t sleep well when I drink alcohol I won’t necessarily be starting it as a regular practice, and I think I’ll keep the disclaimer in my Healthy Lifestyle CD’s moderate drinking track that says, approximately, “If you don’t drink at all, switch off now, I’m not going to advise you to start drinking just for some possible health benefit that isn’t even proven.” But this is another pointer to the possible health benefits from moderate drinking.

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comments: 2 » tags: ,
  • Sheila Joyce Gibbs

    I would be extremely careful about recommending any alcohol consumption. Remember, there’s no restriction on who or of what age bracket can read this information !
    At this time, there are five common health afflictions, solely caused from what many of us thought, was moderate alcohol consumption.
    That being 1-2 stiff drinks per day, which has now been reduced eff February /09 through a Medical Information Release, to 1-2 stiff drinks per week.
    The current illness’s (in no particular order) are:
    -Grand Mal Seizures
    -Rapidly Progressive Blindness
    -Rapidly Progressive Deafness
    -Rapidly Corroded Livers
    -Heart Attacks
    All with no forewarning signs, nor with any cures at this time.

    Its all fine and dandy to recommend ‘Jack Sprat to eat no fat’ but this……..this carries far more
    derogatory relapse’s than anything legal at this point in time !!
    So when all us old sods have been dropped off at seniors homes to be spoon fed & diaperred, who’ll take over all our many Professions, if our youth have followed in our slimy footsteps, resulting in their own health being destroyed ???

    May God have mercy on us all !

  • Mike Reeves-McMillan

    Sheila, thanks for your comment.

    If you read the last paragraph you will see that I am specifically not recommending alcohol consumption, I’m simply reporting on the study. I’m also attempting to be extremely clear that this is a possible benefit for middle-aged people. Elsewhere on the site I point out that the harm done by alcohol among the young far outweighs the possible benefits among the middle-aged, and that if health effects were the only consideration, the legal drinking age would be 35.

    Your concerns are correct, but I don’t see myself as recommending alcohol consumption in any way.

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