If health was the sole consideration being used to make alcohol policy, the drinking age would be set at 35.
Startling, but true. Most of the harm done by alcohol is done to young people, while no health benefits have ever been identified to people under the age of 35.
What this means is that when you look at the number of lives lost in New Zealand in 2000 because of alcohol, versus those theoretically saved by drinking alcohol, the outcome is that 60 more lives were lost than saved. But if you instead look at “Disability Adjusted Life Years” lost, the net loss is an astonishing 12,000 years, because most of the lives lost were those of young people. (Figures from New Zealand’s Alcohol Advisory Council (ALAC), which points out: “These figures underestimate the adverse impacts of alcohol consumption on health, as they exclude many mental health outcomes, and important social consequences.”)
Heart disease – mainly a disease of the middle-aged and elderly – is the area in which the greatest benefits are seen associated with moderate alcohol consumption. The number of heart attacks is reduced and heart attack survivability is increased. Depending on the study, the effect appears to reduce heart attacks by between 20 and 40 percent, according to the US National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
photo credit: josef.stuefer
As the Institute notes, though, it’s yet to be proven whether this association is one of cause and effect. Other lifestyle patterns shared by moderate drinkers, but not by heavy drinkers or abstainers, may account for at least some of the effect. These could include diet and exercise patterns and abstaining from smoking.
Some studies have attempted to eliminate these factors statistically, and there does seem to be a residual effect. The speculation is that alcohol may reduce deposition of fatty deposits which narrow the arteries, and/or reduce clotting. A blood clot being caught in a narrowed artery is the basic scenario for a heart attack.
Stroke, high blood pressure, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, several cancers (such as kidney and prostate cancer), metabolic syndrome (a collection of health issues which increase the risk of heart disease), rheumatoid arthritis and a number of other conditions have also been identified as being less prevalent among moderate drinkers than among heavy drinkers or non-drinkers, according to sociologist David J. Hanson.
However, the key word here is moderate. For reasons which I explored thoroughly in my previous post in this series, alcohol consumption is not, on the whole, good for the body, and certainly not if you give it too much alcohol to deal with at once. One drink a day appears to be associated with (but, remember, has not been proven to cause) health benefits, but seven drinks all in one day will definitely do you harm, not good.
Different experts give different guidelines, but nobody is recommending more than three drinks a day, and most sources say one or two. The health benefits seem to be minor from an occasional drink (but the health risks are correspondingly small).
The near-universal advice, which I endorse, is this:
- If you don’t drink, don’t start, because there’s no clear evidence that it’s the alcohol that is directly causing the health benefits.
- If you drink moderately (one or two drinks a day) and are sensible about issues such as driving, good for you. You may be getting a health benefit (if you are over 35), and unless you are in an unusual situation medically you are unlikely to be harmed by it. (Your individual experience may vary, of course, statistics being what they are.)
- If you drink more than one or two drinks a day, cut down if you can, and stop if you can’t cut down.
Get help if you need it, from Alcoholics Anonymous if you meet the definition for alcoholism in my previous post on the negatives of alcohol, or from a hypnotherapist or other motivational counselor if you believe you can cut down to moderate drinking and stick with that without a problem. (Those are links for New Zealand. Internationally, you can find hypnotherapists here and Alcoholics Anonymous here.)
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