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How many times have you heard that moderate drinking is associated with health benefits? This means that those who do not drink have worse health outcomes on average compared to those who drink a small amount.

These types of headlines encourage us to open that bottle of wine. But they may not tell the whole story about how alcohol effects the body. It’s easy to understand why most of us think moderate alcohol intake directly benefits our health. However, the data show an association, not a cause per se.

Recent (2021) research cautions against drinking alcohol for health reasons. When researchers dig into why people abstain from alcohol, it turns out that a lot of them are doing so because they are in poorer health or have other health risks. Poorer health is causing some to avoid alcohol. When we analyze their health data, we observe an association between no alcohol intake and poorer health outcomes. 

The lead author on this study explains  “Alcohol abstainers seem to die earlier than low to moderate drinkers. But we found that the majority of abstainers had alcohol or drug problems, risky alcohol consumption, daily tobacco smoking or fair to poor health in their history, i.e., factors that predict early death.”

Large-scale population associations remain an important research avenue, but we must be careful using associations to inform public health guidance.

The truth is that there are some cases where we know small amounts of alcohol can slightly increase health risks. For instance, recent findings indicate that a single drink can increase risk of heart beat problems (arrythmias).

While we certainly need more research on this topic, in the meantime it seems that alcohol should not be viewed as a health-benefitting beverage. It doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy it. Just that enjoying it in the name of better health could become a thing of the past.