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Moderate drinking isn't good for you
It turns out many of the studies are wrong: "The common error was to lump into the group of "abstainers" people who were once drinkers but had quit."
Addendum: Elsewhere on EconLog we are given notice of Greg Mankiw's new blog, for his Econ 10 course at Harvard.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on April 3, 2006 at 07:43 AM in Medicine | Permalink
Comments
I have suspected this for years (I am a teetotaler), after reading a summary of the articles from the Norwegian government. Another thing I noticed in that summary is that most alcohol studies define alcohol quite differently from chemists, defining beer and wine as "alcohol types" rather than beverages containing alcohol. That makes it a lot easier to say that alcohol is healthy.
Posted by: Harald Korneliussen at Apr 3, 2006 8:06:29 AM
Actually, a better title for this post would be "Moderate drinking isn't better for you" since the key graf is "All seven of those [accurate] studies found no significant differences in the health of those who drank -- or previously drank -- and those who never touched the stuff."
Posted by: Patrick at Apr 3, 2006 8:26:14 AM
Or "There Is No Health Reason Not to Drink in Moderation"
Posted by: Sandy Smith at Apr 3, 2006 9:29:48 AM
I mentioned this at the linked EconLog thread, too - Bryan would be better to stick with moderate beer drinking than to consume sugar-sweetened soft drinks, particularly if HFCS is involved. Aside from the caloric concerns, HFCS is linked to a number of ailments, primarily adult-onset diabetes and obesity.
Of course government is involved too - corn subsidies and sugar tariffs keep HFCS in our soft drinks instead of cane sugar, which is both healthier and much, much tastier as a sweetener.
Posted by: Zac at Apr 3, 2006 9:59:15 AM
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Posted by: Jake at Apr 3, 2006 12:54:16 PM
It would seem to me that evaluating the health risks of drinking requires controlling for the effects of smoking (and vice versa), as so many people engage in both habits.
Posted by: Peter at Apr 3, 2006 1:09:00 PM
I like your blog, but you have violated a fundamental rule, habitually violated by many bloggers:
1a. Realize that most sound bites about health from the media are wrong or misleading
1b. When there is something interesting, wait until a competent physician friend can get the full text and analyze the paper.
If I told you that the principal determinant of per capita GDP was the religion of the President or Prime Minister, you would insist on seeing the data.
Fillmore’s paper is not yet available to read- just like papers about antidepressants and suicidality (suicidality and suicide are related but different things) and stimulants, strokes & heart attack. In these latter cases, blogs blared out misleading sound bites based in the antidepressant case on misleading comments by the head of the National Institute of Mental health. By the time the papers were available to read, one week later, the blogs had moved on and didn’t want informed comments.
2. Many variables influence mortality. Those who think that moderate alcohol (especially wine) consumption reduces cardiovascular death rates and probably increases cancer death rates all concede that smoking has a much larger effect on cardiovascular mortality than alcohol consumption. There’s lots of data that the diets of beer drinkers and wine drinkers differ significantly in vegetable intake, etc.
3. Consider the twin study of Carmelli et al (Am J Pub Hlt 85:99, 1995)- thousands of twins, all male, who had been in the military, were sampled for alcohol intake into three groups: never drank, formerly drank, still drank (broken down into three groups by alcohol consumption). The twins discordant for alcohol consumption were the focus. Those who never drank had a high incidence of never smoking, whereas former & current drinkers were mostly smokers. However the never drinkers had a significant excess of deaths from all causes except cancer; the former drinkers had a small excess.
I tell my friends that anything they hear on radio or TV about health is most often wrong, and that newspapers are only slightly better. Nobody wants to take the time to review the raw data and put new reports in perspective. Yes, medical dogma (and economic dogma) is often wrong. Sound bites aren’t the answer to either problem.
Bob Snodgrass
Harbor-UCLA Medical Center
Posted by: Bob Snodgrass at Apr 3, 2006 6:49:22 PM
BOB, i wanted to get through your long post, I am sure you had some important things to say, but I had to go drink a beer.
Posted by: kyle8 at Apr 3, 2006 7:38:06 PM
Peter, few studies are that obviously stupid, they try to correct for known major health risks (smoking, diabetes, age, sometimes income), although if those factors have complex interrelationships their methods may fail.
Wikipedia claims that alcohol in large amounts is not only carcinogenic, but multiplies the carcinogenic effects of smoking as well, in the throat and related parts.
So it's pointless to say that soft drinks are worse. There is a safe level for them, same as there is a safe level for alcohol, and even a safe level for tobacco. All of them cause harm to society as they are used today, and two of them we would be better off without, IMO.
Posted by: Harald Korneliussen at Apr 4, 2006 5:31:21 AM
I commend to you the Australian word "wowser". It refers to killjoys, puritans, prohibitionists and the like.
Posted by: dearieme at Apr 4, 2006 8:18:38 AM
I like dearieme's comment.
Why is discussion of "what is good for you" SO dominated by notions of what'll sustain physical health, important as that is? We all recognize alcohol as a social lubricant, and yet we seem to have few thoughtful discussions about it's use as such. It's beer ads on one side and DARE programs on the other, with little inbetween.
Many of your neighbors met their spouses when operating "under the influence." Where are the studies about that? And might not they be much more persuasive than the marginal differences we see disputed in terms of the physical effects?
Posted by: Dave Meleney at Apr 4, 2006 10:13:50 AM
Actually, it's not just that moderate drinking is no worse; the implication
of the metastudy (if it's correct, which I doubt) is that once you start
drinking, you shouldn't stop. The former drinkers did worse than the current
drinkers. I know once I start, I generally choose not to stop.
Posted by: Jonathan at Apr 4, 2006 2:57:00 PM
Well, I think the world needs a couple of wowsers, then. I don't mind being one here...
I agree that the personal damages to yourself from drinking is a poor reason to quit drinking in itself, for most people. However, a significant health benefit might have been a reason to start (were it true!).
The "social lubrication" effects of alcohol are a result of people being taught alcohol cheers you up, reduces inhibitions etc. Without the social context and education, alcohol only makes your mind work a little slower.
I think the world would be a better place if people met their spouses when sober, and if they learned to do the things they wanted to do without the excuse "I was drunk at the time".
Mandatory wowser link: The psychology of getting high, by fellow wowser Hans Olav Fekjær.
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