MONDAY, June 14, 2004 (HealthDayNews) -- A new U.S. government report says the lowest death rate occurs among those who have one to two drinks per day.
The government isn't telling you to drink, but only reporting what the research says about the health-related effects of moderate drinking. So, except for people for whom alcohol is a risk, having two drinks per day for men and one drink per day for women is unlikely to cause problems, the report said.
"There have been a large number of studies about how alcohol might lower the risk of cardiovascular symptoms," said lead researcher Dr. Lorraine Gunzerath, a branch chief for strategic research planning at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), which prepared the report. "So a lot of people have been asking their doctors if they should be drinking more or start drinking if they haven't."
Current U.S. government dietary guidelines recommend that men have one to two drinks per day, women one drink, and the elderly one drink per day regardless of gender, Gunzerath said.
To see if these guidelines should be changed, the researchers looked at studies that dealt with how alcohol affected heart disease and other conditions, such as cancer. The report appears in the June issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.
"We recommended that the guidelines should not be changed," Gunzerath said. "Moderation is still no more than two drinks a day, and risky drinking is something like four or more drinks every day or a whole lot of drinks one day a week," she added.
Gunzerath said that the benefits from alcohol were similar no matter what form of alcohol you drank. It didn't matter if the drink of choice was wine, beer, or spirits, she said.
People who are heavy drinkers are at risk for many health problems, such as cirrhosis of the liver and heart trouble, Gunzerath said. But "people who are low to moderate drinkers, in general, improve their health profile."
Moderate drinking improves cardiovascular health, experts believe. It is also helpful in diabetes, because it changes the way the body processes insulin. Moderate drinking may even help in the fight against obesity. "It turns out that people who are moderate drinkers don't seem to gain weight," Gunzerath said.
In other diseases, such as cancer, there is no clear evidence for or against alcohol, she said. "It may really depend on the individual.
"If you have a genetic predisposition to certain kinds of cancer, for example, then that's really the overriding thing. Alcohol may increase the risk in some people, but may decrease it in other people -- it isn't the alcohol, it's the gene," Gunzerath said.
Those who shouldn't drink include individuals with a family history of alcoholism as well as pregnant women, who can raise their baby's risk for fetal alcohol syndrome.
All pregnant women are advised not to drink because so far no one knows what causes fetal alcohol syndrome, how much alcohol is too much, and who is most susceptible, Gunzerath said.
Of course, individuals who've shied away from alcohol don't necessarily have to start drinking to boost their health, she added.
"We are not saying if you never had a drink of alcohol in your life and your family has a history of heart disease, you better start drinking," Gunzerath said. "There are other things you can do to reduce your risk of heart disease."
Drinking is something you should talk over with your doctor, ahe advised.
"I commend the NIAAA for this balanced, and well-reasoned position paper," said Dr. David L. Katz, director of the Yale Prevention Research Center at Yale University School of Medicine. "They have approached the issue of alcohol consumption strictly on the basis of science and health effects."
For many, a glass of wine or beer a day is one of life's pleasures, and moderate drinking's effect on mental health should be taken into consideration too, Katz said.
"Pleasure contributes to mental health. Even if alcohol confers no appreciable health benefit to an individual, they may choose to drink for pleasure. Another might prefer not to drink, but feel compelled to do so for health protection. Add pleasure into the mix as you reach a personal decision. If you do enjoy a glass of wine with dinner, that's a good reason to have one -- with a likely health benefit a bonus," he said.
Katz brought up a saying from the 16th-century pharmacologist Paracelsus, who said that "the dose makes the poison."
"There are few better examples of this principle than alcohol," Katz said. "Some is generally good, but more is certainly not better. The final word on the subject is and should be moderation."
More information
The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism can tell you about alcohol use and abuse.
