Is drinking in moderation good for your heart? Harvard Gazette

These differences may result in ambiguous or even conflicting results and must be taken into account in order to draw valid conclusions or develop appropriate guidelines. Even when a definition of moderate drinking has been developed, that definition may not apply equally to all people or under all circumstances. For example, although it may not be harmful for a party’s host to consume three or four drinks during the evening, the same amount of alcohol when consumed by a guest who plans on driving home could place the guest at risk for being in a car crash. Similarly, a healthy woman will likely experience no negative effects from drinking one drink per day; however, if the woman is pregnant, the same drinking level may lead to adverse effects (i.e., fetal impairment).

1. Two alcoholic drinks per day is considered moderate drinking for men.
2. The investigators reported in the journal BMC Medicine that people who drank from 2 to 7 glasses of wine per week were much less likely to be diagnosed with clinical depression.
3. In this video, Dr. Bobby Lazzara explains the potential benefits of alcohol for your heart and emphasizes the importance of moderation.

Department of Health and Human Services, the 2020–2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans provide recommendations on what the average American should eat and drink to promote health and help prevent chronic disease. According to the guidelines, adults of legal drinking age can choose not to drink or to drink in moderation by limiting intake to two drinks or less in a day for men and one drink or less in a day for women when alcohol is consumed. There are some adults who should not drink alcohol, such as women who are pregnant.

The social and psychological benefits of alcohol can’t be ignored. A drink before a meal can improve digestion or offer a soothing respite at the end of a stressful day; the occasional drink with friends can be a social tonic. These physical and social effects may also contribute to health and well-being.

For example, separate QF questions for different periods within a given timeframe (e.g., each month within the past year) produce higher estimates than does one global QF question (e.g., consumption during the entire year). Similarly, beverage-specific questions or questions asking for consumption in different contexts (e.g., in bars, at home, or at parties and celebrations) produce higher estimates than do global questions asking about total alcohol consumption. The less alcohol you drink, the lower your risk for these health effects, including several types of cancer.

Other chronic diseases

Diary methods produce higher estimates than do either QF or short-term recall methods. For example, in the previously mentioned study using an automated interactive telephone reporting system (Searles et al. 1995), 50 volunteers reported their daily alcohol intake for 112 consecutive days. Other data collected by traditional means immediately after study completion demonstrated that drinkers—particularly heavier drinkers—retrospectively underreported their alcohol consumption.

While there wasn’t much of a difference in risk between younger and older groups who drank moderately, younger people in the study had greater mortality risks than the older ones at high consumption levels. Mirza Rahman, MD, president of the American College of Preventive Medicine, said that good health behavior in areas such as diet, exercise, and sleep may not be enough to reduce the negative impact of moderate drinking. Large studies published in the past several years, he said, have established that no level of drinking is safe. The reported alcohol consumption is likely to be higher if the respondent perceives the assessment to be less stigmatizing. For example, estimates of alcohol consumption are higher when alcohol-related questions are part of a food-frequency survey than when the same questions are posed in an alcohol-specific survey. More detailed and specific questions also elicit higher estimates of alcohol consumption.

Nutrition and healthy eating

44 Those with one gene for the slow-acting enzyme and one for the faster enzyme fall in between. In the Nurses’ Health Study, the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, and other studies, gallstones 40, 41 and type 2 diabetes 32, 42, 43 were less likely to occur in moderate drinkers than in non-drinkers. Many studies over the past 20 years have suggested that people who have what was eminem addicted to a drink a day or less may have a lower risk of cancer, heart disease, or all-cause mortality than those who abstain from drinking. Yet a growing body of newer research shows that those claims may be a mirage.

Alcohol levels

Moderate drinking seems to be good for the heart and circulatory system, and probably protects against type 2 diabetes and gallstones. Heavy drinking is a major cause of preventable death in most countries. In the U.S., alcohol is implicated in about half of fatal traffic accidents. 1 Heavy drinking can damage the liver and heart, harm an unborn child, increase the chances of developing breast and some other cancers, contribute to depression and violence, and interfere with relationships.

Extreme binge drinking, also known as high-intensity drinking, refers to drinking at levels far beyond the binge threshold, resulting in high peak blood alcohol concentrations. Other Core articles will help you to screen for heavy drinking, identify possible medical complications of alcohol use, assess for signs of AUD, and conduct a brief intervention to guide patients in setting a plan to cut back or quit if needed. While there is no guaranteed safe amount of alcohol for anyone, general guidelines can help clinicians advise their patients and minimize the risks. Here, we will provide basic information about drink sizes, drinking patterns, and alcohol metabolism to help answer the question “how much is too much? ” In short, the answer from current research is, the less alcohol, the better. Drinking moderately if you’re otherwise healthy may be a risk you’re willing to take.