For most of my formative years in medicine it was taken as gospel that 1-2 drinks/day, particularly red wine, was good for you.
Today though, the pendulum has swung the other way (granted, that could change in a year).
Recent re-analysis of the data now suggests there’s no benefit to any amount of alcohol. Zero. Zip. Nada.
This certainly isn’t the first time in medicine this has happened. It’s amazing how many studies end up getting re-analyzed, and re-re-analyzed, years later, with different conclusions reached.
Dr. Allan M. Block
It makes you wonder how these things happen. Possible explanations include flawed methodologies that either weren’t recognized at the time, confirmation bias, a rush to publish, and, rarely, outright fraud.
All of them, except for the last, are understandable. We all make mistakes. We’re all susceptible to the same statistical and psychological biases. Isn’t that part of the reason we do the peer-review process, so more than one pair of eyes can look for errors?
So, basically, no amount of alcohol is good for you.
Do I really think this is going to change anything? Hell no.
A huge amount of our culture revolves around alcohol. I’m not much of a drinker, but have no desire to give up my 2-3 beers per month, either. Just shopping in the store you see T-shirts, kitchen towels, gift bags, etc., that say things like “wine is just fruit salad” or “1 tequila, 2, tequila, 3 tequila, floor.”
The archaeological record suggests we began making alcoholic beverages 13,000 years ago. That’s a long time, and a pretty hard cultural habit to break. For comparison, tobacco has only been used for 3000 years.
In one of our strangest moments, America launched a 13-year experiment in prohibition, which failed miserably. Think about that. One hundred years ago, in 1924, you couldn’t legally buy alcohol anywhere in the United States. You had to break the law to get a drink, which most people did. Even then it was dangerous —in order to keep industrial ethanol from being sold to the public it was denatured with various toxins. As a result several thousand Americans died from their routine nightcap — with the government’s blessing.
Basically, alcohol isn’t going away. Not now, probably not ever.
There may be some out there who will alter their drinking habits based on the study, but I doubt it. I just don’t see too many people having a glass solely for the same reason they might take Lipitor or a multivitamin.
But I have no issue with correcting the original data. In medicine, and life in general, finding out what works is just as important as learning what doesn’t.
Dr. Block has a solo neurology practice in Scottsdale, Arizona.