New Guidelines Say Men Should Not Have More Than One Alcoholic Drink Daily

New U.S. dietary guidelines recommend that men should not have more than one alcoholic drink daily, The Wall Street Journal reports. Currently, the recommended limit is two drinks a day.

The two-drink limit was recommended based on research linking moderate drinking with a lower risk of heart disease. More recently, health experts have found problems with those studies.

“We looked at deaths from cancer, cardiovascular disease, and more than 60 alcohol-related conditions,” said Timothy Naimi, a physician and alcohol researcher at Boston University, who served on the federal committee that revised the guidelines. “Whatever kind of study you look at, two drinks a day is associated with a higher risk of death than drinking one drink a day. In the context of a health document, why would you endorse people drinking up to a level in which mortality increases?”

The old and new guidelines recommend that women have no more than one alcoholic drink daily.