Alcohol May Not Be So Good for You, After All

Many studies have suggested that using alcohol in moderation may help heart health and even prevent diabetes and dementia, but some scientists are questioning the purported benefits of moderate drinking, the New York Times reported June 16.

Kaye Middleton Fillmore, a retired sociologist from the University of California at San Francisco, suggested that moderate drinking is simply what healthy people do, as well as exercising and eating right. Tim Naimi of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that moderate drinkers are healthier, wealthier, and more educated and that these social advantages have nothing to do with their drinking.

On the other hand, Arthur L. Klatsky, an Oakland, Calif., cardiologist, said he would still recommend that a man in his 50s or 60s who has a heart attack and decides to give up drinking would be better off drinking moderately. The American Heart Association, however, recommends that nondrinkers do not start imbibing.

Some studies have shown that light drinkers are less likely than abstainers to develop diabetes. But critics have wondered whether the abstainers included people who had stopped drinking because they already had heart disease, or were older and perhaps more susceptible to disease.

Adding to the debate is the relationship between the alcoholic-beverage industry and researchers; some studies showing the benefits to moderate drinking have been funded by the alcohol industry.

R. Curtis Ellison, a Boston University physician, published a summary of a conference partly funded by the alcohol industry claiming that the participants had reached a consensus that moderate drinking had “predominantly beneficial effects on health,” for example, but Fillmore and her co-authors reviewed the summary and found that deep divisions among the participants had been glossed over in Ellison’s report.

This summary has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction, June 26, 2009
The summary originally noted that some health organizations, such as the American Heart Association, recommend moderate drinking, “although they do so with caution.” According to the New York Times article, although some health organizations recommend that those who already drink do so in moderation, the American Heart Association recommends that nondrinkers do not start drinking.