Alcohol use: Weighing risks and benefits

From this, the study’s authors concluded that while light drinking might have a modest protective effect for certain conditions among certain people, “Our results show that the safest level of drinking is none.” And perhaps that should not be too surprising since study methods differ widely. For example, the definition of “one drink” in the US is 14 grams of alcohol, as found in a 12-ounce bottle of beer, 5-ounce glass of wine, or 1.5-ounce shot glass of distilled spirits.

Is Any Alcohol Good for Health?

The debate still simmers today, with a lively back-and-forth over whether alcohol is good for you or bad for you. Heavy alcohol drinking can affect the absorption of or increase the loss of zinc and other nutrients. For this reason, your liver is particularly vulnerable to damage from alcohol intake. The morning after a night of over-imbibing can cause some temporary effects on your brain. Things like trouble concentration, slow reflexes and sensitivity to bright lights and loud sounds are standard signs of a hangover, and evidence of alcohol’s effects on your brain. Your body breaks alcohol down into a chemical called acetaldehyde, which damages your DNA.

Deciding about drinking

Some research has identified a possible benefit of light to moderate alcohol consumption on brain health. Keep reading to learn about the effects of alcohol on the body and the potential benefits of drinking or not drinking it. Moderate drinking is defined as at most one standard drink per day for females drug addiction and at most two for males, while heavy drinking is defined as more than three drinks per day for females and four for males. Yet we continue to see reductive narratives, in the media and even in science journals, that alcohol in any amount is dangerous.

You Probably Do This Every Day- But Experts Warn It’s Harming Your Child’s Development

For men, heavy drinking means more than four drinks on any day or more than 14 drinks a week. The evidence for moderate alcohol use in healthy adults is still being studied. But good evidence shows that drinking high amounts of alcohol are clearly linked to health problems. In August of 2018, two larger studies examined the impact of alcohol.

A drink consists of 14 grams of pure alcohol, which is found in 12 ounces of regular beer, 5 ounces of wine or 1.5 ounces of distilled spirits. One in particular is hepatocellular cancer, which is a cancer of the liver. Certain esophageal cancers and gastrointestinal cancers have also been related to excessive alcohol use. Both alcoholic and non-alcoholic beers contain barley polysaccharides thought to stimulate prolactin, which increases breast milk production. (Why do I hear Quagmire’s voice right now?) However, non-alcoholic varieties avoid the potential negative effects of alcohol on breast milk quality. Many of these factors could explain the lower risk for heart disease among moderate drinkers.

Ways Alcohol Is Legitimately Healthy

• He is triple board-certified in family medicine, lifestyle medicine and geriatrics, providing care to an array of patients ages 18 and older.
• Drink too much, though, and you can get dehydrated, and that increases your risk of kidney stones along with other health problems.
• For example, beer has a high amount of carbohydrates, and some types of beer are high in calories as well.
• In the United States, people younger than age 21 are not legally able to drink alcohol.

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. That happy-hour cocktail or glass of wine with dinner may make you less likely to develop type 2 diabetes. Scientists aren’t sure why exactly, but it might be that a drink or two helps your body deal with high blood sugar levels in a healthy way. The more—and longer—people drink, the more they risk developing health problems, such as diabetes, liver disease and even brain shrinkage. Excessive drinking can also lead to high blood pressure, cardiomyopathy and arrhythmia, according to the American Heart Association.

The Bottom Line: Balancing Risks and Benefits

Here, over 200 million people in the Region are at risk of developing alcohol-attributable cancer. But there have been studies that found small amounts of red wine and other forms of alcohol may be beneficial for your health, leaving the general public understandably confused. Here’s what the data and doctors have to say about the potential impact of alcohol on your health. Dr. Jeffery Landsman is a primary care physician at drug addiction Mercy Personal Physicians in Lutherville, Maryland. He is triple board-certified in family medicine, lifestyle medicine and geriatrics, providing care to an array of patients ages 18 and older. Dr. Landsman also has an extensive background and interest in geriatric care.

The first one, published in The Lancet, included only people who drank at least some alcohol. It concluded that common recommendations regarding “moderate” drinking (one drink a day or less for women, and two drinks per day or less for men) might be too much. Globally, the WHO European Region has the highest alcohol consumption level and the highest proportion of drinkers in the population.

If you have up to seven drinks per week, the added risk to your heart appears to be minimal. If you go above that amount, however, the risk rises exponentially (see “What is a standard drink?”). According to the 2016 ​​Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study, drinking was the seventh-leading risk factor worldwide for both death and disability. About a quarter of alcohol-related deaths are due to liver disease, a quarter to cancer, a quarter to high blood pressure, and a quarter to alcohol-related accidents and injuries. A 2017 study in BMJ called into question previously held beliefs that a little drinking might be good for your brain. Looking at the drinking habits and cognitive skills of 550 older adults over a 30-year period, researchers found that the more you drank over that time, the more brain mass you lost.

The Good—And Bad—Health Effects Of Alcohol

• Researchers sometimes disagree with each other about how to interpret the available evidence, and what guidance is best for boosting health.
• We all know that alcohol can increase cancer risks and other chronic health issues.
• Each of those consequences can cause turmoil that can negatively affect your long-term emotional health.
• A 2017 study found that people who had a dependence on alcohol had a higher prevalence of dental issues — such as dental caries and periodontitis — than those who did not have a dependence on alcohol.
• Cirrhosis, on the other hand, is irreversible and can lead to liver failure and liver cancer, even if you abstain from alcohol.

Current alcoholic beverage labels in the US warn of the risks of driving under the influence of alcohol, adverse effects on general health, and risks for a developing fetus — but there’s no mention of cancer. Now, we’ve all heard the reasons why alcohol is bad for you, but what about the benefits? Here is our list of seven ways that drinking alcohol in moderation (when you’re of the legal drinking age of course) might benefit your health. While alcohol certainly has some negative health effects, there can also be advantages to moderate consumption.

Alcohol causes liver injury, which is reversible and transient, but not if you continue to drink large amounts chronically, says Siegel. Heavy drinking can lead to liver-related conditions like fatty liver, alcoholic hepatitis, fibrosis and cirrhosis. It can also weaken the gut lining and disrupt healthy gut bacteria. Alcohol affects the pancreas by triggering toxic substances that may lead to pancreatitis, a painful condition that causes swelling and impairs digestion.