To Drink or Not to Drink: That Is the Question

Drinking pattern of wine and effects on human health: why should we drink moderately and with meals?

“…This is possible because the individual risk factors cannot be assessed. However, based on the available scientific evidence, adults who consume wine with meals regularly and moderately, in most circumstances experience more health benefits than risks 92,93 .…”

The Importance of Methodological Meta-Analyses and a Call to Assess Current and Former Drinking Patterns: A Commentary on Stockwell et al. (2016)

“…We know from panel surveys that many respondents who later report never in their lives having drunk alcohol reported at earlier interviews that they were then prior or current drinkers (Caldwell et al, 2006;Rehm et al, 2008). In addition, no research to my knowledge has yet studied drinking behavior outcomes in the clearly heterogeneous group who would state in a medical assessment that they never were drinkers following advice from their doctor to "relax and take a drink a day, preferably with dinner" (Rubin, 2014(Rubin, , p. 2890. Methodological work on claiming never to have drunk alcohol in even "neutrally framed" panel surveys results in false lifetime abstention answers (Rehm et al, 2008), and questions from a medical authority figure could lead to even more denial of former drinking.…”

“…Further emphasizing the importance of methodologically driven work like this, the belief in protective effects of moderate drinking is sufficiently widely held to have been incorporated into global burden of disease estimates (e.g., Lim et al, 2012), and we are beginning to see renewed calls from certain medical commentators to prescribe moderate drinking for lifelong nondrinkers of ages about 40 to 50 (Rubin, 2014). Offering medical advice like this, I believe, is premature, and I have strongly opposed this on a number of grounds, including methodological weaknesses in numerous epidemiological studies (studied anew in this meta-analysis) marshaled as evidence of reductions in cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality .…”

Alcohol Consumption, Hypertension, and Cardiovascular Health Across the Life Course: There Is No Such Thing as a One‐Size‐Fits‐All Approach

“…For example, barely a of quarter of individuals in the United States presenting to their general practitioner with hypertension are recommended to reduce their alcohol intake as a nonpharmacological means of controlling their blood pressure 13. On the other hand, there are clinicians who have gone as far as recommending that nondrinkers over 40 years of age consider taking up drinking as a means of extending their life and lowering their risk of developing cardiovascular disease 14. However, this has mostly been met with cynicism,15 even among proponents of the hypothesis that moderate drinking confers cardiovascular benefits11, 16 and certainly no major public health body endorses such advice.…”