Is light drinking really good for cardiovascular health?

People often think that drinking alcohol is not a good thing, and we all know that drinking alcohol is bad for you

For example, a 2021 study published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology showed that light alcohol consumption was associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease and all causes compared to never drinking alcohol related to mortality

In addition, a study by UCL researchers published in the journal BMC Medicine in July 2021 also pointed out that drinking less than 105 grams per week may be associated with heart attack, stroke, angina or cardiovascular disease

According to a 2018 study published in The Lancet, the least harmful alcohol consumption is not drinking at all

So, is drinking in moderation bad for your health? Why are there observational studies finding cardiovascular benefits of moderate drinking?

On March 25, 2022, researchers from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard published an article titled JAMA Network Open.

The study, which looked at 371,463 adults (average age 57, average 9.

The team further found that people who drank light or moderate alcohol tended to have healthier life>

Therefore, the observed cardiovascular benefits of low-level alcohol consumption are actually due to differences in life>

Due to the different alcohol content of various types of wine, in order to measure the amount of drinking, the "alcohol unit" is usually used as the standard

A 500ml bottle of beer with 5% alcohol content is equivalent to 2.

First, the team found that those who drank light to moderate alcohol had the lowest risk of heart disease, followed by those who did not drink alcohol, while those who drank heavily had the highest risk of heart disease

But further analysis showed that the benefit was due to healthier life>

Next, the research team used Mendelian randomization to try to find out whether there is a causal relationship between alcohol consumption and disease risk

The results showed that those with the genetic variant that predicted higher alcohol consumption were indeed more likely to binge drink and have a higher risk of high blood pressure and coronary artery disease

In addition, increasing weekly alcohol consumption from 0 to 7 standard beverages was associated with a small increase in cardiovascular disease risk, increasing weekly drinking from 7 to 14 beverages, increased cardiovascular disease risk higher, and increased an especially high risk of beverages above 21, This suggests that alcohol consumption is not linearly associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, and the more you drink, the greater the increased risk

Notably, even following the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism recommendations (no more than 1 standard drink per day for women and no more than 2 standard drinks per day for men), the risk of cardiovascular disease was still increased

Overall, this study shows that even small amounts of alcohol consumption can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, and that the risk of cardiovascular disease increases rapidly as alcohol consumption increases
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What's more, this study explains the previously observed cardiovascular benefits of moderate alcohol consumption, as people who drink small to moderate amounts of alcohol have healthier life>
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In March 2022, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Wisconsin-Madison published a research paper in Nature Communications, a subjournal of the journal Nature[6], showing that alcohol consumption is associated with reduced brain volume, even when The same goes for light to moderate drinking
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It can cause damage to the brain
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The average amount of drinking a bottle of beer a day is equivalent to two years of aging
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These studies all tell us that there is no such thing as a safe amount of alcohol, and the best amount of alcohol is not to drink
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Even small amounts of alcohol can increase the risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, brain damage, and more
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