Health benefits of moderate drinking ‘may be less than assumed’

The health benefits of light alcohol consumption may be less significant than previously thought, according to a new study.

Researchers from Pennsylvania State University in the US have analysed data from more than 9,000 people across England, Scotland and Wales to track changes in drinking and smoking habits from age 23 to 55, and their relationship to mental and physical health.

It was shown that the health of people who drank moderately depended heavily on the presence of other risk factors – for example, light-to-moderate drinkers suffered poor health in midlife if they were former smokers or smoked occasionally.

Similar variations were also identified in people who said they never drank alcohol, suggesting that previous reports indicating that alcohol abstinence leads to health risks may also have been overstated.

Many midlife abstainers began their adult life in poorer physical or mental health than peers who had completely abstained from alcohol, for example, while around one-fifth of 55-year-olds who said they had never consumed alcohol had previously reported drinking when they were younger.

Jennifer Maggs, professor of human development and family studies at Penn State, said: "Drinking habits are shaped by our education, health earlier in life, and related lifestyle factors including smoking. These other influences may be the real factors underlying the connection between drinking and midlife health."

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