Is there really a safe level of alcohol consumption? Experts weigh in
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Researchers found that these studies have largely focussed on moderate drinking among older adults, and compared them with 'abstainers' and 'occasional drinkers' — both these groups were found to also include older adults who had quit or cut down on drinking because they had developed health conditions.
«That makes people who continue to drink look much healthier by comparison,» said lead researcher Tim Stockwell, a scientist with the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research, University of Victoria.
Thus, by failing to account for people's lifetime drinking habits, the studies «suffer from fundamental design flaws,» according to the authors. The findings are published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.
«There is simply no completely 'safe' level of drinking,» Stockwell said.
The team identified 107 published studies looking at the relationship between drinking habits and longevity.
Combining all the data, it looked like light to moderate drinkers had a 14 per cent lower risk of dying during the study period compared with those abstaining from alcohol, the researchers said.
However, looking at all the data more closely, they found that in «higher quality» studies — that analysed drinking habits of people on average younger than 55 and made sure that former and occasional drinkers were not counted as 'abstainers' — alcohol in
