Healing Metaphysics Home > Archive> Sobering news about benefits of the booze

The Weekend Australian August 30 - 31,2003
by Kathryn Shine
Copyright News Limited

Evidence of some favourable effects of alcohol is not an excuse to overindulge, Kathryn Shine reports.

This month, we've been told having a few drinks can help us get a pay rise, and even more bizarrely, lose weight.

That news follows countless reports of medical studies claiming alcohol protects against everything from heart disease to stroke, Alzheimer's and diabetes.

All of which, of course, makes it much easier to justify those two, three of four glasses of wine at the end of a long day.

What's the harm? It's good for us right? The real answer is yes and... well, no.

While it's true that light drinking may provide some protection against heart disease, most experts say the health benefits have been vastly overstated.

Even in the case of heart disease, alcohol is really only helpful for those at risk- predominantly middle-aged men.

And those people don't need two, three or four drinks a night to get benefits.

According to Professor Tim Stockwell, who heads the National Centre for research into the Prevention of Drug Abuse, the best protection is gained from one to two drinks a day for men, and a half to one drink a day for women.

"The maximum benefit is at very low levels of drinking," he says. "You can still get some benefits at slightly higher levels of consumption but they are not as great."

He and his peers are quick to point out that although some people think the National Health and Medical Research Council guidelines on safe drinking recommend four standard drinks a day for men and two for women, they are in fact maximum levels - not suggested daily intakes.

Stockwell, who is undertaking a massive review of the research into the health benefits of alcohol, is considered one of the world's leading authorities in the field. He knows, for instance, that there have been 23 good long-term studies about alcohol and heart disease.

And he can reel off effortlessly the exact number of ways excessive drinking can kill.

"If you are habitually drinking above the NHMRC guidelines you are increasing your risk of premature death, from a variety of causes," he says. "There are about 37 different kinds of ways we can confidently say alcohol can kill you."

Injuries is on the top of the list of that. Liver disease, cancer and strokes are among the others.

Next month Stockwell's office plans to release new statistics showing low-risk drinking saves about 6000 lives and causes about 2000 deaths in Australia each year.

At the other extreme, there are 3000 lives lost and 300 saved due to drinking at higher levels. Though the figures on light drinking may imply saved lives, Stockwell says we can't conclude one or two drinks a day is good for everyone.

"A huge study in Japan found no benefit of alcohol because the Japanese have such a healthy diet and the incidence of heart disease is very low," he says.

"They are much more likely to die from cancer than heart disease, and of course, alcohol is a risk factor for cancer."

Stockwell and his peers caution against believing frequent media reports about the benefits of alcohol.

As Geoff Munro from the Australia Drug Foundation says, the reports are short, simplified versions of typically long and complex medical studies.

"One of our concerns is that this story often gets reported in brief: 'Alcohol is good for you, say scientists.' People aren't provided with the fine print," he says. "We base the information we give to the public on the consensus of medical research literature. We need to be wary of making a lot from a single study."

It's worth bearing in mind, also, that much of research is funded by alcohol companies keen to extol the virtues of drinking. And that those researchers looking into the advantages of alcohol are far more likely to get funding than those investigating the negatives. "The alcohol companies are so wealthy," Stockwell says. "It introduces a huge distortion into the public sense of what alcohol does."

Paul Dillon from the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre says the sheer volume of studies makes it difficult for people to discern the truth from the hype.

"We have a very powerful alcohol lobby and I think they are trying to bamboozle us," he says.

"Sooner or later the penny is going to drop that the alcohol companies are the ones pushing this message." He believes the favourable research gets a lot of publicity because it's something we all want to hear.

"Because 90 per cent of Australians do drink of course they are going to grasp onto the positive," he says.

The danger is that it may encourage people to drink more than they should.

"People do believe that when they drink they are doing all these miraculous things to themselves because they see all these headlines saying alcohol is good for them. "

"It justifies possibly bad behaviour. It's a great copout to say alcohol is good for you."

Munro worries "people might think that if a little bit is good for you, a lot might even be better."

He says it's also irresponsible to encourage daily drinking.

The NHMRC recommends one to two alcohol-free days a week – for good reason.

"Drinking every day ought to be treated as a sign of alcohol dependency," he says.

While Stockwell says there's probably no harm having one drink a day, every day, he says people who regularly drink more should have breaks. "It's very easy to gradually slip into a pattern of drinking the same thing, at the same time, for the same reasons and then they need more and more," he says.

Stockwell hopes the study on which he has just embarked will clarify much of the research on the health benefits, and otherwise, of alcohol.

In co-operation with staff from the University of California and the World Health Organisation, he will analyse more than 100 studies to pin down the effects of drinking on heart disease and stroke.

"We've got an ambitious aim and that's to scrutinise every single decent study that has been done on the long-term effects of alcohol consumption on health," he says.

"My aim is to see how large the effect is likely to be for Australia."

The $215,000 project was the first to be funded by the Canberra-based Australian Alcohol Education and Rehabilitation Foundation, which can draw on $115 million from the proceeds of the excise on draught beer.

Until the two-year study is complete, Stockwell recommends people rely on reviews of multiple studies by reputable bodies such as WHO or the NHMRC.

The experts are pragmatic enough to realise people will continue to drink regardless of the research outcomes, because, even if it doesn't prevent Alzheimer's, alcohol is pleasurable. But they want to make it very clear it's not a cure-all.

As Dillon says: "If you drink responsibly it's probably not doing you any great harm, but it's probably not doing you any great good either."

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