I have seen some epidemiological research correlating moderate alchohol consumption with health. But epi studies are problematic. Some feel that many who drink zero alcohol do so because of attempts to control addiction or because of health problems or inability to process it. These kinds of variables are hard to control for and could skew statistics in favor of those who can drink alcohol safely but only drink a little bit, ie the moderate drinkers. This would explain why correlational studies show moderate drinkers to be healthiest on average. But if confounders are skewing the data, alcohol could actually have little or no health benefit as long as water supplies are decently safe (unlike in the past or in 3rd world countries where some water supplies are/were badly diseased). Does anyone have any more controlled data or research suggesting causal benefits of alcohol intake?
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This is a good review. 'Alcohol, a razor-thin double edged sword. Talks about difficulty of intentionally trying to balance risks vs benefits. |
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Martin berkhan at leangains believes distilled alcohol in moderation helps with insulin resistance. He has an interesting write up on it. |
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All I know is that an occasional glass of wine or cocktail does wonders for my mental health. Before when doing grains and other nasty things I could not even tolerate a glass of wine...now the occasional wine compliments my life and my meal. I think this is a great example that this eating style works better with my metabolism. |
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Stephan had a good post on this recently: http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2010/05/does-red-wine-protect-cardiovascular.html My comment to him was: Stephan, thank you for this post. The "alcohol is healthy" nonsense has been more and more vocal of late. It's unbelievable how many studies I've seen over the last few years which conclude that "Alcohol consumption may reduce the risk of (x)". The two new ones last week (though certainly not the first for these ailments) were Diabetes and Alzheimer's. Name a common ailment and there's about a 98% chance you'll be able to find a study saying alcohol "may" help prevent it. In addition to healthy user bias, I think there's a strong researcher bias here. Just about every adult I know drinks on a regular basis, and I'm sure the people conducting these studies are no different. People want alcohol to be heathly to justify their consumption of it. This, in addition to the fact that all of these pro-alcohol studies get attention by making the news, seems to be the perfect self-perpetuating combination. |
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Journal impact factor is tough to gauge insofar as its impact on study findings. The highest impact journals (NEJM, JAMA, Lancet) would not publish many controversial nutrition topics. In fact, their bars for nutrition topics might be considered a bit arbitrary. This dude in my building used to be the NEJM editor-in-chief, and he got axed for hinting that the journal was trying to make some cash by expanding their offerings. It is a crazy, mixed up world, and because of that, study findings should maybe be examined on their own accords without regards for the journal impact factor. But yeah, journals are few notches above the general media! Blogs...it depends on which blogs :) |
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Unfortunately, most of the studies that look into the health effects of stuff like alcohol and coffee are going to be epidemiological. It's just too expensive to design and perform a long term study under laboratory conditions. When studies like this come along, make sure you check them out on pubmed. If the research looks promising you can generally get the full text article at a University library which will give you more insight into the methods, and potential conflicts of interest. I would also take the validity of the journal into consideration by checking out their Eigen Factor rating, and Article Influence rating. Unfortunately, I have little in the form of actual medical articles relating to the subject. My current area of interest are related to sugar consumption, but I hope these tools help you find what you're looking for. |
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