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>Evidence that moderate drinking benefits the heart is 'evaporating'
>The American Heart Association now stresses that we should not drink alcohol in the hopes of warding off heart disease.
>For years, we were told that consuming light to moderate amounts of alcohol — particularly wine — offers us some health benefits, particularly a lower risk of heart disease.
>Recently, health officials have been more cautious. The American Heart Association, for example, now stresses that we should not drink alcohol in the hopes of warding off heart disease.
>That new caution is looking more and more justified. In 2014, for example, a massive meta-analysis of 56 studies involving more than 250,000 individuals reported that reducing alcohol consumption, including among light to moderate drinkers, is beneficial to cardiovascular health.
>‘Evaporating’ benefits
>A new study published Tuesday in the journal BMJ offers further evidence that any apparent health benefits from alcohol are, in the words of one health policy expert, quickly “evaporating.”
>For the study, researchers analyzed a decade’s worth of British data involving more than 50,000 adults aged 50 and older who were followed for up to 10 years. They found no significant association between the moderate use of alcohol and a reduction in the risk of death.
>The only possible exception was among women aged 65 and older. But those benefits were very modest, say the researchers, and may have been the result of selection bias. It’s quite possible, for example, that the older women whose data were used in this study were unusually healthy.
>The study found a slight benefit among men aged 50 to 64, but it disappeared completely when the researchers did not include as “non-drinkers” people who used to drink but had stopped.