Decades of research has linked light to moderate drinking, especially of wine, to a range of health benefits. There’s also strong scientific evidence that any alcohol consumption raises the risk of certain cancers, and that heavy drinking carries serious health risks.
But the reasons why moderate drinking seems to be neutral or beneficial for some people and harmful for others remains a mystery. A new study seeks to answer two pressing questions: How does alcohol affect older adults? And are the health effects of light and moderate drinking different for healthy people vs. people with existing health problems and lower socioeconomic status?
The study, published this week in JAMA Network Open and conducted by researchers based at the Autonomous University of Madrid, Harvard and other institutions, finds that the risks of drinking depend on socioeconomic and health status. Older adults who had existing health problems or were economically vulnerable were at increased risk of dying, especially from cancer, when they drank even small amounts of alcohol. However, adults without those factors were not at an increased risk of death, even when they drank moderately. Drinking mostly wine and drinking only with meals were both associated with reduced risk of alcohol-related health problems.
How Does Alcohol Affect Older Adults?
The study dives into a health paradox. On one hand, as we age, we may be more likely to suffer from the adverse consequences of drinking alcohol. That’s because older adults tend to take more medications (some of which don’t mix well with alcohol) and to suffer from health issues that drinking could worsen.
On the other hand, some research has shown that older adults actually stand to reap the most benefits from moderate drinking, especially protection against cardiovascular disease, diabetes, frailty and other ailments. Compounds found in wine appear to protect against cognitive decline and dementia. Older adults may also enjoy the social benefits of alcohol, whether they drink with their spouse or with friends.
The new study says that older adults with existing socioeconomic and health risks do not see health benefits from drinking—and that they experience increased risk of poor outcomes even with low amounts of consumption. But in healthy drinkers from more affluent areas, those risks do not increase.
Novel Methodology
Researchers examined data for over 135,000 current drinkers over the age of 60 from the U.K. Biobank, a respected, large public health survey of U.K. residents. They compared drinkers based on their average daily amount of drinking, which was defined as occasional (approximately one-fifth of a glass of wine for men and women, or the equivalent of one glass every five days), low risk (up to 1.5 glasses for men and three-quarters of a glass for women), moderate risk (up to 3 glasses for men and 1.5 glasses for women) and high risk (over 3 glasses for men and over 1.5 glasses for women).
Researchers further grouped people based on type of alcohol consumed and whether they drank while eating. If more than 80 percent of alcohol consumed came from one type of beverage, people were classified as having a preference for that beverage. Subjects were divided into people who drank only during meals, only outside of meals or at any time.
Finally, researchers compared people with health and socioeconomic risk factors to people without them. Health-related risk factors were measured using a frailty index that looked at 49 common health problems, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer. People were classed by socioeconomic risk based on where they lived using the Townsend deprivation index, a socieconomic score comonly used in the U.K. that considers rates of home and car ownership, unemployment and overcrowding sourced from census data.
Drinking Wine with a Meal Appears Lowest Risk
In people with health-related and socioeconomic risk…
Source : https://www.winespectator.com/articles/wine-cancer-death-risk-older-adults-jama-health-study
