wine and health

I wanted this blog to be about the healthy role of wine in everyday life that I observed on my trip to Austria and Hungary last week, not the latest salvo against alcohol from another big study . It’s getting tiresome seeing an important issue being muddled in the search for clarity, and I don’t like the idea that a reasonable person viewing the same data but seeing something else might be seen as an apologist for the alcohol industry. Yet the same mistakes endure, both in the studies themselves and the reporting on them. They are technically correct and fundamentally wrong at the same time. First the happy part: What I saw in Europe, as I have on previous trips, was a view of wine as a normal part of everyday life. Wineries are still often family businesses, with everyone contributing. At a winery in the Etyek region of Hungary we were served by the owners and their teenage daughter. In our wine tasting group was a 20-year old woman from Finland, on holiday with her mother and ...

 There is a resurgence of debate about the validity of the J-curve, especially as it relates to alcohol and cancer. A 2014 report determined that “alcohol use was positively associated with overall mortality, alcohol-related cancers, and violent death and injuries, but marginally to CVD/CHD” (cardiovascular disease). In other words, there was little benefit if any in terms of heart disease but a big upside risk for cancer and accidental or violent demise. Gone was the French Paradox!  The J curve is dead! Or not. Though that statement may be technically true, I looked at look at the data myself and found something different: a strong confirmation of the J-curve for overall mortality, overall cancer deaths, cardiovascular disease, and all “other causes.” This held for both men and women:     Used under creative commons license from Ferrari P, Licaj I,Muller DC, et al. Lifetime alcohol use and overall and cause-specific mortality in the European Prospec...

     A very large review out recently has experts proclaiming that we had it all wrong in believing that moderate drinking was a good thing. As I so often do, I cast a dissenting vote on this one, and offer an alternative (and possible more accurate) interpretation.      This latest study, from the University of Victoria in Canada, is impressive in scope and has been widely reported. In it, Tim Stockwell, study author and the director of the Center for Addictions Research of British Columbia, questions the long-established J-shaped curve which demonstrates that moderate drinkers are healthier and outlive nondrinkers and heavy drinkers. He cites what is termed the “abstainer bias,” meaning that people who choose to abstain from alcohol are different than people who quit drinking because of health reasons. Another term for this is the “sick quitter” hypothesis. The result of lumping sick quitters with never drinkers together is a skew toward poor health i...