Drinking wine could help you live longer than beer or spirit drinkers – and even teetotallers, research suggests.
The study of more than 340,000 British adults revealed the health risks associated with alcohol doesn’t just depend on how much you drink, but what you are drinking.
While drinking a couple glasses of wine can cut the risk of dying from heart problems, drinking beer or cider increases that risk when the amount of alcohol consumed by the two groups was broadly the same, the research found.
“These findings can help refine guidance, emphasising that the health risks of alcohol depend not only on the amount of alcohol consumed, but also on the type of beverage,” said Zhangling Chen, a professor at the Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University in China and the study’s senior author.
“Even low to moderate intake of spirits, beer or cider is linked to higher mortality, while low to moderate intake of wine may carry lower risk,” he added.
For the study, researchers followed adults who had signed up to the UK Biobank scheme. Participants were asked about their diet and alcohol intake and their health was tracked for 13 years.
For men, drinking between 17.5 and 35 units a week was considered to be moderate drinking. But that’s well above the NHS recommendation of 14 units a week. However, women were considered to be moderate drinkers if they had between 8.75 and 17.5 units per week.
For context, 14 units is the equivalent to six pints of average strength beer or six medium (175ml) glasses of average strength wine. Drinking too much alcohol on a regular bases has been linked to several heart conditions, including cardiovascular disease which affects more than 8 million people in the UK.
However, moderate drinkers who opted for wine had a 21 per cent lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease in comparison to people who never drink or only drink alcohol occasionally.
In comparison, drinking low levels of spirits, beer or cider was associated with a 9 per cent increase in dying from cardiovascular disease compared with drinking never or occasionally.
But researchers did note that compared to people who didn’t drink, those who drank more than moderate drinkers were 24 per cent more likely to die from any cause, 36 per cent more likely to die from cancer and 14 per cent more likely to die from heart disease. Yet that risk was lower for wine drinkers.
There are certain compounds in red wine, such as polyphenols and antioxidants, that may have beneficial effects on cardiovascular health.
Wine may also be drunk with a meal and by people who have healthier diets and lifestyles overall, while beer and spirits is more likely to be consumed without food and by people with a lower quality diet overall.
“Taken together, these factors suggest that the type of alcohol, how it is consumed and the associated lifestyle behaviours all contribute to the observed differences in mortality risk,” Dr Chen said.
For the analysis, researchers did adjust the data to account for demographic factors, socioeconomic status, lifestyle factors, cardiometabolic factors and family history of diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer. But alcohol consumption was self-reported, which could be a limitation of the study.
Authors of the study also stressed it is an observational study, meaning the findings only show an association and do not prove cause an effect.
Ziyue Li will present the study, “Alcohol Use at Mid-Life and All-Cause and Cause-Specific Mortality,” on Saturday, March 28.
