Yahoo! Life: PHI’s Dr. Priscilla Martinez Discusses Alcohol and its Impact on Health

“As one of his final acts as U.S. surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy called for alcohol products to carry a label warning that they can cause cancer. His office also published a report detailing just how carcinogenic booze can be, estimating that more than 741,000 cases of cancer worldwide in 2020 were attributable to alcohol.

In truth, it isn’t news that alcohol can cause or increase risks for cancer. Nor is it new knowledge that alcohol intake is linked to all manner of other health problems, including brain damage and liver disease. But even amid a broader shift away from drinking culture and toward sober living, moderate drinking (especially of red wine) has continued to be perceived by many as heart-healthy. The World Health Organization (WHO), however, has declared that no amount of alcohol is safe.

Alcohol and heart disease

You’ve probably heard or read plenty about red wine’s supposed cardiovascular benefits. It’s sometimes referred to as the “French paradox.” France has low rates of heart disease, despite most people having diets high in saturated fats and cholesterol, which contribute to cardiovascular problems. Some scientists theorized that the custom of drinking red wine might have protective effects because it has anti-inflammatory properties. But the claim — as well as studies that support it — is somewhat misleading.

The hypothesis has what scientists call “biological plausibility” — meaning that we know alcohol can do things that theoretically help protect heart health — but the evidence is “mixed,” Priscilla Martinez, deputy scientific director at the Alcohol Research Group, tells Yahoo Life. There’s real research to suggest that red wine has anti-inflammatory effects. But drinking alcohol can also contribute to and worsen high blood pressure, a key risk factor for heart disease.

Alcohol’s contradictory impacts may be why studies on the link between heart health and alcohol often show a J-shaped curve. In other words, people who drink alcohol have lower risks of dying from heart disease than non-drinkers — up to a point, when those who drink over a certain number of alcoholic beverages in a week have considerably higher risks than those who abstain.

But, notes Martinez, “sometimes we see a J-shaped curve, and sometimes we don’t,” when studying this relationship. And the relationship between drinking (and red wine drinking in particular) and heart health might actually not be about alcohol at all. Researchers have noted that people who drink moderately — defined as two or fewer drinks a day for men, and one or fewer for women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — may be more likely to have higher incomes and therefore have better diets and better access to health care. All of those factors may do more to protect their heart health than red wine ever could.

And in the end, even if red wine or other forms of alcohol have slightly protective effects for the heart, “nobody should ever start drinking for health reasons,” says Martinez. “There is no benefit to initiating drinking for the risks of dying or getting diseases.”

Alcohol and the risk of dying from any cause

Heart disease and cancer are, respectively, the first- and second-leading causes of death in the U.S., but alcohol can increase the risks of dying from many other diseases and injuries. Risks of dying from either of these causes, injuries caused by drinking or liver cirrhosis start to rise with even one drink a day, according to a recent draft report by the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking (ICCPUD). “Our report says that no level of [alcohol] consumption is completely risk-free,” says Martinez, who contributed to the ICCPUD report. “Among drinkers, the lower your use of alcohol, the lower your risk of dying or developing an alcohol-related disease,” she adds.

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Originally published by Yahoo Life