Balancing Risks & Benefits: A Glass of Wine May be Good For You Only After a Certain Age

As the debate simmers over whether alcohol is good for you or bad for you, the new study claims to be the first to approach the issue from the angle of age, sex and geographic region.

Older adults may benefit from a daily drink of alcohol, a new study carried out the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at Washington University claims.

While acknowledging that any level of drinking is fraught with health risks for younger adults, people over the age of 40 may reduce the risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes by indulging in a daily glass of red wine, said the authors of the peer-reviewed meta-analysis findings, published in The Lancet.

The study broke down the risk from alcohol consumption on 22 health outcomes, such as injuries, cardiovascular diseases, and cancers using 2020 Global Burden of Disease data for males and females aged 15-95 years and older between 1990 and 2020, in 204 countries and territories.

It revealed that in every area the largest segment of the population drinking unsafe amounts of alcohol were males aged 15 to 39.

For individuals in this age segment even one drink a day could impair their health, with damage occurring after just one tenth of a standard drink, the findings show.

One standard drink is defined as 10 grams of pure alcohol, equivalent to a small 100ml glass of red wine at 13 per cent alcohol by volume, a 375ml can or bottle at 3.5 per cent alcohol by volume, or a 30ml shot of spirits at 40 per cent alcohol.

“Our message is simple: young people should not drink, but older people may benefit from drinking small amounts,” Dr Emmanuela Gakidou, a senior author and professor of Health Metrics Sciences at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine said.

For adults aged between 40 and 64, without any underlying health conditions, the researchers claim that safe alcohol consumption levels in 2020 ranged from about half a standard drink per day (0.527 drinks for males and 0.562 standard drinks per day for females) to almost two standard drinks (1.69 standard drinks per day for males and 1.82 for females).

Individuals over 65 years could allow themselves a little more than three standard drinks per day without the additional risks of health loss (3.19 drinks for males and 3.51 for females).

“Even if a conservative approach is taken and the lowest level of safe consumption is used to set policy recommendations, this implies that the recommended level of alcohol consumption is still too high for younger populations,” Dana Bryazka, the lead author and researcher at IHME.

As for variations in risks from alcohol consumption in different countries, for example, among individuals aged 55–59 years in North Africa and the Middle East, 30.7% of alcohol-related risks were linked to cardiovascular disease and 12.6% - to cancers.

In this same age group in central sub-Saharan Africa, 20% of alcohol-related health risks were due to cardiovascular disease and 9.8% to cancers.

Overall, the research suggested the recommended alcohol intake for adults should be between 0 – 1.87 standard drinks per day, regardless of geography, age, sex, or year.