Prospective studies have looked at the association between alcohol intake and adiposity gain in various populations, with follow-up periods ranging from several months to 20 years 4, 30, 31. Results of these studies have been varied and do not provide a clear picture. Several studies have found no association or a negative association between alcohol intake and changes in weight, BMI or other measures of adiposity 12, 30, 32–39.
Alcohol use: Weighing risks and benefits
All of the available studies have examined moderate intake of alcohol, and the majority have reported results on beer and wine intake, but not other forms of alcohol 3•, 5. Crouse and Grundy 48 looked at the effect of adding 630 kcal/day of alcohol to the diets of 12 men in a metabolic unit. There were no significant changes in weight for normal weight participants over the four-week intervention study. They however noted that about half of the obese participants gained weight, with the largest weight gain being 1.8 kg 48. In a randomized crossover study, Cordain et al. 49 found that drinking two glasses of red wine (270 mL) with dinner daily for six weeks did not lead to changes in weight or body fat percentage in 14 men. They noted that self-reported nutrient intake and physical activity did not differ between conditions, although there may have been dietary compensation that was not accurately reported by their 3-day food logs 49.
Rate of premature deaths due to alcohol
The extent to which wasted energy from regular alcohol consumption contributes to weight gain prevention is unclear. Aside from the immediate influence on appetite that comes from alcohol consumption, there are also effects on energy storage. Alcohol inhibits fat oxidation, suggesting that frequent alcohol consumption could lead to fat sparing, and thus higher body fat in the long term 62.
- Wine contains around 12% pure alcohol per volume, so that one liter of wine contains 0.12 liters of pure alcohol.
- Global data on the prevalence and effectiveness of alcohol use disorder treatment is incomplete.
- The slow development of obesity and multi-faceted nature of this condition really complicates the possibility to show a cause-and-effect association between alcohol consumption and weight gain.
- Many of these trials have been conducted for weeks, and in a few cases months and even up to 2 years, to look at changes in the blood, but a long-term trial to test experimentally the effects of alcohol on cardiovascular disease has not been done.
Alcohol Use: Conversation Starters
She studied at the University of Vermont, where she completed her undergraduate studies in nutrition, food science and dietetics, and attended the dietetic internship program at Massachusetts General Hospital to become a registered dietitian. This information on drinking in moderation was adapted from materials from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Use these tips to talk with someone about cutting back or quitting drinking. If you don’t have insurance, you may still be able to get free or low-cost help for alcohol misuse.
Alcohol and Public Health
But those studies lumped all nondrinkers together, including those who had quit because of substance use issues or illness. As a result, “abstainers” looked relatively unhealthy, and “moderate” drinkers, many of whom exercise and eat well, looked pretty https://ecosoberhouse.com/article/why-do-alcoholics-crave-sugar-in-recovery/ good. As with cross-sectional studies, the way by which alcohol intake is measured and categorized likely influences the interpretation of the results. Several studies have grouped all levels of individual alcohol intake above 30g/day as ‘heavy’ drinkers 12, 38.
- Another important question is, Why does it matter how a drink is defined?
- Thus, we need to rely on short-term intervention studies and epidemiologic studies, each of which has clear limitations in showing an effect of alcohol intake on the vulnerability to gain weight.
- “I never would recommend to someone, ‘Go ahead and drink wine, even if you don’t like it, because you’re going to be less likely to have a heart attack,’” Li said.
In addition to the circumstances under which drinking occurs, alcohol’s effects on the drinker (e.g., on the ability to drive a car) depend to a large extent on the blood alcohol levels (BALs) achieved after alcohol consumption. The same number of drinks, however, will result in different BALs in a 150 pound (lb) and a 250 lb person. Even people with identical body weights can achieve different BALs because of variations in the levels of water and fat in the body, which primarily depend on the drinker’s age and gender. Alcohol is a small, water-soluble molecule that is distributed throughout the body water. Women tend to have proportionately less body water and more body fat than do men and therefore may achieve higher BALs than do men with the same body weight after drinking the same alcohol amount. Similarly, body water generally decreases and body fat increases with increasing age.
Alcohol consumption across the world today
One drawback to this type of survey is that many infrequent or occasional drinkers may report no alcohol consumption during the time studied. Consequently, short-term recall measures may overestimate the proportion of abstainers compared with other survey methods. Frequency measures query the respondent on his or her typical drinking frequency in a given timeframe (e.g., the past year), based on various predetermined categories from which to choose (e.g., “never,” “once a month,” “once a week,” or “everyday” ). Because these frequency measures do not assess the alcohol amount consumed on each drinking occasion, they do not allow researchers to calculate a person’s average or total volume of alcohol consumption. These risks seem to cancel out evidence of alcohol’s cardiovascular benefits, which was weakened anyway when researchers did more nuanced studies. The heart-protective theory was based on the finding that moderate drinkers had better cardiovascular health than both nondrinkers (by a little bit) and heavy drinkers (by a lot).
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- Next, they studied a subset of 754 individuals who had undergone previous PET/CT brain imaging (primarily for cancer surveillance) to determine the effect of light/moderate alcohol consumption on resting stress-related neural network activity.
- For people who drink several times a week and do not have alcohol dependency, even slightly reducing intake can have significant health benefits, Keyes added.
- This interactive chart shows the average share of household expenditure that is spent on alcohol.
- Alcohol blocks the absorption of folate and inactivates folate in the blood and tissues.
The risk of an alcohol use disorder is highest in individuals with intermittent explosive disorder, dysthymia, ODD, bipolar disorder, and social phobia. In general, risks exceed benefits until middle age, when cardiovascular disease begins to account for an increasingly large share of the burden of disease and death. To some degree, discrepancies in the definition of moderate drinking may result from the fact that some people confuse the term with “social drinking” — that is, drinking patterns that are accepted by moderate drinking the society in which they occur. Depending on the society, however, those drinking levels may not be moderate or risk free. When analyzing the results of QF measures, researchers can use several formulas to multiply the frequency of alcohol consumption and the average amount consumed. One benefit of QF measures is that the analyses sometimes also provide information on drinking patterns.
Understanding alcohol use
For people who drink several times a week and do not have alcohol dependency, even slightly reducing intake can have significant health benefits, Keyes added. Those scientists may not be as attuned as alcohol researchers to the numerous methodological subtleties involved in measuring alcohol consumption and thus may be more likely to misinterpret some of the findings. More detailed and specific questions also elicit higher estimates of alcohol consumption. For example, separate QF questions for different periods within a given timeframe (e.g., each month within the past year) produce higher estimates than does one global QF question (e.g., consumption during the entire year). Similarly, beverage-specific questions or questions asking for consumption in different contexts (e.g., in bars, at home, or at parties and celebrations) produce higher estimates than do global questions asking about total alcohol consumption.
General Health
In diary methods, participants record each drink consumed over a given timeframe (e.g., 1 week), ideally shortly after consumption. Researchers have recently introduced an automated variation of the diary method. In this approach, participants report their daily alcohol intake by calling a dedicated toll-free number and activating, through a touch-tone telephone, an automated, interactive voice-simulation system (Searles et al. 1995). Another technique for assessing alcohol consumption is the timeline followback (TLFB) method (Sobell and Sobell 1995). The TLFB is a structured interview in which participants receive calendar-based memory cues to assist them in constructing a chronological report of their alcohol use. Although the procedure is widely employed in research on the efficacy of alcoholism treatment, the required interviews are highly individualized and, hence, generally impractical for use in large-scale population-based surveys.
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