Can Drinking Alcohol Really Extend Your Life?
Research shows benefits — and health risks — associated with alcohol consumption. (Photo: Stocksy/Sean Locke)
Is booze the secret to hitting your 100th birthday?
In a recent interview with a Philadelphia news station, 100-year-old Pennsylvania woman Pauline Spagnola credited alcohol — and lots of it — for the numerous rows of candles on her cake. And this isn’t the first time imbibing has been linked anecdotally to longevity: In 2013, a Staten Island centenarian said her daily alcohol intake — two glasses of wine with lunch, Southern Comfort at 4 p.m., and a can of Budweiser in the evening — is part of the recipe for a long life.
Pauline Spagnola, of Plains Township, Pennsylvania, credits alcohol consumption for her reaching age 100. (Photo: WNEP)
We’ve all heard that polyphenols found in red wine are good for the heart. But is downing a drink or two each day really the solution for staying healthy into old age?
“One-hundred-year-olds are one of the fastest-growing age groups in the population,” says Patrick Krueger, PhD, an assistant professor of health and behavioral sciences at the University of Colorado Denver. “It’s not exactly clear [whether] the things that cause survival to 100-years-plus are the same things that matter for survival to age 20 or 50 or 80.”
Swearing off cigarettes, for example, is critical if you hope to make it to your 80th birthday — but after that, even non-smokers start dying off in large numbers. “It’s unclear what makes some never-smokers survive an extra 20 years and what prevents others from doing so,” Krueger tells Yahoo Health.
There is, however, strong evidence that alcohol may play a role in longevity. In a study of 12,000 male doctors, researchers found that vascular and respiratory diseases accounted for over half of all deaths over the course of the 23-year study — and that drinkers were significantly less likely than abstainers to develop both. A 2014 study review in the journal BMC Medicine found that drinkers with an average intake of less than 30 grams of alcohol — about two drinks — per day and no consistent heavy drinking had the lowest risk of heart disease, compared to lifelong non-drinkers and heavy drinkers.
“The data are very clear that one of the best predictors of longevity is moderate drinking,” which is often defined as one drink a day for women and two a day for men, says Curtis Ellison, MD, a professor of medicine and public health at Boston University. “In almost every epidemiologic study, where people have been followed for years and years, those who consume alcohol moderately tend to live a little longer. It varies from one year to several years longer than people who do not drink at all during their lifetime.”
The most likely explanation? The reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, which includes common killers like heart disease and stroke, Ellison tells Yahoo Health. Benefits of booze include increased “good” HDL cholesterol, decreased inflammation and blood clotting, and healthier blood-vessel linings, all of which stave off cardiovascular trouble.
The potential medicinal effects don’t stop with your ticker, either. Alcohol may delay the development of dementia, says Emanuel Rubin, MD, a pathologist at Thomas Jefferson University, while also helping to control your blood sugar levels, “which means that moderate drinkers are less likely to get diabetes,” adds Ellison.
Related: Seniors, Rejoice: Drinking Alcohol May Preserve Your Memory
Yet, you aren’t likely to find “drink wine” alongside doctors’ recommendations to exercise or eat right. “The [National Institutes of Health] has traditionally not wanted to say anything favorable about the health effects of alcohol,” says Ellison. “The vast majority of NIH funding is for alcohol abuse [studies].”
So why are doctors reticent to recommend indulging in a glass or two? For starters, it’s not 100 percent clear that booze is a direct contributor to longevity. “One has to be sure that there is actually a causal beneficial effect from alcohol intake on the disease outcome — and not just an association,” says Michael Roerecke, PhD, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Toronto.
Plus, recent research suggests that not all non-drinkers face an elevated risk of premature death compared with moderate imbibers. “People’s reasons [for drinking or not drinking] are associated with their future mortality risk,” says Krueger. In a recent study, he found that people who’ve always abstained for “family prosocial” reasons — that is, for moral or religious beliefs, as well as out of fear of becoming an alcoholic — face a similar risk of death as light drinkers.
By contrast, non-drinkers who used to have an alcohol problem have a 60 percent higher risk of dying than folks who down about one drink a day. “The biggest increased risk of death among people that don’t drink is among those that used to drink heavily and either experienced health problems from their drinking or issues like alcoholism,” Krueger says. However, he adds, “those individuals would have had an even higher risk if they’d continued drinking.” (Some researchers call these non-drinkers “sick-quitters.”)
Related: Alcohol Poisoning Kills 6 Americans Daily: You’ll Be Surprised Who
There’s also the question of cancer risk: Although most alcohol-associated cancers are strictly linked to heavy consumption, breast cancer is a risk even among moderate drinkers, says Ellison. “Even the women who consume only a drink a day have a slightly increased risk of breast cancer, probably because alcohol increases estrogen a little bit.” That said, consuming high levels of folic acid, a nutrient added to many foods, can counteract this effect, he notes.
The takeaway? Drinking alcohol can be beneficial in moderation — but there are other ways to increase your odds of a long life. “If you really want to prevent mortality, the biggest things to do are make sure you don’t smoke, wear your seat belt, and have a relatively healthy diet and exercise occasionally,” says Krueger. “It’s hard for me to imagine that alcohol is ever going to trump those concerns.”
But if you’re not prone to problematic drinking, a little vino is still worth considering. “I recommend moderate alcohol consumption, one to two drinks per day, for middle-aged people,” says Rubin, who authored an editorial titled, “A Plea to Consider the Benefits of Moderate Alcohol Consumption.” “I want to emphasize ‘moderate.’ This is not excessive drinking at all, which is bad for you.” In fact, in Krueger’s study, heavy drinkers had a far greater mortality rate than light drinkers. So stick to one standard drink per day (or two, if you’re male), which amounts to 4 to 5 ounces of wine, 1.5 ounces of spirits (like vodka or whiskey), or 12 ounces of beer.
“I think doctors should discuss alcohol with everybody age 50 and older,” Ellison adds. “If they do drink, find out how they’re drinking, and remind them to make sure they control it. If you’re going to encourage someone to drink, I usually say a glass of wine with dinner,” since pairing your alcohol with a meal reduces the impact on your blood alcohol level.
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