According to new guidelines from the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA), which were published earlier this year, consuming more than six alcoholic drinks a week leads to high health risks, including cancer, especially for women.

The CCSA led the initiative to update Canada’s Low-Risk Alcohol Drinking Guidelines (LRDGs). This Health Canada initiative was initiated in July 2020. The result of this project was the creation of Canada’s Guidance on Alcohol and Health, which now replaces the LRDGs.

The CCSA states that no matter the kind of alcohol, whether it is wine, beer, cider or spirits, even a small amount is damaging, regardless of age, sex, gender, ethnicity, tolerance for alcohol or lifestyle.  Thus, if you drink, it’s better to drink less.

According to the CCSA, the guide provides people with the information necessary to make well-informed and responsible decisions about their alcohol consumption.  The guidelines state that there is a continuum of risk associated with weekly alcohol use.

• No risk = 0 drinks per week — Not drinking has benefits, such as better health and better sleep.
• Low risk = 2 standard drinks or less per week — Most likely to avoid alcohol-related consequences.
• Moderate risk = 3 to 6 standard drinks per week — There is risk of developing several types of cancer, including breast and colon cancer.
• Increasingly high risk = 7 standard drinks or more per week — The risk of heart disease or stroke increases significantly at this level.
• Each additional standard drink radically increases the risk of alcohol-related consequences.

In addition, consuming more than 2 standard drinks on any occasion is associated with an increased risk of harms to oneself and others.

As with the previous guidelines, alcohol should not be consumed when pregnant or while breastfeeding.

On the other hand …

Contradicting at least a portion of the new Guidance on Alcohol and Health is another study, also published this year, this time in the Nutrients Journal where researchers completed a study aimed at understanding the association between wine consumption and cardiovascular mortality, cardiovascular disease (CVD) and coronary heart disease (CHD). 

This investigation states that wine consumption has an inverse relationship to cardiovascular mortality.  According to the journal, “Researchers performed a systematic review and meta-analysis using longitudinal studies, including cohort and case-control studies retrieved from multiple databases which they searched from their inception to March 2023”.

The researchers stand by the belief that light to moderate alcohol consumption positively affects general health; for instance, it acts on high-density lipoprotein cholesterol to prevent atherosclerosis, lowers the incidence of ischemic heart disease (IHD) and helps with the prognosis of people at higher risk of coronary complications leading to myocardial infarction.

However, these researchers agree that excessive drinking causes over 200 diseases, which makes it a leading cause of deaths globally.  They also warn that alcohol interacts with multiple drugs, altering its metabolism. Decreased alcohol metabolism could lead to increased blood alcohol levels. For example, a component in wine, resveratrol, interacts with certain drugs and modifies their metabolism.

Polyphenols in red wine, such as tannins, provide multiple cardiovascular health benefits. It is also an anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and antimutagenic thus reducing potentially harmful chemicals from the body. Nonetheless, all cardiologist agrees that light to moderate alcohol consumption has a positive effect on cardiovascular health, whereas excessive alcohol drinking elevates the risk of CHD mortality, cancers, etc. At least both studies agree on this point.

The participant’s age, sex or smoking status apparently had no effect on the study’s results.  Both red and white wines displayed positive affects but the impact varied by the type of wine.

Though health benefits were noted with both red and white wine, the variations in the strength of this association were attributable to the different concentrations of some components.  Red wine, in particular, has phenolic compounds such as gallic acid, catechin, and epicatechin (flavonols), which gives it antioxidant properties. These wines also reduce low-density lipoprotein (LDL) oxidation, thrombosis risk, plasma and lipid peroxide.

Alcoholic components of wine reduce the risk of thrombosis and levels of fibrinogen, as well as induce collagen and platelet aggregation. Thus, higher consumption of red wine is more beneficial for combating CVDs than white wine other alcoholic beverages.

The study concluded that moderate wine consumption is good for cardiac health. However, researchers should interpret these findings with caution. Increasing wine consumption could harm patients susceptible to alcohol due to age, preexisting pathologies or medications.

In closing …

I leave it to you to make your own decision with regards to the merits of both studies.  Complete information regarding Canada’s Guidance on Alcohol and Health is available at https://ccsa.ca/.  The complete study, Association between Wine Consumption with Cardiovascular Disease and Cardiovascular Mortality: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis, is available at https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/15/12/2785.

Sláinte mhaith