No health benefits from alcohol for young people, few for older people: Study

It can now be said with scientific certainty that alcohol is bad for you.

A new study out of the University of Washington found that imbibing carries significant health risks, with a few perks for people over 40 and none for young people, according to a release published by EurekAlert. 

The study, which was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and published in the British medical journal The Lancet, says it’s the first of its kind to assess alcohol risk broken down by geographical region, age, sex and age. 

It looked at 22 health outcomes — such as injuries, cardiovascular diseases and cancers — using 2020 Global Burden of Disease data for men and women aged 15-95 years and older between 1990 and 2020, across 204 countries and territories.

For young people aged 15-39, the daily intake of alcohol was recommended to be about a tenth of a standard drink for men and a quarter of a standard drink for women.

The study defines a standard drink as either a small glass of wine at 13% alcohol-by-volume (ABV), a can of beer at 3.5% ABV or one shot of whiskey at 40% ABV.

The researchers said that they hope this data is used to revise consumption guidelines for alcohol, especially as it relates to young people.

“Our message is simple: young people should not drink, but older people may benefit from drinking small amounts,” said senior author Emmanuela Gakidou, a professor of Health Metrics Sciences at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine, said in a news release announcing the study. “While it may not be realistic to think young adults will abstain from drinking, we do think it’s important to communicate the latest evidence so that everyone can make informed decisions about their health.”

Roughly 59% of people who drank harmful amounts of alcohol in 2020 were between ages 15-39, according to the study, with nearly 77% being men. In hard numbers, that was over a billion men, to go with slightly over 300 million women.

Young men suffered 60% of alcohol-related injuries in this group, with causes such as motor vehicle accidents, suicides and homicides being included in this study.   

Harmful use of alcohol was particularly concentrated in young men in Australasia as well as western and central Europe.

“Although the risks associated with alcohol consumption are similar for males and females, young males stood out as the group with the highest level of harmful alcohol consumption,” said Ms. Gakidou in the release. “This is because a larger proportion of males compared to females consume alcohol and their average level of consumption is also significantly higher.” 

For those over 40 without any underlying health conditions, drinking small amounts of alcohol could produce benefits such as a reduced risk in cardiovascular disease, stroke, and diabetes.

Researchers did acknowledge some limitations with their study, such as its lack of assessing patterns of drinking — meaning that it didn’t distinguish between those who drink heavily, if infrequently, and those who drink the same amount more consistently.  

Its data also relied on self reporting of alcohol consumption, which made it vulnerable to bias, and couldn’t gather data on consumption during the COVID-19 pandemic due to delays in collection.