[19] Compared to those who did not change their alcohol intake, those who increased their intake by 2 or more drinks a day gained a little more than a half-pound. It was noted that calorie intake (not from alcohol) tended to increase along with alcohol intake. If you don’t drink alcohol, don’t start because of potential health benefits. However, if you drink a light to moderate amount and you’re healthy, you can probably continue as long as you drink responsibly. Be sure to check with your doctor about what’s right for your health and safety.

While many believe that darker drinks, like bourbon and red wine, have higher levels of congeners, it’s also thought that cheaper brands of alcohol also contain more as well. To be safe, it’s best to buy top-shelf, clear liquor to avoid consuming more of these impurities. Buying more expensive alcohol is also a good way to deter yourself from drinking too much. We’ve either heard or asked these questions more times than we can likely recall, and that’s because alcohol consumption is a common form of socialization in the world. In America alone, 86.4% of adults 18 years and older stated they’ve drank at some point in their lives, 70.1% drank in the last year, and 56% drank in the last month, according to a survey conducted by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

Women

If you enjoy a glass of wine or pint of beer with dinner, you might wonder whether alcohol is a friend or foe to arthritis. While moderate drinking may reduce some risks of developing arthritis, if you already suffer from arthritis or a condition like gout, it may do more harm than good. Anti-inflammatory Benefits
Enjoying a drink with some regularity might reduce your risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis (RA), according to a few studies. “Moderate alcohol consumption reduces biomarkers of inflammation, including c-reactive protein (CRP), interleukin-6, and TNF-alpha receptor 2,” says Karen Costenbader, MD, MPH, a rheumatologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Alcohol’s anti-inflammatory effects are also thought to be one of the reasons it appears to lower cardiovascular disease risk in moderate drinkers.

It then describes several approaches to determining people’s drinking levels and patterns. Finally, based on that information, the article presents definitions of moderate drinking that are currently used in the United States and in other countries. We’ve known about the association between moderate drinking and good health for quite some time. It’s fairly well-established that, if you look at society at large, people who drink a moderate amount are the healthiest in a number of ways. For clinical purposes, however, accurate and reliable information about a person’s alcohol consumption is essential. For example, treatment providers base various treatment decisions on the drinking-behavior information provided by patients.

Other Topics in Patient Care & Health Info

On the other, it is addictive and highly toxic — especially when you drink too much. Dr. Washton is an addiction psychologist and book author in private practice in New York City and Princeton NJ. Dr. Washton has served as advisor and consultant to professional sports teams, foreign governments, media organizations, multinational corporations, the U.S Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. Dr. Ascher is a board-certified general and addiction psychiatrist who serves as a clinical assistant professor in psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, Philadelphia, and is in private practice. “They have a lot of things going for them that protect their health, that have nothing to do with their alcohol use,” Dr. Stockwell said. If you are becoming worried about the amount of alcohol you consume, you can ask your doctor about it.

One of the reasons underlying higher estimates with graduated frequency measures is that such measures generally involve more questions than do simple QF measures, particularly for heavier drinkers. Survey researchers have discovered that more questions (and consequently more answers) may lead to higher consumption estimates, which are generally considered to be more accurate. The perspective of epidemiological sociology is the synthesis of several epidemiological approaches to the study of alcohol use and abuse and their consequences. Here, use and consequences are studied independently rather than as one psychiatric condition. Systematic epidemiological sociological surveys of the general U.S. population began in the 1960s. Most of those national and community studies were sponsored by NIAAA and its predecessor within the National Institute of Mental Health.

Alcohol use: Weighing risks and benefits

Many people find that the first 2-3 drinks bring a great deal of pleasure, while the fourth and fifth (or sixth or seventh) drinks seem like they will bring pleasure but actually bring hangovers or regret. If you’re reading this blog, chances are you’ve had some sort of experience with hangovers, oversharing, extra belly fat, or other features of drinking that you’d rather skip. The good news is that you can keep the pleasurable parts of drinking and nix the negatives by simply stopping at your “magic number”. Your buzzed self will actually have more fun and thank you later since it no longer has to do “on the spot thinking” about how much to drink. Many people find that through observation, they discover they frequently drink one or two drinks more than what is actually their true pleasure point. By reframing your drinking target as a “magic number” that is about your pleasure rather than as a “limit”, many people are able to embrace alcohol moderation as a friend rather than a foe.

Moderate alcohol consumption may reduce symptoms of type 2 diabetes by enhancing the uptake of blood sugar by your cells. The relationship between alcohol and heart disease is complex and depends on several factors. In fact — while drinking beer regularly may cause an increase in waist circumference https://ecosoberhouse.com/ — the well-known “beer belly” — wine consumption may have the opposite effect (31, 35, 36). Conversely, drinking moderately has been linked to a reduced risk of dementia — especially in older adults (16, 17, 18). One of its main roles is to neutralize various toxic substances you consume.

1One example of how the strength or alcohol content of a beverage can be standardized is the “ proof” measure, which generally is applied to distilled spirits. According to this measure, a 200-proof solution contains 100 percent alcohol by volume; an 80-proof beverage contains 40 percent alcohol by volume (Doernberg and Stinson 1985). A drink before a meal can improve digestion or offer a soothing respite at the end of a stressful day; the occasional drink with friends can be a social tonic.

Some previous studies have suggested that people who drink moderately are less likely to die from heart disease or other causes than people who abstain from alcohol or drink heavily. Alcohol causes dehydration, which contributes to hangovers, which absolutely no one wants. To avoid feeling like you’ve been hit by a bus the morning after a night out, drink water— lots.

What is a Drink of Alcohol?

Others, like loss of consciousness or slurred speech, may develop after a few drinks. If you tend to drink excessively or notice that alcohol causes problems in your life, you should avoid it as much as possible. As a rule of thumb, if alcohol is adversely affecting your quality of life, you may have a problem with alcohol dependence or alcoholism. Studies suggest that light and moderate consumption of alcohol may cut the risk of premature death — especially in Western societies (66, 67). The cells lining your mouth and throat are especially vulnerable to the harmful effects of alcohol. Alcohol consumption is a risk factor for cancers of the mouth, throat, colon, breast and liver (57, 58, 59).

LoConte added that she is concerned by the recent rise in alcohol intake among women in the U.S. The number of women who report having heavy drinking days — defined as consuming four or more drinks within a couple of hours — rose 41% from 2019 to 2020, according to a survey from the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit think tank. 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 the society in which they occur.