Doubts poured on drink for health

Think you can justify those two or three glasses of wine a day this Christmas because they are good for your heart? Forget it.

New research by Auckland academics has poured cold water on conventional medical wisdom that moderate drinking - a pint of beer or a couple of glasses of wine a day - is necessarily good for us.

The research, published in the influential medical journal the Lancet, was undertaken by Auckland University Medical School academics Rod Jackson, Joanna Broad, Jennie Connor and Susan Wells.

They have debunked a claim that up to three drinks a day could reduce the risk of heart attacks by a quarter, saying an apparent greater susceptibility of non-drinkers is probably due to factors unrelated to an absence of alcohol from the diet.

The belief that drinking is healthy in moderation stemmed from a paper published in the Lancet in 1979 which first highlighted an apparent protective effect of alcohol on the heart, attributing the effect to wine.

But the New Zealand experts say bibulous researchers may have been blinded to the true effects of alcohol, and that any protection it may offer the heart is likely to be outweighed by other health risks.

They cite a large American study published this year of 200,000 adults which found drinkers were healthier than non-drinkers, but that this was unconnected to their alcohol intake.

Of 30 risk factors for heart disease, 27 were found to be significantly more common in the non-drinkers. The lower incidence of heart attacks in the drinkers was probably due to this difference in risk, and nothing to do with their alcohol consumption.

The authors say that, if anything, the evidence is more compelling that heavy rather than light drinking offers more protection for the health. But this is outweighed by other damaging effects of heavy drinking.

Dr Connor, who confessed to the Weekend Herald last night that she had just been out enjoying "a couple of wines myself", said of the alcohol protection theory: "We are not saying it is untrue, we are just saying it could be untrue."

- INDEPENDENT, additional reporting by Mathew Dearnaley