By Christopher Piercecchi, MD — Physician and Wellness Manager, Founder, The Men’s Clinic for Wellness & Vitality
SITREP is an evidence-review briefing for patients and colleagues of The Men’s Clinic for Wellness & Vitality. It is educational and does not constitute individualized medical advice.
“A glass of red wine is good for the heart.” “My cardiologist said one a night is fine.” “My grandfather had a Scotch every evening and lived to 88.” Most of us have heard some version of this, and for decades there were published studies that appeared to support it.
The problem is that most of those studies were observational. They compared people who drank with people who did not, and those groups turned out to be different in ways that had little to do with alcohol. What we saw in the study was that moderate drinkers often exercised more, smoked less, ate better, and differed in other ways associated with better health. When researchers tried to correct those problems, much of the apparent “positive findings” shrank or disappeared. Genetic studies, which approach the question without simply asking people how much they drink, have also failed to reproduce the old heart-protective effect.
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