Is the Party Over? Recent Research on the Pros and Cons of Drinking Alcohol

I was so happy with the French paradox. This was the phrase researchers came up with in the early 1990s to explain the completely not-fair scenario of how the French were indulging in duck confit (duck cooked in lots of fat, a waiter once explained to me) and buttery croissants while not only remaining thin but also having fewer heart attacks. So not fair to Americans who were glumly gnawing broiled chicken breasts and low-fat cookies and buying increasingly outlandish books about losing weight, only to find themselves fatter than ever and just as likely to get heart disease.

But the French paradox offered a bonbon of hope. Some researchers suggested that the secret to French coronary health was, in part, the red wine sipped over the course of a long, leisurely dinner.

I began having wine with my dinner, too. And even if I finished my second glass while hunched over the sink scouring pots, I still felt a bit of that French glamour. As if it were Edith Piaf wailing in the background, not Bruce Springsteen.

Then I heard someone say that drinking moderate amounts of any alcohol was good for the heart. While wine is thought to have hundreds of substances, such as resveratrol (an antioxidant found in the skin of grapes linked with cardiovascular benefits and cancer prevention), that favorably affect health, I, too, began reading the reports that suggested that any form of alcohol increases "good" cholesterol, decreases inflammation and "thins" the blood, making dangerous blood clots less likely. Lo, another door to the good life opened! I didn’t learn to mix anything fancier than a vodka-and-tonic at home, but when my girlfriends and I went out we ordered drinks that were considerably more exotic, with silly names: the Coexistence Collins, the Rose of Warsaw, Bluebeard’s Passion. (Surely, no one has more fun coming up with names than cocktail designers and breeders of thoroughbred racehorses.) It was easy to feel downright virtuous as we sipped our drinks, especially as we heard about new studies suggesting that moderate alcohol consumption also lessened the risk of stroke and increased bone density.

Here come the caveats …

Not everyone in the scientific community is so enthusiastic about the health benefits of moderate imbibing. Critics pooh-pooh the French paradox, saying that the French might have lower risks for cardiovascular disease but that they don’t have significantly lower rates of overall mortality.

In fact, not all research suggests that moderate alcohol consumption confers health benefits. For example, multiple studies have shown an increased risk of breast cancer for women who drink even as little as one glass of alcohol per day, leading some researchers to conclude that when it comes to breast cancer, any level of consumption can be considered unsafe. Other research suggests that the B vitamin folate—found in leafy greens, oranges and legumes—and its supplemental form, folic acid, may blunt alcohol’s breast cancer impact by supporting normal cell division and repairing DNA damage. One study found that women who drank alcohol did not have a higher risk of breast cancer if they consumed at least 600 mcg/day of folic acid.

"For people who have had breast cancer, or are at risk of getting breast cancer, and who drink, I do not insist on total abstinence. But I advocate that if you do drink, you should do so moderately," says Larry Norton, M.D., medical director of the Evelyn H. Lauder Breast Center of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. "That’s a reasonable choice if you’re eating lots of fruits and vegetables." (Fruits and vegetables provide nutrients, like folate and vitamin C, that may mitigate the cancer risk associated with drinking alcohol.)

However, even eating bushels of fruits and vegetables won’t erase the ill effects of too much alcohol. Some scientists are concerned that ordinary people like moi have gotten the idea that if one serving of alcohol might be good, several more might be better.

"Either consciously or subconsciously, some people omit the word ‘moderate’ and come away with the idea that drinking is good for you," says Tim Naimi, M.D., M.P.H., an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). "The concept of moderate drinking tends to be adjusted elastically at the level at which one already drinks."