If you are drinking a glass of wine a day because of the long-held belief that moderate drinking reduces the risk of heart disease, you may want to have a rethink, going by the result of a new study.
A study published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs has found that alcohol has no beneficial effects on humans, claiming that other studies that have made assertions to the contrary were in error.
In the study, a team of Canadian researchers reviewed as many as 87 past papers on the subject and claimed that the studies were biased, poorly mapped, suggesting that the positive effects claimed were unlikely in reality.
The study found that moderate drinkers were compared to people who refrained from frequent drinking due to ill health.
As a result, moderate drinkers – who took less than a glass of alcoholic drink per week – were found to live the longest.
But the group that conducted the new study said there was no real link between longevity and moderate drinking, as the studies that had so claimed were poorly designed.