A DRINK A DAY?

Is alcohol good for you?

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1. Counselling Conundrum: a real question from a patient

2. Concise Conclusion: a straight-forward patient-friendly answer 

3. Quick Wrap-up 

Clearly, there are nuances that may not be captured in this format. The goal here is to provide you with helpful counselling tips which often draw from multiple sources or those which are not commonly accessed by busy healthcare providers serving the community.

Counselling Conundrum: "My friend told me she drinks one glass of whiskey every day so that she will live longer. Is this really a good idea?"

Concise Conclusion: At the end of the day, we know alcohol has a negative impact on your sleep (though you pass out faster, it unfortunately wakes you up more throughout the night, heart rate increases, and REM sleep is reduced), and it can contribute to fatty liver disease. Some flawed studies suggest lower risk of mortality in moderate drinkers (compared to never or heavy drinkers, for example), but If you are young and healthy, an occasional drink is likely fine. The main takeaway however is that it is unlikely to provide any health benefits beyond the social kind.

Quick Wrap-up: The problem with the studies on alcohol and mortality is that many are observational, the "moderate drinkers" tend to be healthier and of higher socioeconomic class (unlikely that alcohol is boosting health more than these factors), and the "never drinkers" and "former drinkers" tend to be less healthy (lower socioeconomic class, higher BMI).

Dive Deeper

1) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26997174/

We hope you have found this useful. A reply to this email with any feedback or topic suggestion you may have would be greatly appreciated. Your input will be the key to making this newsletter the best it can be.