Many papers in the past tell us that "moderate drinking" is good for our health, but is it really true?
In traditional epidemiological studies, alcohol intake of one to two equivalent servings per day appears to be associated with some good health-protective effects by sex. However, alcohol also directly affects the rise of blood pressure in many chronic risk factors for disease. Therefore, the debate on the pros and cons of alcohol intake has existed for a long time, but this latest paper published in an authoritative journal may temporarily put a stop to this debate!
Refer to the article published in the international medical authoritative journal "Lancet" in 2019paper:[Conventional and genetic evidence on alcohol and vascular disease aetiology: a prospective study of 500000 men and women in China], since the content involves many medical and statistical majors, the author will only extract the key points of the paper below:
The paper used the Chinese Kadoorie Biobank database, which collected questionnaires, physical data and blood samples from 510,000 men and women aged 30 to 79 in 10 regions of China between 2004 and 2008, and regularly tracked health data About ten years (ending in 2017), it is a prospective study with high predictive reference value, and the subjects of the case are yellow people, and the analysis data is more suitable for Asian countries.
In this study, the research team collected data on more than 500,000 people (n=512,715), 210,205 men and 302,510 women. To track the occurrence of long-term cardiovascular disease, the researchers used data from the Chinese health insurance system. Register the data, and additionally analyze and group the genetic variation related to the alcohol metabolism pathway. It is hoped that by calculating the genotype-predicted mean alcohol intake, all the study cases will be grouped and the data will be analyzed. Comparison with traditional epidemiological data to clarify the actual impact of alcohol intake on cardiovascular disease. (The comparison logic is more complicated, so it will not be described in detail in this article. Interested readers should refer to the original text by themselves.) The following is the result of the analysis and discussion of the paper:
Alcohol consumption consistently increases systolic blood pressure and the risk of stroke; including intracerebral haemorrhage & ischaemic stroke.
Alcohol intake had no significant effect on the risk of myocardial infarction.
From this paper, we can see that our thinking about alcohol intake may need to change. The author believes that the concept of "moderate drinking is good for health" should no longer be advocated. Instead, we should face up to the health risks of alcohol and suggest reducing alcohol intake.
【Information on the Risks of Alcohol Consumption】
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1. The health protection effect of “moderate” alcohol intake should be questioned.
2. Alcohol intake increases blood pressure and increases the risk of stroke.
3. Alcohol intake has no significant effect on the risk of myocardial infarction.
〈The author is former Attending Physician in National Taiwan University Hospital, and Master of Science from National Taiwan University〉