{"id":1388,"date":"2016-09-09T12:48:50","date_gmt":"2016-09-09T02:48:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/studies-linking-alcohol-to-health-benefits-based-on-flawed-science-research\/"},"modified":"2016-09-09T12:48:50","modified_gmt":"2016-09-09T02:48:50","slug":"studies-linking-alcohol-to-health-benefits-based-on-flawed-science-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/studies-linking-alcohol-to-health-benefits-based-on-flawed-science-research\/","title":{"rendered":"Studies linking alcohol to health benefits based on flawed science: research"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>By consumer affairs reporter <a href=\"http:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/news\/amy-bainbridge\/3938908\" target=\"_blank\">Amy Bainbridge<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/news\/alex-mcdonald\/6671344\" target=\"_blank\">Alex McDonald<\/a> (Updated Mar 2016, 3:53pm)<\/em><br \/>&nbsp;<br \/>The notion that moderate drinking can help you live a longer and healthier life is being challenged by new research released today.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Key points:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Researchers found studies linking moderate drinking to improved health were based on flawed science<\/li>\n<li>They found many of the studies were comparing moderate drinkers to abstainers<\/li>\n<li>The group of abstainers could include people who had given up alcohol due to poor health<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A team of international researchers found that a number of studies linking one or two drinks per day with a range of health benefits were based on flawed science.<br \/>Curtin University&#8217;s Tanya Chikritzhs, the principal investigator for the project, said her team analysed 87 studies and found most of them used questionable methodology.<br \/>Professor Chikritzhs said the main problem was how the studies compared drinkers with non-drinkers to gauge which group was healthier.<br \/>Moderate drinkers were more often than not being compared to abstainers, she said.<\/p>\n<p>Professor Chikritzhs said the problem with that approach was that the group of abstainers included former drinkers, who had given up alcohol because of poor health.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What these studies tend to do when they&#8217;re trying to identify an abstainer group is to mix up in there a whole bunch of people who haven&#8217;t drunk in the last 12 months with a whole bunch of people who used to drink 10 years ago, five years ago and so on,&#8221; Professor Chikritzhs told the ABC.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So essentially they set up a situation where an abstainer group looks as if they&#8217;re in worse health than the drinker group.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What we identified is when you account for this bias built into the methodologies of these studies, you actually don&#8217;t find a protective effect of alcohol at all.&#8221;<br \/>&nbsp;<br \/>Professor Chikritzhs said there were other ways to look more accurately at the health impacts of drinking.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What we found in our study is the best comparison group is not non-drinkers at all, but occasional drinkers, so these are people who drink in such small amounts that biologically alcohol could have no effect on their body in terms of protection,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What we actually found in terms of these occasional drinkers in terms of the longevity stakes &mdash; who lives longer &mdash; it&#8217;s the occasional drinker who live the longest, so they outdo the people who are drinking at moderate levels.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/news\/2016-03-22\/studies-linking-alcohol-to-health-benefits-flawed-researchers\/7264040\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"button\">For complete article<\/a><br \/>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By consumer affairs reporter Amy Bainbridge and Alex McDonald (Updated Mar 2016, 3:53pm)&nbsp;The notion that moderate drinking can help you live a longer and healthier life is being challenged by new research released today. Key points: Researchers found studies linking moderate drinking to improved health were based on flawed science They found many of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dalgorno-monitoring-alcohol"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1388\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}