College students probably won't like the results from this study.
New research has found that drinking even the recommended amount of alcohol could still shorten your life—and the suggested amount is probably much less than what you actually drink.
In the United States, guidelines recommend that women have no more than 98 grams a week—or about seven drinks total in a week. For men, it’s no more than 196 grams a week, or roughly two standard drinks per day.
However, the study—co-authored by more than 100 researchers, including Duke's Daniel Blazer II, professor emeritus of psychiatry—found that drinking more than 100 grams of alcohol each week was connected to an increased risk of early death. To Blazer's knowledge, this was the largest study that investigated the link between alcohol and mortality.
“It goes against what the current wisdom is about alcohol,” Blazer said. “Up to this point, the data has suggested that there was actually a sweet spot. If you drank a drink a day, you might have an increased life expectancy compared to not drinking at all.”
Drinking guidelines vary between countries, with Canada recommending no more than 136 grams each week for women and no more than 204 grams per week for men. In the United Kingdom, guidelines suggest no more than six standard drinks a week for men and women.
To conduct the study, the researchers looked at the drinking habits of about 600,000 people, measured in 83 studies across 19 countries. About half of these people reported drinking more 100 grams per week, and 8.4 percent consumed more than 350 grams each week.
Compared to individuals who consumed between zero and 100 grams of alcohol per week, the researchers found that the life expectancy for those who drank 100 to 200 grams a week was six months lower, and it was one to two years lower for those who drank 200 to 300 grams a week. In addition, people who had more than 350 grams lived four to five years less on average.
The exact reasons for the increase risk of early death remain unclear.
“I think even though we don't know exactly what the mechanism is, it does suggest that doctors and other health care professionals need to be talking to their patients,” Blazer said.
In the study, alcohol consumption was also linked to an increased risk of stroke, heart failure and death from hypertensive disease or an aortic aneurysm.
However, a higher alcohol consumption was also connected to a slightly lower risk of having a heart attack, which Blazer said needs to be further investigated. He noted that future studies should look at the biological mechanisms through which alcohol may be impacting health.
Still, he said there’s no reason to panic if you do drink. Having one drink a day did not dramatically raise the risk of early death.
“The risk is relatively small and each person is going to make decisions about what is healthy and what is not healthy,” he said.
Blazer also emphasized the importance of doctors talking to their patients about their alcohol habits.
“The message would be that you need to take this into account along with all the other things you need to think about if you want to live a longer life,” he said.
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