What Decades of Alcohol Research Got Wrong - and What It Means for Your Health

We’ve all heard it: a glass of red wine is good for your heart. Maybe even a few are fine. It’s comforting. It’s culturally baked in. But is it true?

In this episode, we’ll dig into the seductive myth that moderate alcohol is healthy, and unpack what the evidence really says. From flawed studies and industry spin to the way risk gets smoothed over in headlines, we’ll take a sober look at where that “protective effect” idea came from, and whether it still holds up.

This isn’t a finger-wagging lecture. If you enjoy the odd drink, I get it. I do too. But if we’re going to drink, let’s do it with open eyes - not clouded by wishful thinking disguised as science.

If you’d like to do the exercise discussed and see how your drinking affects you health, here’s the information you need:

Here’s a quick-reference cheat sheet showing the alcohol content of common drinks:

Use these figures to estimate how much alcohol you drink and compare it to the risk curve | Data: USDA | Image: Author + Adobe stock

How to use it:

• If you drink the same amount daily, just use that number.

• If your drinking varies, add up your weekly intake and divide by seven to get your daily average.

Now you’ve got your grams per day - now look at the graph below and find your place on the curve.

Once you remove high-risk former drinkers, the J-curve disappears. The more you drink, the greater your risk of premature death. | Data: Stockwell et al. 2015 | Image: Author + Adobe stock

Let’s say you drink two large glasses of wine with dinner. That’s 2 x 26g = 52g of alcohol a day.

Trace 52 along the bottom axis of the graph. Now move up to the curve.

You’ll see that your risk of premature death is around 2.4 times higher than if you didn’t drink at all.