You might think having a few drinks regularly is harmless, but even consuming alcohol in moderation carries some risks. Drinking too much alcohol too frequently is unhealthy and can lead to liver disease, weight gain, and alcohol use disorder (AUD). Alcohol consumption may also play a role in certain mental health conditions, like depression and facts about moderate drinking dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease. To find out, Columbia Magazine spoke with Katherine Keyes ’10PH, a professor of epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health and an expert on the health risks of our new drinking habits. Experts said it’s possible to undo the negative effects of moderate alcohol consumption, but this would depend on the damage and the person’s unique characteristics and habits. When taken together, the new reports implicate moderate drinking with a higher risk of breast, esophageal, and oral cancer, but an advisory from the Surgeon General outlines even more dire outcomes.
- These distinctions are codified in the US guidelines, the Canadian guidelines, and the Irish guidelines.
- Moderate drinkers who have two copies of the gene for the slow-acting enzyme are at much lower risk for cardiovascular disease than moderate drinkers who have two genes for the fast-acting enzyme.
- Using 2023’s 62% as a baseline (because the 2022 reading of 67% is an outlier), the decline in drinking has been more pronounced among women (down 11 percentage points since 2023, to 51%) than among men (down five points, to 57%).
- Consequently, when reading an article that relates a certain number of drinks per day to a specific health benefit or risk, one must pay careful attention to how a drink is defined in that study.
Americans of a certain age — i.e., me — probably remember hearing that a glass of red wine a day could be good for you. For the first time, researchers also found that a majority of Americans believed that moderate drinking is bad for one’s health. In 2018, just 28 percent of respondents reported that one or two drinks a day is unhealthy, but in 2025, 53 percent did.
Another technique for assessing alcohol consumption is the timeline followback (TLFB) method (Sobell and Sobell 1995). The TLFB is a structured interview in which participants receive calendar-based memory cues to assist them in constructing a chronological report of their alcohol use. Although the procedure is widely employed in research on the efficacy of alcoholism treatment, the required interviews are highly individualized and, hence, generally impractical for use in large-scale population-based surveys.
Alcohol’s Effects on Health
Just 6% say it’s good for one’s health, while 37% believe it makes no difference. Today’s belief that moderate alcohol consumption is unhealthy follows increases from 28% in 2018 and 39% in 2023 to 45% a year ago. By contrast, from 2001 through 2011, the percentage with this view hovered near 25%, roughly equal to those who considered drinking beneficial. QF measures query the respondent on both drinking frequency and average quantity consumed per occasion, thereby providing a measure of the total alcohol amount consumed. QF measures currently may be the most widely used instruments with which to measure drinking in most countries, including the United States. Generally, the quantity question asks for the typical number of drinks consumed per occasion, providing the respondent with some definition of a drink (e.g., one 12 oz can or bottle of beer) on which to base his or her answer.
Many people using OTC birth control pills previously used nothing, study finds
It’s no surprise that more and more countries — though not yet the US — are giving their citizens official guidance that no level of alcohol consumption can be recommended. Not surprisingly, given the variability in the definitions of one drink, the numerous approaches to assessing alcohol consumption, and the subjective interpretation of the word “moderate,” definitions of “moderate drinking” vary considerably among researchers. In the English language, “moderate” can be used as both a qualitative and a quantitative term, but it generally carries strong qualitative connotations. For example, Webster’s dictionary (1966) defines moderate as “characterized by an avoidance of extremes of behavior; observing reasonable limits, showing discretion and self control” (p. 1451).
Health benefits of not drinking
- Other data collected by traditional means immediately after study completion demonstrated that drinkers—particularly heavier drinkers—retrospectively underreported their alcohol consumption.
- The rapid progress in computer technology, however, has led to the development and use of computer-assisted telephone interview systems.
- In a study published in 2013, researchers compared the cancer risk of people who consume no more than one daily drink to those who drink nothing.
- Throughout the 10,000 or so years that humans have been drinking fermented beverages, they’ve also been arguing about their merits and demerits.
- The survey finds that 54% of U.S. adults say they drink alcoholic beverages such as liquor, wine or beer — “the lowest by one percentage point in Gallup’s nearly 90-year trend,” the analytics company says.
Since 2001, it has tracked their views on health implications related to moderate drinking. The Dietary Guidelines also list several categories of people who should not drink at all. Finally, the Dietary Guidelines provide specific recommendations for recovering alcoholics and for people who have family members with alcohol problems. Familiarity with these methodological variations and their implications can help scientists and other interested readers understand and evaluate the wide discrepancies found across various studies that assess different drinking levels and their consequences. Alcohol use disorder, which has strongly been linked to poor health, can also start from a moderate drinking habit, he added. The conflict has been on display in recent months, with the release of assessments that will be used to shape the U.S.
Earlier this year, the outgoing U.S. surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, recommended a label on bottles of beer, wine and liquor that would clearly outline the link between alcohol consumption and cancer. While many of the facts conveyed in this post may sound as though they are meant to dissuade individuals from drinking, the goal is not to pass judgment on behavior or to make the argument in favor of abstinence. Americans’ reported drinking is among the lowest since the question was first asked in 1939. For most of the last few decades, at least 6 in 10 Americans have reported drinking alcoholic beverages, only dipping below that point a few times in the question’s history. That idea came from imperfect studies that largely didn’t include younger people and couldn’t prove cause and effect.
Other chronic diseases
Compounding the challenge for companies that sell alcohol, drinkers now appear to be dialing back how much they drink, as well. From 1997 to 2023, at least 60% of Americans reported drinking alcohol. The figure fell to 62% in 2023 and to 58% in 2024, before reaching 54% today.
Health Conditions
In the United States, moderate drinking for healthy adults is different for men and women. It means on days when a person does drink, women do not have more than one drink and men do not have more than two drinks. The evidence for moderate alcohol use in healthy adults is still being studied.
Moderate drinking is defined as one to two drinks per day for a man, and one drink per day for a woman. A “drink” is defined as a shot (1.5 ounces) of spirits, a 5-ounce glass of wine, or a 12-ounce bottle of beer. Many of these trials have been conducted for weeks, and in a few cases months and even up to 2 years, to look at changes in the blood, but a long-term trial to test experimentally the effects of alcohol on cardiovascular disease has not been done. A recent successful effort in the U.S. to launch an international study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
In such an environment, it shouldn’t be surprising that total abstinence is on the rise—not only are we lonelier, we’re convinced that the road to an early grave is paved with moderation. Information and shareable resources to help others choose to drink less alcohol and be their best. That’s because you may be more likely to make decisions or take risks that could negatively affect others. In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls. Before 2019, liquor ranked last in popularity, while the proportions preferring wine and beer varied, but with beer usually leading. “Older folks may be a little more hardened in terms of the whiplash that they get with recommendations,” Saad said.
These trends were exacerbated by the stress of the Covid-19 pandemic, yet they began before it, marking a major shift in America’s drinking habits. Given the disparate findings, it’s understandable to be confused about the potential toll that moderate drinking can take on your body. That’s why we asked experts to unpack what effect, if any, your happy hour habit might have on your disease risk. When trying to moderate alcohol intake over the course of an evening or a week, it helps to know how much alcohol is in each drink you consume. Hormonal factors may also play a role in making women more susceptible to the effects of alcohol. Studies have found that with the same amount of drink, blood alcohol concentrations are at their highest just before menstruation and at their lowest on the first day after menstruation.
Find science-based information on the effects of alcohol on health.
The results come as 45 percent of Americans last year believed moderate drinking was bad for health, according to a Gallup poll. The latest Gallup survey, conducted from July 7 to July 21, found that a smaller share of Americans are drinking alcohol than at any point in the poll’s history. In the mid-1970s, the share peaked at 71 percent for three consecutive years starting in 1976. Gallup has tracked Americans’ drinking behavior since 1939 and their views of the health implications of moderate drinking since 2001.