Can alcohol be good for you?

You may have heard that some types of alcohol can be good for you. Many people believe that drinking can be good for the heart, or that red wine can protect against cancer. Is this true?

Alcohol and heart disease

Drinking small amounts of alcohol can protect against heart disease. But this is only really true for men over 40 and women who have been through the menopause.

Drinking alcohol specifically to improve your health is unlikely to work. And heavy drinking can actually increase the risk of heart disease.

Red wine

Red wine contains high levels of a chemical called resveratrol, which has some anti-cancer effects in laboratory cells. But this is a far cry from saying that drinking red wine can protect people from cancer. For a start, red wine contains many other chemicals, which may not be so beneficial, including alcohol itself.

Based on studies done so far, there is there is no strong evidence that red wine could protect against cancer. One small but widely reported study claimed that men could halve their risk of prostate cancer by drinking 1-2 units a day. But much larger, stronger studies have contradicted this conclusion.

Recently, a newspaper report claimed that red wine could prevent breast cancer, based on a study which found that resveratrol blocks some types of DNA damage in breast cancer cells. But we can't conclude from this that red wine protects against cancer, as we discuss in our blog.

Wine in general

It is clear that all types of alcohol can increase the risk of cancer, including both red and white wines.

The bottom line is that it is a bad idea to drink wine to prevent cancer. There is no strong evidence that this would work. And moderate drinking can easily turn into heavy drinking, which can definitely cause cancer.