Light-to-moderate drinking tied to lower risk of heart attack and death

Isn’t the problem with these studies that people that drink no alcohol are often not doing so because of bad health or because they were alcoholics?

e.g.: https://time.com/5376552/how-much-alcohol-to-drink-study/

Before anyone decides to drink alcohol as if it were a supplement hear me out.

Alcohol in every continent has a rich social element to sharing it. It could very well be that the fabric of society around which revolves alcohol consumption determines these benefits more so than the alcohol consumption itself.

It might well be that regularly seeing friends, a ritual as ancient as humanity itself, could be responsible for these healing effects. Friends are good for you!

Link to the study- https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1291...

>In summary, our study shows that an alcohol intake up to about 105g a week is associated with lower risks of both mortality and subsequent cardiovascular events among CVD patients.

>Our findings therefore indicate that, for secondary prevention of CVD, current drinkers may not need to stop drinking but should be informed that lower levels of intake (up to 105g/week) may be associated with reduced risks. However, non-drinking patients should not be encouraged to take up light drinking because of well-known adverse effects on other health outcomes, such as cancers [79].

In other news:

Drinking any amount of alcohol causes damage to the brain, study finds

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/drinking-alcohol-causes-dama...

Even if the benefits are real (which is really dubious as most observational studies should be carefully reviewed!), most important is this:

> Ding cautioned that non-drinking individuals should not be encouraged to take up light drinking because of known adverse effects on other health outcomes, such as cancers.

Thing is, light-to-moderate drinking implies that nothing really bad happened in your live. Most of the people who have cancer either stop drinking or become heavy drinker. Same with a heart attack and so on.

However, the reason we hear again and again about these studies is, that both scientist at a prestigious institution and journalist at a prestigious publication implies that not much really bad has happened in your live, which in turn implies light to moderate drinking.

... controlling for the higher camaraderie and socializing typically enjoyed by such drinkers?

These types of studies seem to flip flop every so often to allow anyone to justify what they want to do instead of being open to learning to take a look at improving any behaviour they may have.