If you’ve been following the news over the last few years, you’ve probably seen stories about the potential health benefits of drinking alcohol. And while many of these studies seemed compelling enough to make even non-drinkers reconsider, doubting voices have started to look harder at what the evidence really says about low-level drinking. 

In a new analysis published this week, researchers looked not only to summarize the data from the past, but to reanalyze it after addressing some of the problems they felt were clouding the results of previous studies. What they found may have you reconsidering your next glass of beer or wine. 

Why doubt the connection between alcohol and health?
As the studies linking alcohol began to mount, some researchers and physicians in the field became suspicious about whether alcohol was truly behind many of the benefits it was being linked to. Some of the conditions alcohol supposedly helped included deafness, hip fractures, the common cold, cancers, birth complications, and dementia, many of which didn’t have an obvious reason for being connected. In fact, low-level alcohol consumption even seemed to lower the risk of birth defects and liver cirrhosis even though both are caused by alcohol consumption. The results seemed to indicate that something else might be going on.

When the team then looked at other reviews of the research that had been done, they also found that how a research group defined who was a drinker and who was an abstainer (someone who didn’t drink alcohol) was muddier than it should be. Many people were being labeled as “abstainers” even if  they had a history of moderate or heavy drinking but had quit for health reasons. A previous alcoholic, for example, might be labeled as an abstainer if they hadn’t had a drink in the past year even if they were suffering the serious health consequences of heavy drinking in the past. The team suspected that who was included in this “abstaining” group might have led to some of the apparent alcohol-related health claims that had been made.