‘Don’t promote alcohol as health tonic’

SYDNEY - Researchers believe that alcohol is still a potentially dangerous drug and should not be promoted as a health tonic.

They say that cardiac protection from alcohol is by no means certain and probably has been over-emphasised in recent years.

Authors of a new study also point out that there are many other health downsides from heavy drinking, and that alcohol is now widely recognised as a dangerous recreational drug.

“When viewed through the lens of two major early reviews in the mid-1980s, then Sir Richard Dolls’s contributions in the mid 1990s, followed by two large meta-analyses a decade ago and two most recent overviews, the health giving properties of alcohol use become increasingly debatable,” said study author Doug Sellman, University of Otago professor.

The study stresses it is important to remember that the two major early reviews of the vast amount of literature on this subject came to opposite conclusions regarding alcohol’s protective effect on coronary heart disease.

“Essentially we believe that alcohol is still potentially a dangerous drug which can cause a range of acute and chronic health problems, so should not be promoted by anyone as a health tonic,” Sellman said.

These findings were published online in the New Zealand Medical Journal.