Even low-risk alcohol consumption in old age could lead to an early death, but opting for wine and drinking it only with meals could help mitigate the damage, a study suggests

Older Britons who drink alcohol lightly or moderately still have a higher risk of dying from cancer, according to a study of 135,000 Britons.

And the impact was even stronger for Britons aged over 60 who were poorer and those with existing health problems, the Spanish researchers found.

But making wine the preferred drink and drinking it only with meals was found to mitigate some of the negative health effects of alcohol.

In the study, experts found that even Britons classified as low-risk drinkers had an 11 percent higher risk of dying from cancer compared with “occasional drinkers.”

People in the poorest areas had it even harder: They had a 25 percent higher risk of dying from cancer and a 14 percent higher risk of dying overall.

Low-risk drinkers with existing health problems were 15 percent more likely to die from cancer compared to their casual counterparts.

However, sick and poorer Britons who chose wine as their drink of choice were not as likely to suffer as much compared to those who drank beer or spirits.

In their analysis, published in the journal Red JamaA study by the Autonomous University of Madrid found that poor wine drinkers were 16 percent less likely to die than non-wine drinkers.

A similar, but smaller, effect was seen in Britons with health problems: those who opted for wine were 8 percent less likely to die compared with drinkers who preferred other alcoholic beverages.

Drinking only during meals also appeared to mitigate the damage in these groups.

The poorest Britons who only drank with dinner were 17 percent less likely to die, while people with health problems who did the same reduced their chances of dying by 7 percent.

And in good news for those who enjoy a glass of wine with a meal, these effects stack.

The authors theorized that this mitigation could be related to antioxidants present in wine, which provide some health benefits, foods that slow the absorption of alcohol and reduce the damage it causes, or better spacing of drinks with meals.

They added that this could also indicate that people who only allow themselves to drink when eating might also be strict about their health, such as how often they eat junk food, in other aspects of their life.

However, they stressed that the amount of alcohol people drink is still critical.

Overall, those who were classified as high-risk drinkers were 39 percent more likely to die compared to occasional drinkers, while those in the low-risk group were only 11 percent more likely to die from the disease.

Their findings were based on data from a long-running study of 135,000 Britons aged over 60, evenly split between men and women.

At the start of the study, Britons were interviewed about their drinking habits, including how much they drank on average per day, what their main drink was and whether they only drank during meals.

Based on the average amount of alcohol consumed, Britons were classified as occasional, low-risk, moderate-risk or high-risk drinkers.

For context, a low-risk drinker in the study was a man who drank less than 20 grams of alcohol a day, which is equivalent to less than a pint and a half of beer.

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For women, the amount was lower, 10 grams of alcohol, which is equivalent to less than a small glass of wine a day.

People who drank the equivalent of an average of 2 grams of alcohol per day were the “light drinkers” to whom the other groups were compared.

Participants were also grouped according to their socioeconomic status and whether they had any pre-existing health conditions. These data were collected between 2006 and 2010.

The researchers then tracked the participants’ health outcomes for just over 12 years and recorded all deaths, with more than 15,000 such deaths by the end of the study.

Concluding their study, the authors said their findings showed that “low-risk” alcohol consumption had no health benefits and exacerbated cancer risk among the poor and those with existing health problems.

“The fact that even low-risk drinkers with these[health]risk factors had an increased risk of cancer death is an important finding, which is consistent with the reported increased risk of several cancer types and cancer mortality even with very low amounts of alcohol,” they wrote.

They added that while the effect was also seen in poorer people, this could be explained by other health problems experienced by this group.

The experts added that the mitigation of these factors between wine drinkers and those who only drank while eating was interesting and warranted further investigation.

This study had some limitations, one of which was that it was observational, meaning that the recorded deaths could not be directly linked to alcohol consumption.

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Another was that people’s drinking habits were recorded at the start of the study, meaning that changes over the next 12 years would not be taken into account, which could influence the data.

Alcohol deaths have been rising in the UK for decades, but they spiked in March 2020 after the first national lockdown came into force and have progressively worsened.

Data from the Office for National Statistics, which does not include “alcohol-related” diseases such as cancer, showed that most deaths are linked to long-term drinking problems and dependence, with alcoholic liver disease accounting for 76 per cent of cases.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the average number of annual deaths due to excessive alcohol consumption — from direct causes like car accidents and liver damage to indirect causes like mental health problems or heart disease — rose about 29 percent, from nearly 138,000 in 2016 to 2017 to more than 178,000 in 2020 to 2021.

That’s more than the number of drug overdose deaths reported in 2022, which totaled approximately 108,000.

The NHS recommends Britons drink no more than 14 units of alcohol a week, which is roughly equivalent to six pints of beer or one and a half bottles of wine.