Written by Joyce Smith, BS. This study found that men and women who enjoyed an average of one alcoholic beverage per day had a higher probability of reaching age 90 than abstainers and heavy drinkers.
Many studies on lifetime alcohol consumption and its impact on cardiovascular disease, cancer, nutrition or mortality 1, 2 have shown inconsistent results, while other studies have also shown inconsistencies in their results by using only male alcohol drinkers 3,4 (alcohol affects women differently than men)5, and neglecting to exclude ex-drinkers. Rarely has the relationship between alcohol consumption and longevity been investigated. The following study by van den Brandt and colleague 6 investigated associations between habitual alcohol intake in later life and the probability of living to 90 years of age in men and women, beverage types, stability of drinking over time and the effects of excluding ex-drinkers, and binge drinking. They analyzed data from the Netherlands Cohort Study (NLCS), which collected health questionnaire data from 1986 to 2007 on thousands of participants, including detailed information on alcohol intake. NLCS participants born between 1916 and 1917 were selected for this analysis because of the group’s potential to reach age 90 by the end of the study. The total group of respondents consisted of men and women from various Dutch municipalities. Included as potential confounders were smoking, height, BMI, physical activity, history of selected diseases, education, vocation, and energy intake.
After adjusting for all of these variables using spline analyses, an inverse J-curve suggested a higher risk of living to age 90 for both men and women who had up to about 2 drinks per day. Of the 5,479 analyzed participants, 16.7% of the 2,591 men survived to age 90 compared to 34.4% of the 2,888 women. Consuming alcohol even in late life (68-70 years of age) correlated with a greater chance of reaching 90 years of age. In fact, the highest probability of reaching 90 was found in those consuming 5 to less than 15 g per day of alcohol (equivalent to about 1 ½ drinks per day), RR=1.36 (95% CI, 1.20–1.55) when compared with those who rarely or never consumed alcoholic beverages; thus, indicating that moderate drinkers were 36% more likely to live to age 90. In a beverage-specific analysis, researchers found no association with beer drinking and longevity; however, drinking wine was positively associated with longevity in women while liquor was positively associated with longevity in men (and inversely in women). Women who were moderate wine drinkers tended to live longer, but their chances of reaching 90 years of age decreased if they consumed more than 15g of alcohol per day. In a subgroup analysis, alcohol intake was associated with longevity in those with and without a history of selected diseases or smoking. Analysis revealed a tendency for binge drinkers to reduce their chance of longevity and while the risk estimates were not significant, researchers suggested that binge drinking be avoided. Lastly, the authors recommended that for non-alcoholic beverage drinkers, the study’s estimated modest risk ratios (RRs) should not be an incentive to start drinking.
Study strengths included the use of valid methods for estimating alcohol consumption, the use of appropriate statistical methods that included confounders and spline regression, and particularly, the assessment of alcohol consumption in 68-70 year old adults to determine an association between alcohol intake in the elderly and subsequent mortality (an assessment that has not been previously done). Furthermore, the cohort had a large number of non-drinkers (about 10-15% were men and more than 30% were women) which provided adequate controls.
This study found that the highest probability of reaching 90 years of age was found for those drinking 5 to less than 15 g of alcohol per day. It does not imply that light to moderate drinking improves health, or that beer may be a good substitute for hard liquor, but rather advocates against binge drinking and non- drinkers becoming drinkers.
Study strengths include the use of valid methods for estimating alcohol consumption and the use of appropriate statistical analysis including spline regression to account for the amounts of alcohol consumed and the many potential confounders. Assessing the amount of alcohol consumed by 68-70 year old adults gave a more accurate association between alcohol intake in the elderly and their subsequent mortality. Furthermore, the large number of non-drinkers (about 10-15% of men and more than 30% of women) in the cohort provided a rich source of controls.
Source: van den Brandt, Piet A., and Lloyd Brandts. “Alcohol consumption in later life and reaching longevity: the Netherlands Cohort Study.” Age and ageing (2020).
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Geriatrics Society. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution on-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Posted May 5, 2020.
Joyce Smith, BS, is a degreed laboratory technologist. She received her bachelor of arts with a major in Chemistry and a minor in Biology from the University of Saskatchewan and her internship through the University of Saskatchewan College of Medicine and the Royal University Hospital in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. She currently resides in Bloomingdale, IL.
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- Yates LB, Djoussé L, Kurth T, Buring JE, Gaziano JM. Exceptional longevity in men: modifiable factors associated with survival and function to age 90 years. Arch Intern Med. 2008;168(3):284-290.
