It’s wine time. Beer Thirty. Happy hour. Five o’clock somewhere. Maybe it's also time to rethink drinking? , but better research methods have thrown cold water on that. “Drinking less is a great way to be healthier,” said Dr. Timothy Naimi, who directs the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. ARE DRINKING GUIDELINES CHANGING?Guidelines vary a lot from country to country but the overall trend is toward drinking less.
That idea came from imperfect studies comparing groups of people by how much they drink. Usually, consumption was measured at one point in time. And none of the studies randomly assigned people to drink or not drink, so they couldn’t prove cause and effect. People who report drinking moderately tend to have higher levels of education, higher incomes and better access to health care, Naimi said. “It turns out that when you adjust for those things, the benefits tend to disappear,” he said.