What Is Moderate Drinking? Defining Drinks and Drinking Levels

When we look at gender differences, we see that in all countries, men have a higher alcohol consumption than women. To make this average more understandable, we can express it in bottles of wine. Wine contains around 12% pure alcohol per volume1 so that one liter of wine contains 0.12 liters of pure alcohol. So, a value of 6 liters of pure alcohol per person per year is equivalent to 50 liters of wine. Or, 67 standard bottles of wine (which have a volume of 0.75 liters). The Dietary Guidelines also list several categories of people who should not drink at all.

Share of adults who drink alcohol

While consuming alcohol in moderation appears to have some benefits, it is important to remember that too much can be devastating for overall health and even life-threatening in the long run. The investigators reported in the journal BMC Medicine that people who drank from 2 to 7 glasses of wine per week were much less likely to be diagnosed with clinical depression. Women usually have lower levels of alcohol dehydrogenase (AHD) than men.

Moderate Alcohol Consumption

1. One standard drink in the U.S. contains around 14 grams of pure alcohol.
2. Again, the prevalence of drinking across North Africa and the Middle East is notably lower than elsewhere.
3. Studies have shown that females begin having alcohol-related problems at lower levels of alcohol consumption than males.
4. The most commonly used measures in this category ask each participant to cite the number of drinks that he or she consumed on each of the 7 days preceding the survey, beginning with the most recent day (Rehm 1998).
5. “Good observational studies do their best to take account of all the factors that might affect an outcome,” Dr. Komaroff says, “Unfortunately, they can’t be done perfectly, and they can’t take account of risk factors that have not yet been discovered.”

But when elevated blood pressure is accompanied by abnormal cholesterol and blood sugar levels, the damage to your arteries, kidneys, and heart accelerates exponentially. In the Special Health Report, Controlling Your Blood Pressure, find out how to keep blood pressure in a healthy range simply by making lifestyle changes, such as losing weight, increasing activity, and eating more healthfully. To find out, Columbia Magazine spoke with Katherine Keyes ’10PH, a professor of epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health and an expert on the health risks of our new drinking habits. The evidence for moderate alcohol use in healthy adults is still being studied. But good evidence shows that drinking high amounts of alcohol are clearly linked to health problems. An Italian review of studies published in the European Journal of Epidemiology found that moderate wine and beer consumption reduced the risk of cardiovascular events, but spirits did not.

Binge Drinking:

“Good observational studies do their best to take account of all the factors that might affect an outcome,” Dr. Komaroff says, “Unfortunately, they can’t be done perfectly, and they how much did steve harwell drink can’t take account of risk factors that have not yet been discovered.” When it comes to alcohol, if you don’t drink, don’t start for health reasons. During pregnancy, drinking may cause the unborn baby to have brain damage and other problems. In this video, Dr. Bobby Lazzara explains the potential benefits of alcohol for your heart and emphasizes the importance of moderation. During pregnancy, it increases the risk of pregnancy loss and of a child having growth and developmental problems in future.

Compared with drinking excessively, moderate drinking reduces your risk of negative health effects. Whilst the World Health Organization (WHO) and most national guidelines typically quantify one unit of alcohol as equal to 10 grams of pure alcohol, the metric used as a ‘standard measure’ can vary across countries. However, this can vary, with several adopting 12 or 14 grams per unit. The map shows the share of all road traffic deaths attributed to alcohol consumption over the national legal limit for alcohol consumption. The chart shows direct death rates (not including suicide deaths) from alcohol use disorders across the world.

Thus, a person drinking such a bottle may still report having had just one drink, although the amount consumed is approximately equivalent to the beer in three regular 12 oz bottles. These examples illustrate the difficulties encountered in determining and comparing actual alcohol consumption and the contents of various types of beverages for establishing a standard definition of a drink. Many current definitions of moderate drinking are based on a specific number of drinks consumed during a designated time period (e.g., per day or per week). This definition, however, raises the obvious question, What is a “drink” ? Another important question is, Why does it matter how a drink is defined?

Nevertheless, research to date investigating the association between alcohol consumption levels and various diseases has relied primarily on self-reports of alcohol consumption. Department of Health and Human Services, the 2020–2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans provide recommendations on what the average American should eat and drink to promote health and help prevent chronic disease. According to the guidelines, adults of legal drinking age can choose not to drink or to drink in moderation by limiting intake to two drinks or less in a day for men and one drink or less in a day for women when alcohol is consumed. There are some adults who should not drink alcohol, such as women who are pregnant. Adults who choose to drink, and are not among the individuals listed below who should not drink, are encouraged to limit daily intakes to align with the Dietary Guidelines. Frequency measures query the respondent on his or her typical drinking frequency in a given timeframe (e.g., the past year), based on various predetermined categories from which to choose (e.g., “never,” “once a month,” “once a week,” or “everyday” ).

Extreme binge drinking, also known as high-intensity drinking, refers to drinking at levels far beyond the binge threshold, resulting in high peak blood alcohol concentrations. The reported alcohol consumption is likely to be higher if the respondent perceives the assessment to be less stigmatizing. For example, estimates of alcohol consumption are higher when alcohol-related questions are part of a food-frequency survey than when the same questions are posed in an alcohol-specific survey. Some surveys may address only alcohol consumption, whereas other surveys may assess all food and other nutrient intake, as well as additional health-related behaviors (e.g., smoking and exercise), and include only a few alcohol-specific questions. In diary methods, participants record each drink consumed over a given timeframe (e.g., 1 week), ideally shortly after consumption.

It directly influences the stomach, brain, heart, gallbladder, and liver. It affects levels of lipids (cholesterol and triglycerides) and insulin in the blood, as well as inflammation and coagulation. When alcohol is consumed, it passes from the stomach and intestines into the bloodstream, where it distributes itself evenly throughout all the water in the body’s tissues and fluids. Drinking alcohol on an empty stomach increases the rate of absorption, resulting in higher blood alcohol level, compared to drinking on a full stomach. In either case, however, alcohol is still absorbed into the bloodstream at a much faster rate than it is metabolized.

The wide methodological diversity helps to explain, at least in part, the seemingly contradictory study findings regarding the consequences of certain drinking levels. Miller and colleagues (1991) have extended Turner’s analyses by providing simple calculation rules for converting alcohol-consumption data among four standard drinking units currently used by researchers. The authors urge the adoption of a common method for reporting alcohol consumption. However, alcoholic beverages differ substantially in their alcohol content. Accordingly, a drink should be defined in terms of alcohol content, so that a drink of beer contains approximately the same amount of alcohol as a drink of wine or spirits.