C-Force: When It Comes to Weighing Drinking Habits, How Much Is Safe?

It seems a natural thing nowadays to see no harm in drinking one or two (or more) cups of coffee a day. Yet it wasn't all that long ago when such a coffee-drinking habit was thought to lead to health problems.

According to a Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health article, early studies linked coffee to heart disease and asthma. As reported by Verywell Health, another early study "warned that drinking six or more cups of coffee a day was associated with 53% higher odds of dementia." But flash forward to a more recent study by Tianjin Medical University: Researchers found that "consuming two to three cups of coffee each day was linked to a 28% lower risk of dementia," Verywell Health reports.

"Over the past few years, research has been showing that coffee may actually be beneficial to cognitive health."

Frank Hu, chair of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, "noted that many participants in those (early) studies also smoked, which may have led researchers to think that coffee was responsible for the adverse effects that are now linked with cigarettes," the Harvard Health article reports.

Current dietary recommendations tend to focus on caffeine, which can come from soda, energy drinks or tea, instead of just coffee itself. Verywell Health points out that the "Food and Drugs Administration said that caffeine can be part of a healthy diet for most people. For most adults, drinking 400 milligrams a day -- about four or five cups of coffee is generally not associated with any negative health effects." It should be stressed, however, that caffeine intake can be harmful to pregnancies, and too much caffeine can also cause anxiety in people with panic or anxiety disorders.

This shift in the assessment of coffee's health impacts came to mind recently after reading a report on another beverage of choice where critical issues and mixed professional opinions are brewing -- alcohol. "Light-to-moderate drinking has long been linked to better heart health, but scientists have never been sure why," writes Time magazine's Haley Weiss in a June report.

Time recently reported on a study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology in which Massachusetts General Hospital researchers suggest that "alcohol might be linked to better heart health: it reduces stress signals in the brain in a sustained way, leading to less of a burden on the heart."

This is based on no small survey. According to Time, "scientists looked at data from more than 50,000 people in the Mass General Brigham Biobank, a large research database created by the hospital." Their findings confirmed that "light-to-moderate drinking was indeed associated with marked reductions in people's risk of cardiovascular disease." Brain scans "suggested that drinking alcohol eases the brain's stress levels in a lasting way, which lightens the stress load placed on the heart even days after someone's last drink. ... When the researchers looked specifically at light-to-moderate drinkers with a history of anxiety -- a condition characterized by an overactive stress network -- the effect doubled."

Before folks start toasting these findings, it is important to note that Dr. Ahmed Tawakol, co-director of the Cardiovascular Imaging Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital and one of the study's authors, is quick to point out ways healthier than alcohol to lessen "activity in the amygdala" (a structure in your brain that processes emotions). These include exercise and plenty of sleep. And after all, "there is no safe quantity of alcohol," Tawakol adds.

The only comparison to coffee drinking I'm making here is the confusion caused by conflicting reports from health professionals. "Many health studies are observational studies, meaning they can show correlation but can't directly prove cause and effect," Verywell Health explains. Others are interventional or experimental, designed to investigate a hypothesis or research question. Dr. Nurgul Fitzgerald, an associate professor of nutritional sciences at Rutgers University, explained, according to Verywell Health, that "it's important to think about all of the results together instead of focusing on an individual study." So how do we find our way to the bottom line?

As to eliminating alcohol altogether, Dr. Nick Sheron, a hepatologist and a visiting professor at Kings College London, said, according to a recent AARP report, "Deciding how much risk you're willing to take may depend on your individual risk for certain diseases. If cancer is your concern, especially breast cancer, abstinence may be your best bet.

"For others, the advice tends to be, if you are a heavy drinker, you should cut back. And if you don't drink at all, there's no good reason to start."

However, Sheron says, "The thing that's never counted in any of these studies is the pleasure that people get from alcohol and the social interactions around it."

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "The Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends that adults of legal drinking age can choose not to drink, or to drink in moderation by limiting intake to 2 drinks or less in a day for men or 1 drink or less in a day for women. ... The Guidelines also do not recommend that individuals who do not drink alcohol start drinking for any reason and that if adults of legal drinking age choose to drink alcoholic beverages, drinking less is better for health than drinking more."

As another Time article notes, "It took decades for smoking rates to fall to their current historically low levels, even after U.S. public-health authorities began sounding the alarm about associated health risks." John Callaci, a researcher with Loyola University Chicago's Alcohol Research Program, says, "Cultural perceptions of alcohol may evolve in a similar way," according to Time.

In the meantime, you might want to consider a Psychology Today post by Dr. Timmen L. Cermak, a psychiatrist specializing in addiction medicine. "In struggles to control any substance, moderation becomes a go-to form of harm reduction," he says. "How we conceptualize the conflict between desire and better judgment determines how we manage it."

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