The Effects Of Heavy Alcohol Consumption On Heart Disease

The negative effects of heavy alcohol consumption have been studied extensively, but recent studies have noted that moderate alcohol consumption correlate to positive health effects. However, the methods of comparing a group of moderate drinkers to a group of abstainers in these studies and the resulting observations have been criticized. Critics claim that comparing abstainers with moderate drinkers lead to biased observations that favor the moderate drinkers to appear to have a lower risk of coronary heart disease. Factors that influence this biasness include the underrepresentation of alcoholics in the moderate drinker group, the possibility of abstainers forgoing alcohol consumption due to illness and medication, and differing†¦show more content†¦2003). This result was correlated with all alcoholic drinks including beer, vodka, and liquor (Kenneth et al. 2003). It has been suspected that the components of these drinks, such as the antioxidant and mineral content, are wh at influence this lower risk (reviewed by Arranz et al. 2012). Studies that observe the influence of moderate drinking on the risk of coronary heart disease have been criticized. First, there have been remarks that past studies observing the effects of moderate alcohol consumption on risk for coronary heart disease were not conducted long enough and used a low sample size. Studies that involve alcohol are limited to short term observations due to many factors. Some of these include high cost, inability to conduct a blind test, the need to find a large sample of subjects not on prescription medicine or willing to consume or forgo alcohol for long periods of time, and the possibility that some subjects may abuse alcohol consumption during the study. Another concern about past studies was about the comparison of the risk of coronary heart disease between a group of moderate alcohol drinkers and abstainers. One study observed that alcoholism may be a factor for increased risk of coronary heart disease among Japanese women (Ikehara et al. 2013). Some point out that there is an underrepresentation of alcoholics in the moderate group while the abstainers may include individuals recovering from this addiction. Abstainers may also